A Girl Called Justice: The Ghost in the Garden

A Girl Called Justice is the first book in the Justice Jones series for junior readers, by British author, Elly Griffiths. At twelve years old, Justice Jones is going to school for the first time, and it's a boarding school on the edge of Romney Marsh: Highbury House School for the Daughters of Gentlefolk.

On arrival, at the start of October, she describes it in her notebook: Dracula's castle/a prison; potential for murders, high; conditions, squalid; food, inedible. Her father, Herbert Jones QC, has sent her here because he knows the Headmistress, Miss de Vere. Her mother schooled Justice at home until her death a month earlier, so she can't just be left at home on her own.

But as soon as Justice hears of the young servant, Mary, who recently died, she is sure it was murder, and believes that if she solves the case, she can convince her father that she can come home. And of course, she is well qualified to solve the murder: she has studied her father's criminal cases, and her mother, writing as Veronica Burton, was the author of the Leslie Light mysteries.

But boarding school is a new experience for her. Justice has to learn to navigate the building, the rules and the girls in her dormy. There is prep and order marks and tuck and early rising, locked gates, out of bounds and restrictions on what she may read, midnight feasts and ghost stories about the Haunted Tower.

Justice isn't at all surprised when someone else dies, although she's puzzled that it's her No 1 suspect. There follow unsigned notes arranging midnight rendezvous, hidden staircases, blackmail, mistaken identity, and several more attempted murders occur, all while they are snowbound and cut off from the outside world. Through it all, Justice manages to make some friends and distract herself from missing her mum and dad.

In Justice, Elly Griffiths gives the reader a wonderfully quirky character: one whose inspiration is the protagonist of her mother's novels, who recites her father's cases when bored or needing to stay awake, who is clever and insightful and a little daring. Her mother's influence is clear from her comments, both spoken and unsaid. She really is an utter delight.

Of her friend Stella's faith in adults, she notes "She seemed incapable of believing that teachers could behave in surprising or underhand ways. Justice supposed that's what eight years of school did for you." And "Mum always used to say that normal school life had a way of numbing your critical faculties, and Justice began to see that this was true."

Griffiths never talks down to her readers, and this series is bound to appeal to young readers, but that doesn't preclude enjoyment by readers well beyond the target age group. It's clear that Ely Griffiths has many more than one string to her bow. There are at least two further volumes in the series that will be eagerly awaited. Excellent historical crime fiction for the young (and young at heart).