Review: Cream Buns and Crime

Cream Buns and Crime 
Rating: 4/5
Buy or Borrow: Buy 
Source: Copy courtesy of the publisher! 

Daisy Wells and Hazel Wong are famous for the murder cases they have solved - but there are many other mysteries in the pages of Hazel's casebook, from the macabre Case of the Deepdean Vampire, to the baffling Case of the Blue Violet, and their very first case of all: the Case of Lavinia's Missing Tie.

Packed with brilliant mini-mysteries, including two brand-new and never seen before stories, and peppered with Daisy and Hazel's own tips, tricks and facts, this is the perfect book for budding detectives and fans of the award-winning, bestselling Murder Most Unladylike series. 

This is such a brilliant collection of short stories, puzzles, recipes and other fun information to do with crime and so on, I had so much fun reading this! I wasn't too sure what to expect going in...I actually thought it was all short stories, so I was pleasantly surprised by all the other bits! For such a thin/short book.....there's a lot of fun stuff packed in, check it out: 

How To Set Up Your Detective Society

The Case of Lavinia's Missing Tie

Daisy's Guide to Detecting

The Case of the Blue Violet

The Golden Age of Detective Stories with Robin Stevens

The Queens of Crime

Daisy's Top Detectives

The Books That Made Murder Most Unladylike

The Secret of Weston School

The Junior Pinkertons' Secret World of Spies

Codebreaking with Hazel Wong

The Case of the Deepdean Vampire

George's Guide to Unsolved Mysteries

Cream Buns and Crime

The Mystery of the Missing Bunbreak

The Great Detective Quiz 

See what I mean? Sooooo much fun stuff packed in! When the characters present something, they do it perfectly in character which was a nice touch rather than having the information be delivered by the author! When Robin does present us some fun information she does it brilliantly, with humour and draws you in! There's some fun notes from Hazel at the beginnings of sections which where another nice little touch! 

The advice given is genuinely helpful, and perfectly usable. The short stories are you know...short, but they're also very well paced and create the mystery and intrigue easily within the few pages they have while managing to keep you guessing and wrapping it all up nicely at the end! I particularly enjoyed The Case of the Blue Violet and The Secret of Weston School! The former being set prior to the Bonfire Night Murder and the latter being the Junior Pinkerton's first mystery! The Secret of Weston School was perhaps the longest, and it really drew me in. I loved the boys POV, and there was great insight in to the climate in the country at the end of WW1 and before WW2. 

Daisy's Guide is fun and tells another story, and Robin's section on the Golden Age of Detective Stories is full of intriguing information, most of which I had no idea about! Queen's of Crime has lots of author information, including a tidbit about Agatha Christie that I had no idea about and piqued my interest! You can see where the characters are inspired from just from that, let alone from the section on The Books That Made Murder Most Unladylike! Queens of Crime also may or may not hint at the next or a coming book, which has me all excited! 

Daisy's Top Detectives and The Books That Made both provide a list of potential reading to build your TBR's with, if you're interested in mystery books and like I said...you can see the inspiration and it was so intriguing to see which detective stories influenced which of the books from this series and how! 

Secret World of Spies provides us with plenty of interesting historical information, and I found myself fascinated as I was reading! There where even some historical figures I hadn't heard of and had to look up right away to find out more information about! Codebreaking with Hazel was so much fun, I loved learning about the different codes and how to break them, and trying my hand at code breaking! That would have come in handy when I was at school, I'm not going to lie! 

The Case of the Deepdean Vampire was another fun short story, with some nice historical touches. I love it when I can see that an author has done a load of research and then worked in to the plot and narrative smoothly without dumping it all out! The characters where so believable and human too. The Unsolved Mysteries section featured a few I knew and a few I didn't, unsolved mysteries drive me mad so this was both intriguing and maddening although I did like the slight speculation on potential suspects as a few came up that I hadn't come across before on certain cases. 

Cream Buns and Crime features a host of recipes. Robin immediately bought my eternal love by giving us a chocolate cake recipe. (I really, really love chocolate cake okay guys!) The recipes are accurate to the time, and I'm going to be needing those coconut Macaroons! We get one more brilliantly written short story and then we finish everything off with a quiz! 

Like I said...a great collection with an incredible amount of information delivered in fun and exciting ways and mixed in with brilliantly written stories that are generally perfect short stories! Not rushed, and perfectly wrapped up! Definitely a must buy for fans of the series...or maybe if you're intrigued by the series and want to get a taster?