The Midnight Tunnel by Angie Frazier (Book 1 Suzanna Snow Mysteries)

I picked up this book because I’m always on the lookout for great mysteries for young readers, which (to me) are hard to find. While perusing other reviews of this book, I notice they make the obvious comparisons to Nancy Drew. The 11-year-old detective, in what I hope is the first of many books in this series, is better than Nancy Drew. I would actually compare this series to the Enola Holmes Mysteries by Nancy Springer. Nancy Drew is good reading, but her character has no “oomph.”

This fantastic new series, featuring 11-year-old Suzanna “Zanna” Snow, is set at the turn of the 20th century in the coastal town of Loch Harbor, New Brunswick. She toils day in and day out at the Rosemount, an exclusive summer hotel managed by her parents. As much as she longs to be a detective like her famous Uncle Bruce Snow, she is being groomed as her parents’ replacement someday. But serving tea and waiting on other people are not what Zanna sees for her future.

You can’t help but like Zanna from the start. She has a strong sense of who she is and what she wants to be. Like a meticulous detective, she keeps a notebook handy to jot down anything of interest, from the goings and comings of the hotel guests to the rules a detective should live by. (more…)