Melodie Campbell

Penny has moved with her Mum and dog to stay at her great aunt's pub. She's happy to be around her cousins but things get tricky when her dog digs up a huge bone from the backyard that turns out to be a human femur! On closer inspection Penny and her cousins find a skeleton - not sure what to do, they cover it up again but the dogs dig it up again and soon all the town knows there is a dead body in the beer garden! who is it? Penny and her cousins form the Crime club and set out to see if they can discover the skeleton's identity before the police do? Along the way, quite a few people in the town act very strangely and try to throw them off the trail.
This book was okay but it got a bit convoluted at the end and I felt there were a few loose ends that were brushed over a bit too quickly. Kids will probably like it but I think it lacked a certain sophistication in the telling...… (más)

I enjoyed this well-crafted whodunnit murder mystery. It's set on an ocean-liner crossing the Atlantic from New York to England in 1928. A passenger, Lady Lucy Revelstoke, discovers a stranger's body in her cabin when she returns from dinner on the first evening. She and her maid, Elf, have a checkered background and therefore they take extraordinary steps to dispose of the body in order to avoid unwanted attention to themselves. Lady Lucy turns amateur detective to identify the killer. Along the way to a solution she encounters several interesting characters and potential killers. The story has an exciting ending with a satisfying conclusion.

There's a good sense of place, the characters are well-drawn and there's plenty of historical detail to add authenticity to the story.

It's a good read and recommended.… (más)

I really like Melodie Campbell's short books. I have read several of them and they never fail to be amusing and fun. This book is no exception. It's a romantic farce with a series of funny mishaps that lead to a happy ending. Charlie goes to Rome with her aunt to mend her broken heart, and nothing goes as it's supposed to, but if everything is going to go wrong, it might as well be in Rome, right? And in the end Charlie finally gets something to go right. This is a short, feel-good story that's great for a Sunday afternoon read.… (más)