Once Upon a Crime: A Murder Most Unladylike Collection (A Murder Most Unladylike Collection, 1) Paperback – August 5, 2021

Good addition to our series

Excellent. This is a collection of short stories (two of which were published as tiny books) and a couple of smaller items. Contents: Case of the Uninvited Guest (my favorite), Case of the Missing Treasure (previously published), Case of the Drowned Pearl (previously published), Hound of Weston School, Case of the Second Scream, May Wong and the Deadly Flat, May's Guide to England, Hieroglyphic Alphabet, Morse Code, time line of all of the Unladylike cases.

It was a wonderful thrill to discover this book's existence while looking up the author online, and I purchased a copy for myself at once. Two of the six short stories were already published individually as small books, but the others are brand new, and the final one is a delightful bridge into the new series that Robin Stevens will be releasing in August 2022. I greatly enjoyed this, and would recommend it to others fans of the series.

This collection of short stories tells the tales of a few of the murders and mysteries solved by Daisy Wells and Hazel Wong intermixed chronologically with novels in the Murder Most Unladylike series. The two founders of the Detective Society now in their teens in 1930’s England. There are also one story featuring their friends George and Alexander, the Junior Pinkertons, and another long one starring Hazel’s 10-year-old sister May and taking place at the start of WWII. May has helped Daisy and Hazel before but this one was solved through her own reasoning and actions. I’m now looking forward to reading the first full-length novel about May and her exploits. Each of the stories in this collection is good, written from the POV of one of the protagonists with the proper word choices for someone their age. They were each unpredictable and satisfying.