Nursery Crimes [Import] [Paperback]

B. M. Gill (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 194 pages
• Publisher: Coronet Crime; New Ed edition (1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0340413417
• ISBN-13: 978-0340413418
• Shipping Weight: 4.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,708,299 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars A 6-year-old killer, a 7-year-old sleuth, March 10, 2010

By 

Catherine Mambretti (Illinois) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Nursery Crimes (Mass Market Paperback)

I've read only four of B M Gill's mysteries, but already she's among my favorite authors. NURSERY CRIMES is a sort of "Bad Seed" story with both a child murderer (an underage killer, not a killer of children, well not entirely) and a child amateur sleuth who longs to grow up to be a lawyer.

In WW II Britain during the worst of the Nazi bombings, city children were farmed out to safety in rural England. Two orphans ("Little Willie" age 4 and "Dolly" age 7) from the slums of Birmingham are unlucky enough to find a home with an the upper-middle-class couple with a spoiled 6-year-old daughter ("Zanny"), who promptly drowns Little Willie in the backyard fish pond while his sister watches. The family and the whole community--including the constabulary--bend over backwards to avoid accusing golden-haired Zanny of murder. Unfortunately, by refusing to believe the worst about the little angel, they make it easy for her to become a serial killer before she graduates from school. The plot is clever, the characters are rich, and the prose is impeccable.