What a delight this middle-grade murder mystery is. Myrtle Hardcastle is a whip-smart 12-year-old with ambitions to join the Detective Bureau. She’s a wordsmith with an enquiring mind, a scholar’s vocabulary, and a telescope.

The trouble starts with that telescope. Something’s amiss at the house next-door. Myrtle investigates, and before you can spell Celastrina argiolus, a murder is discovered, clues accrue, and red herrings swim invitingly through the narrative current. Or should I say they sprout like weeds in the garden, for this is a mystery of botany and horticulture.

True to classic form, Myrtle not only sports a deerstalker, but has a sidekick: modern-minded governess Miss Judson - a Mary Poppins figure with impeccable poise and sang-froid: a foil to Myrtle’s occasional outbursts of bubble and pique.

In a fun bit of intertextual gameplay, each chapter begins with an epigraph quoting from the Principles of Detection: A Manual for the Amateur and Professional Investigator, 1893 by H.M. Hardcastle. The reader can deduce who the writer of this authoritative work is.

Wordplay abounds; in fact it was the pun on Myrtle in the title which initially drew my attention. And thumb’s up for the commodious bathroom. Booknerds can watch out for the literary genealogy running through the novel: the setting is Swinburne, and key characters are named Hardy, Wodehouse, and Blakeney. On the subject of the latter, Reader, I adored him and hope he reappears in subsequent novels.

I encountered this book in audio format, narrated by Bethan Rose Young with all the crunch and sweetness of a candy-apple. Her voice was warm and clear, with smugness and triumph in all the right places. I would love to read Premeditated Myrtle now, but will probably have to rush straight to the sequel.

Premeditated Myrtle is a delightful, witty, and intelligent historical novel. As for Myrtle, she is the kind of heroine with stuff in her pockets. Highly recommended for children aged nine plus and amateur sleuths of all ages.