THE year is 1904 and Zanna Snow, who lives in the tiny coastal town of Loch Harbor, New Brunswick, yearns to hone her detective skills instead of helping her parents run the exclusive Rosemount Hotel.
Her idol is her uncle, Bruce Snow, a famous Boston detective, and her dream is to eventually work for him. Zanna is hampered in her efforts to train herself, though, as she is required to help out in a specific part of the hotel's operation each summer. By so doing, her parents think she will be adequately prepared to eventually join them in managing the hotel. By the time she is 11, she has spent one summer in the hot and steamy laundry and is currently assigned to the hot and steamy kitchen. Her slapdash work drives the cook crazy and her daydreaming causes her to have lots of accidents. Hotel life becomes a lot more interesting when a seven-year-old girl goes missing and life in the hotel descends into chaos while guests, employees and police all embark on a frantic search for the child. Zanna is sure she has an important clue but is ignored until her uncle shows up with his young helper who seems to believe she is not just a victim of an overly active imagination.
Will takes Zanna seriously and tells her to talk to her uncle who treats her with utter disdain and rejects any thought that she might have useful information to share. Naturally, this leads to Zanna trying to solve the mystery on her own. In the tradition of mystery stories it leads her into great danger as she races across a shrinking land bridge after a fleeing suspect.
In a wonderfully tense and scary denouement, all is revealed and the mystery is solved. Best of all, the famous uncle actually acknowledges that Zanna and Will have been a great help in the investigation and she realizes that she just might have taken a big step towards her chosen career.
The Maritime setting is nicely realized and Zanna clearly loves her Loch Harbor home. The period setting helps to emphasize the fact that Zanna is an unusual and enterprising girl of her time and the luxury hotel setting is fascinating.
Zanna has a few rules by which she operates as a detective, some of which are listed in italics at the beginning of book chapters. Middle grade girls will enjoy reading a period mystery with a thoroughly modern protagonist.
Fran Ashdown worked at the Capilano branch of the North Vancouver District Library as the children's librarian for many years. She would love to live but not work in a luxury hotel. For further information check your local libraries.
