15 Detective Books for Young Sleuths

This series is a new spin on Sherlock Holmes, involving Sam, a young boy in Singapore and his trusty robot Watson. In this first adventure, Auntie Kim Lian’s Peranakan cookbook goes missing, and Sam fears he will never have her delicious ayam buah keluak ever again! He will need to use his amazing detective skills to find out where it went and save everyone from this culinary catastrophe!

This is an older book but there’s a reason people still talk about. True, there are some problematic themes in there with gender and racial archetypes. Overall, it is still a good mystery. In case you’re not sure what it is about, 16 strangers get invited to the reading of Samuel W. Westing’s will. There they find that this eccentric puzzle loving millionaire has left one final puzzle for them to solve in order to inherit his vast fortune. With a new movie adaptation on the horizon, the love for this book is sure to be reignited.

In this series that takes place in an alternate reality, Ada Lovelace and Mary Shelley are childhood besties who form a detective agency. Their first case involves a missing heirloom, a false confession, and numerous suspects who could be the actual thief. The girls must use their analytical and mathematical thinking to deduce who the actual culprit is. This new spin on the Holmes and Watson dynamic helps to promote a love of the STEM field for young readers, especially girls, as Ada and Mary use these to solve their cases.

This is a series of books, but the first one is my favorite. Kyle Keeley prefers video and board games to reading, so he is very much uninterested in a writing contest where the prize is a lock-in in the town’s recently renovated library. That is, until he finds out that the library was designed by his favorite game designer, Luigi Lemoncello. A last minute attempt ends up garnering Kyle a winning slot along with 11 of his classmates. When the morning comes, the lock-in turns into an escape room experience, here the children have to use all of their wits to find the hidden escape route.

After setting up a detective agency at their boarding school, Daisy Wells and Hazel Wong yearn to find a mystery worthy of their deductive skills. Then Hazel comes across the body of Miss Bell, the Science Mistress; but when she returns with Daisy, the body has gone missing. Now the girls not only have to prove the murder happened, they have to solve it before the police do, and before the killer strikes again.

Ted and Kat watch their cousin Salim enter a pod on the London eye on the morning of May 24. Thirty minutes later when the ride is over, they watch everyone but their Salim exit the pod. When the police come up with nothing, it’s up to the brother and sister to overcome their own prickly relationship to band together and find out what happened to their cousin.

Zoe moves with her mother to a new town school following her parent’s divorce. One of the first people she meets is Philip Digby, an annoying if extremely charismatic boy. Against her better judgement, Zoe allows Digby to draw her into his world and current scheme to solve the kidnapping of a local girl. As she goes along with his schemes, Zoe learns that Digby’s own sister was kidnapped eight years earlier and he feels this new one is related. No one is prepared for all the revelations that come not only in this book but the ones that follow. This is a trilogy of books so you won’t get too much of Zoe, Digby and their other friends, but it is still an enjoyable read even if it is short lived.

Monday Charles has gone missing, and only her BFF Claudia seems to care. When she goes to her home to check in on her, her mother and sister April also appear apathetic about Monday’s missing status. When Claudia digs deeper into the situation, she finds that no one can really remember the last time that they saw Monday. Claudia is determined to find her missing friend as well as find out that no one seems to care that a girl has seemingly vanished into thin air.

When Asiya Haque sneaks out for a walk with Michael, her friend and hidden crush, neither expect to stumble over a dead body. Michael covers for Asiya so her strict parents don’t restrict her even more than they do, but then goes missing himself. This leads the authorities to believe he is the culprit, despite what Asiya says. She has to find a way of combating an officer who appears to have skipped all his sensitivity training classes—and avoid becoming a victim herself—to prove Michael’s innocence.

Scarlett is a fearless Muslim American girl who is ready to take down crime in Las Almas. When her latest case pulls her into a centuries old battle between genies and ancient curses. What’s even worse is that her family has ties to this feud and that solving it could result in her father’s death.

Mary Quinn finds herself saved from the gallows and given the opportunity to attend Miss Scrimshaw’s Academy for Girls. Once there she finds that the boarding school is a cover for The Agency, an all-female investigative unit. For her first case, Mary assumes the guise of a lady’s companion to infiltrate the home of a rich shipping magnate to trace where his missing cargo has gone. In this house full of deception, will Mary be able to solve the mystery and make it to her next case?