The Feathered Book by Charlie Nutbrown ~ Blog Tour

Everything With Words – 11th September 2025

Embrace the mystery of The Feathered Book! Lose yourself in the unknown, search for clues and absorb the magic. This story will have readers captivated from start to finish. It’s my pleasure to welcome author Charlie Nutbrown with a guest post about why children should read detective fiction.

WHY CHILDREN SHOULD READ DETECTIVE FICTION

CHARLIE NUTBROWN

The Feathered Book, my new middle grade novel, is both an animal adventure and a detective story. Or, as I like to think of it, Sherlock Holmes meets The Wind in the Willows.

Detective stories for children are, of course, nothing new. There is a long tradition of such books – the Nancy Drew stories, for example, or Nils-Olof Franzén’s Agaton Sax. And there are innumerable children’s books that incorporate some form of mystery. However, the vast majority of these are ‘treasure hunts’ – that is, one clue leads to another, which leads to another, and so on. Many of these are wonderful, thrilling books; some are classics. But I hoped to write a children’s book in the manner of a Golden Age locked-room mystery: one that starts with a seemingly impossible crime while providing all the information the detective (and the reader) requires to solve the mystery.

In The Feathered Book, a cursed work of alchemy disappears from a locked room in an underground labyrinth beneath a library. The only door was locked; there are no windows; the room was empty moments before; and two librarians are stationed immediately outside the door. The crime is, on the face of it, an impossibility.

This is the perplexing puzzle that faces the book’s detective, Monty the Fox. With a combination of brains, enthusiasm, and incompetence, he sets out across the Lake to solve the mystery, gathering clues, interviewing suspects, and spinning theories. But which of the nefarious characters he meets in his investigation – otter pirates, sinister toads, and crooked rats – is the thief? And just how was the book stolen from a locked, empty and guarded room?

Some readers may crack the case easily; others will rack their brains until the end. Personally, I’m not sure it matters. Detective books are often talked of as though they are dry puzzles, to be solved rather than read. But to me, detective stories are more like magic tricks: full of illusions, misdirection, and – in the revelation of the criminal – grand finales. And the revelation should be a delight. It is the magician, with a great flourish and a puff of smoke, pulling the rabbit out the hat, and shouting ‘Hey presto!’. My favourite such moments make me laugh or gasp with their sheer ingenuity and preposterousness.

Detective books have a lot to offer children. They require logic and memory. They encourage critical thinking, pattern spotting, close reading. They provide an insight into darkness, while being safe. They show that bad things happen, but that justice exists; that life is puzzling, but that puzzles have solutions; that in the face of mysteries, the answer isn’t superstition and ignorance, it’s imagination and brains.

But, in truth, that’s not why I love detective books – nor why I think children should read them. I love detective books because they make you think. They make you imagine. They terrify and bamboozle, charm and amuse. And, above all, they offer moments of delight and wonder. What more can you ask of a book than that?

Thank you to Everything With Words for inviting me to take part in the blog tour! Don’t miss the rest of the stops:

Click on the covers below to find out more or purchase online:

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Books by Kate Heap:

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