Paradise Barn by Victor Watson

"The killer had not been found. The police had been enquiring, but it was wartime and they had too much to do. So far, they hadn’t discovered who the dead man was.

Old Miss Morton had found the body. She had been walking her two labradors. Now, whenever Molly saw Miss Morton, she looked carefully at her, imagining there would be a new and special grimness on her face because she had found a dead body. But Miss Morton had always looked grim, even before she had come across the man lying under the elm tree with a bullet-wound in his head."

Nothing used to happen in the country town of Great Deeping, but in 1940 life changes for everyone, even in the remote English countryside.

The small town is full of strangers and evacuees from the London blitz, and then there is a murder. While the adults seem to have other things on their minds, Molly and Abigail decide to solve the mystery. When Adam is evacuated to Molly’s house, he quickly forms an alliance with them, and it is his passion for drawing and his interest in art that leads the three friends to discover a link between the murder and a notorious art theft.

How this connects with Hilda Pritt, the woman pilot with a revolver in her handbag, Cuffey the mysterious lodger who befriends Molly, and Paradise Barn itself is gradually revealed in this tense thriller.

Victor Watson’s enthralling first novel brilliantly uses wartime England as a background, showing a time when children were left to their own devices and danger was a part of everyday life. It has been shortlisted for the Branford Boase Award for first-time authors.

Catnip will be publishing a further mystery featuring Molly, Abigail and Adam next year.

"Familiar ingredients of Second World War Home Front Fiction are given a fresh, emotionally acute treatment."
THE BOOKSELLER

"Young readers...have much to look forward to if Watson produces further historical novels of this quality."
INIS

"Well imagined and cleverly plotted...recreates the wartime atmosphere without straying into cliches. Watson's characters come over as vivid and real."
Nicholas Tucker, IBBY