Reviewed by Craig Sisterson
Eleven-year-old Tippy’s uncle and his boyfriend turn up in her small New Zealand town to look after her when his mother is away over Christmas, but when her schoolteacher is found dead and her best friend has a near-fatal accident, the trio turns detective, dubbing themselves The Nancys, and launching a chaotic, hilarious investigation.
I don't know if I've grinned as much reading a crime novel for quite a long time. There's such a lovely sense of exuberance to Melbourne-based Kiwi author RWR McDonald's debut mystery, which is set in a fictional small town in the deep south of New Zealand.
Delightful, charming, heartfelt, exuberant; they're not usually the words that come top of mind when musing on a crime novel, but they absolutely fit for The Nancys and the Case of the Missing Necklace, which has an adolescent heroine but is very much an adult mystery novel (not a young adult or juvenile mystery).
I can certainly see why the then-unpublished manuscript was highly commended in the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards (a pipeline that has highlighted the likes of The Dry by Jane Harper, The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion, and The Nowhere Child by Christian White).
There's just something, well, je ne sais quoi, about The Nancys and the Case of the Missing Necklace that makes it quite different to much of the great rural and small-town crime writing coming out of Australia and New Zealand in recent years. While it has some of the quirky local characters and secrets-behind-closed-doors you'd expect with 'rural noir', there's a different energy and tone, delightfully so.
At its heart, and the book has a big one, The Nancys and the Case of the Missing Necklace centres on the misadventures of an unlikely investigating trio and the colourful South Otago townsfolk they encounter. along the way.
Tippy Chan is an eleven-year-old Riverstone local delighted by a visit from her beloved Uncle Pike, a Sydney hairdresser who could body double for Santa Claus. Pike has returned to the riverside town he fled years before - "the town that style forgot", as the blurb aptly describes - with his fashionista boyfriend Devon in tow, to look after Tippy while her mother goes on a cruise.
It's been a tough time for the Chan family, with Tippy's father passing away in the past year and even more stress heaped on her mother, Pike's sister, who could do with a good break away. Tippy loves her uncle’s old Nancy Drew books, and when her best friend falls off a bridge and then her teacher’s body is found near the town's only traffic light, the trio see a chance to solve a mystery for real. At the same time they're juggling other local adventures, including a surprising makeover of a glum teenage neighbour for a local show, and Pike dealing with his past history in the town.
Overall The Nancys and the Case of the Missing Necklace is a real delight, a charming mystery that is much more than charm, packed with lovably unruly characters and chaotic events and perfectly seasoned with humour and heart. First-time novelist McDonald has opened his account with a real belter, a unique and enthralling tale.
[I originally reviewed this book for the New Zealand Listener and this blog on its original Australian and New Zealand release a few years ago. Today a newly edited and updated version, The Nancys and the Case of the Missing Necklace has been published for the first time for UK, USA & global market]
Craig Sisterson is a lawyer turned writer, editor, podcast host, awards judge, and event chair. He's the founder of the Ngaio Marsh Awards, co-founder of Rotorua Noir, author of Macavity and HRF Keating Award-shortlisted non-fiction work SOUTHERN CROSS CRIME, editor of the DARK DEEDS DOWN UNDER anthology series, and writes about books for magazines and newspapers in several countries.
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