About ‘A Box Full Of Murders’
1983: Ricky heads off to Scout and Guide camp with his Dad’s old pen knife. It is an emotional experience because the Scouts and Guides have always camped at Chalfont Camp but a property developer has been granted permission to develop the site – although not the nearby woods. First, Scout Leader Baloo tells the children a scary story about Chalfont Woods and then a body is found …
Modern Day: Luke and Ava find a box of in their attic. It contains old documents relating to the Scout and Guide Camp – tent diaries and incident forms and police documents and newspaper cuttings. Someone h as headed the documents with a letter imploring the reader from ‘the future’ to solve the case …and Luke and Ava find themselves more deeply drawn in with every word that they read …
The first book for children from the masterful and popular adult mystery writer, Janice Hallett.
Q&A with author Janice Hallett
Q: Your story is set in a 1980s Guide and Scout camp. What would your tent name have been in that era and why?
A: I was very into pop music at the time, so my tent would definitely have been named after a band, a song, or a singer. In A Box Full Of Murders there’s a tent called Duran Spandau, because two of the Guides in it like the pop group Duran Duran and the other two prefer Spandau Ballet. There’s also the Fun Girl Three tent, also named after a band. Music was the main channel of cultural expression for young people of this generation and that’s reflected in A Box Full Of Murders.
Q: Ava and Luke are children in the modern day reading evidence from the 1980s. Please can you tell the reader about their reactions to some of the 1980s details? How did you see the 1980s through the eyes of today’s children?
A: Luke and Ava are aghast at how clunky the technology of 1983 was. From the telephones to cassette recorders to the fact that photographic film had to be ‘developed’ into photographs, while letters were posted and took days to arrive. It feels like light years away from now.
Looking through Luke and Ava’s eyes felt warm and nostalgic at first, until I realised how little information was available then. With no wikipedia and no internet to look things up – if you didn’t know something, you didn’t know it – and if you weren’t in a library you couldn’t look it up. We are very lucky to have such resources now.
Q: What are your top tips on planning and writing a good mystery?
A: I don’t do much planning in advance of writing my books, and that’s my biggest tip; let your characters lead you through the story. For me, characters always need one secret each – something they don’t tell us. It may or may not be revealed during the story, but if everyone has a secret then everyone has something to hide and that’s a recipe for intrigue and mystery.
Q: Which characters did you most enjoy writing a why? Please can you tell the readers a little bit about them?
A: I love Ricky, who is the leader of the Hunky Dory tent. He’s determined his tent will be the best and takes his leadership role very seriously, but without even trying he ends up in trouble time and again. Belinda, leader of the Fun Girl Three tent, was also a joy. She is the opposite to Ricky. She doesn’t care if her tent succeeds or not, so long as she does the least work possible without getting into trouble. Then there’s the Brewford Badgers, who aim to get as many Guide badges as possible. I love their ambition!
Q: Which Girl Guide badge was your favourite/do you wish you had done as a child?
A: As a Brownie I was very committed to earning badges and had them sewn all down my sleeves, even on the cuffs. Despite that, one badge evaded me: Horse Rider. Unfortunately, I lived in the heart of Urban west London and there wasn’t a horse within a 20-mile radius. It didn’t stop me from ‘badgering’ the Brown Owl, to no avail as I never did get it.
- A Box Full Of Murders Is Available Now. Janice Hallett is appearing at the Barnes Children’s Literature Festival. To grab your tickets and to see what else is on visit: https://www.barneskidslitfest.org/whats-on/ (Q&A provided as part of festival promotion. Many thanks to Janice Hallett for taking part at to Jo Hardacre for organising)
