How observant are you? If you had to take a pop quiz every time your environment changed, how do you think you’d do?
In the story, Professor Also tells the Wiffle kid that he’s going to learn more than he ever wanted to know about buttons and motor oil. If you had to learn about obscure things to become a better detective, what would you choose?
If you were going to draw a scene from the book, which one would you pick? Why?
Which Legatum class is your favorite? What new classes would you add? There’s a complete list in the book for reference.
What do your fingerprints look like? Are they very swirly, or more straight? How do they compare with those of your friends and family?
If you were a detective, what would be your mystique? What would you select as your area of specialty?
If you were one of the décor gremlins, how would you decorate the Holmes House common room? Why?
Do you know any martial arts? Would you like to?
Why do you suppose Headmaster Thrillkill is so afraid of icicles?
What would you like to make with a 3D printer?
Q and A with Author Paula Berinstein
Where did you get the idea for this story?
I love mysteries, and I’ve always wondered if I could write them. But before I could start, I had to invent a detective. I wanted it to be a woman because I thought I could get inside a woman’s head better than a man’s, and I wanted her to be unusual. I came up with the idea of a young woman who would rebel against her upbringing. Her family would be intellectual and college-educated, but she wouldn’t want to be anything like them, so she’d become a plumber. And so I made her a plumber’s apprentice. In the first story, she’d find a dead body under a house when she crawled underneath to fix a pipe.
I got the idea of her being descended from the fictional character Inspector Lestrade because unlike Amanda, I love Sherlock Holmes and I wanted to use him in the story, but only indirectly. Trying to follow Conan Doyle’s amazing act was just too intimidating, so I didn’t want to write about Holmes himself. Since I like the idea of finding out more about minor characters, Lestrade was the perfect choice.
I also thought that being American, I would naturally be able to write about an American character, so I made Amanda American. At first the entire setting for the story was going to be Los Angeles—specifically Woodland Hills—which I know really well. But I couldn’t make that setting interesting enough, so I moved the story to England, which is where my husband, Alan, comes from.
But I still had difficulty—until I came up with the idea of making Amanda a kid. Once I did that, I was able to invent a school for her to attend, and everything fell into place. Writing for kids allowed me to come up with some crazy ideas, such as a sugar conspiracy, which adults might have trouble taking seriously.
How do you come up with names for your characters?
A combination of ways.
Some of the names in the story come from people in my life. For example, some of the teachers’ names come from my own teachers. Miss Sidebotham, for example, was my junior high sewing teacher. Miss Also was my gym teacher.
Amanda’s stick dog friends are based on real friends, although the personalities are completely different. When I was about seven, I really was in a stick dog club with two friends named Laurie and Jill. The last names I gave the girls, Wong and Javor, come from two other friends I met in junior high and am still friends with.
Some of the names come from other people I know. Halpin, for example, is the name of a writer friend. Simon is the name of my son-in-law. Mukherjee, the legal issues teacher, is another writer friend. Of course none of the real people are anything like these characters either.
Many of the names are made up. I invented many of them myself, either by tweaking real words, or using them verbatim. These names include Owla, from owl; Binkle, which is totally made up using funny English-sounding letter combinations; Amphora, which is a Greek jar; and Peaksribbon, which is completely made up. I can’t remember where I got Thrillkill. It probably just popped into my head, as so many names do. Some of the names are taken from places as well, like Ribchester, the name of Bill Pickle’s pickle-making rival. By the way, the name Bill Pickle just popped into my head too.
There was a reason for using the name Amanda, but I don’t remember what it was now. Nick is my favorite male name, so I had to use that.
Why aren’t more characters specifically named as descendants of famous detectives, such as Lord Peter Wimsey, Nancy Drew, and Hercule Poirot?
Intellectual property restrictions. Holmes, Watson, Lestrade, and Moriarty are in the public domain, but most other famous fictional detectives aren’t. Getting permission to use them is possible but not easy, so I decided to avoid the problem for now and leave those sorts of names out.
How did you come up with the sugar idea?
Originally the story was going to be about candy. In fact, the original title was Amanda Lester and the Great Candy Conspiracy. However, I couldn’t figure out an original way to make candy dangerous. I researched ways of making it lethal, but they were all humdrum, like spiking it with poison. So I tried to think of something similar to candy, and when I discovered that a sugar factory had exploded in Mexico, I decided to use sugar instead.
Why isn’t Amanda’s name Amanda Lestrade?
I wanted her to be able to hide who she was and fear that she’d be discovered.
Did Amanda ever repay the publican for the train fare?
She certainly did. As soon as she got back from the factory explosion.
Are you Amanda?
Not at all. She’s much gutsier than I am. Actually, the only thing we have in common is that we’re both from L.A. Of course she gets to live in Calabasas, which I’d love to do, but it’s pretty pricey.
Are any of the other characters in the story based on people you know?
Only Simon, and he’s only vaguely based on a friend of mine.
Who are your influences?
Well, obviously J.K. Rowling. I’m in awe of her. Her world-building is amazing. I’d also say just about every detective story I’ve ever read, including many I read as a kid, such as those featuring Nancy Drew, Trixie Belden, and the Bobbsey Twins. I was also influenced by the Edward Eager books, like Half Magic, the Oz books, and the Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle books, as well as fairy tales. My favorite writers of adult fiction include Elizabeth George, who writes the Inspector Lynley mysteries, Val McDermid, especially the Tony Hill stories, C.J. Box, who writes the Joe Pickett books, and of course, Conan Doyle. I am also a huge fan of Charles Dickens.
Do you do a lot of research for your stories?
A lot more than you’d think. For this first Amanda book, I researched everything from the sugar mile in London to viruses. I also gathered lots of images, such as those of UK boarding schools, factories, the roads between Windermere and Edinburgh, and even English trains and train stations. I’ve already written the next two books in the series, and I did at least as much research for those, if not more.
How did you hone your writing skills?
I’ve been writing for a long time. I studied literature in college and have written fiction as a hobby. I also write nonfiction and do technical writing as part of my living. But I really began to understand how to write fiction when I started my podcast, The Writing Show. I spoke to so many people about how they write, and read so many books, both about writing and the stories themselves. However, without the late Blake Snyder and his Save the Cat! screenwriting books, I doubt I’d ever have understood story structure as well as I do. What a great loss it is that he’s no longer with us.
How did you change the story after you completed the first draft?
The biggest change I made was in softening Amanda and her relationship with her parents. I made her much more combative at first. Many of my test readers didn’t like that, so I ended up making her less angry and her parents less overbearing. I thought the way I wrote her originally was f
ine, and so did my husband, but some people didn’t get Amanda that way, so I tried to make her more likeable. She can still be prickly, of course, but she’s not quite as difficult as she was.
How can you kill off so many characters?
Easily. Their deaths serve the story, and anyway, they’re fictional. You can’t really hurt them.
Is there anything you’d like to add?
You would not believe some of the things that are going to happen to these characters! For example, in the next book, Amanda Lester and the Orange Crystal Crisis, Amanda meets a descendant of Sherlock Holmes, who becomes a thorn in her side and a central figure in her life. In Amanda Lester and the Purple Rainbow Puzzle, she and her friends tangle with one of the most dastardly enemies you can imagine, and it isn’t who you think. I’ve got lots of juicy surprises in store. You’ll see.
Grab a Free Ivy Story!
Amanda’s friend Ivy Halpin may be blind, but she’s the best detective in the school. And now she’s discovered something no one else knows about.
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Visit http://eepurl.com/bQW4GP
Amanda Lester
and the
Orange Crystal Crisis
PAULA BERINSTEIN
The Writing Show
Table of Contents
Chapter 1 Lestrade, Meet Holmes
Chapter 2 Gordon Bramble Explodes
Chapter 3 Professor Redleaf’s Surprise
Chapter 4 Nick’s Secrets
Chapter 5 Just the Treasure
Chapter 6 Amanda Lester, One-man Band
Chapter 7 Scars and Bruises
Chapter 8 Blackpool
Chapter 9 Earthquake!
Chapter 10 Mushy Letters and Candy Stashes
Chapter 11 The Crystals
Chapter 12 Another Dead Body
Chapter 13 Stuck
Chapter 14 The Magnificent Basements
Chapter 15 The Trove of Secrets
Chapter 16 Back to the Whatsit
Chapter 17 Crystal Weirdness
Chapter 18 I’d Like to Thank the Academy
Chapter 19 Triboluminescence
Chapter 20 Eureka!
Chapter 21 An Unexpected Party
Chapter 22 The Whatsit
Chapter 23 Phone Calls
Chapter 24 Overwhelmed
Chapter 25 Acoustic Levitation
Chapter 26 Couple of Clowns
Chapter 27 London
Chapter 28 Regrouping
Chapter 29 Answers
Chapter 30 In Pursuit of a Culprit
Chapter 31 Scapulus Holmes, Dreamboat
Chapter 32 Windermere
Chapter 33 The Quarry
Chapter 34 Debriefing
Chapter 35 The Detective’s Bible
Chapter 36 Goodbye to the Crystals
Chapter 37 It’s a Wonderful Life
Discussion Questions for Your Reading Group
Acoustic Levitation Is Real!
Q and A with Author Paula Berinstein
1
Lestrade, Meet Holmes
Amanda Lester wasn’t ready for what she’d just heard. Life was already weird enough at Legatum Continuatum, the secret school for descendants of famous detectives, in England’s Lake District. After the events of the last few months, including her father’s kidnapping, two murders, a teacher’s disappearance, an explosion, and a criminal plot to corner the world’s sugar market, she was battered, fed up, and downright depressed, especially since one of the kidnappers had turned out to be the boy she thought was her best friend. So when she arrived at Headmaster Thrillkill’s office on the first day of the new term and overheard one of the teachers say that the school was facing the worst crisis in its history, her first impulse was to run. But when she caught the word “Moriarty,” she couldn’t help listening, even though she knew eavesdropping was wrong. And that was when all the trouble started, or at least this round of trouble.
Moriarty, of course, was the master criminal Blixus Moriarty, whom Amanda had helped catch just a few weeks before. Elegant, brilliant, and cruel, he was at least as dangerous as his infamous ancestor Professor James Moriarty, archenemy of the renowned detective Sherlock Holmes. Even though Blixus was locked away in Her Majesty’s Prison at Manchester, nicknamed Strangeways, and his wife, Mavis, in Holloway Castle in London, the detectives who ran Legatum kept him under constant surveillance. And now, it appeared, there was news.
Amanda moved as close to the door as she could without being seen and closed her eyes so she could hear every word.
“I’m starting to think we’re out of luck,” said one of the teachers. “This is a catastrophe.”
“You’re overreacting,” said another. “There are still places to search. It will turn up.”
“Hogwash,” said a third. “The Moriartys have it.”
“If that’s the case,” said yet another, “it’s gone. It wasn’t in their possession when they were captured, or in their rooms here at the school. It must have been destroyed in the fire.”
The teacher was referring to the fire that that had killed the Moriartys’ son Nick, aka Nick Muffet, and destroyed the sugar factory where their cartel had manufactured deadly sugar-powered weapons—the factory where they had created a virus that tainted their competitors’ products. The same factory that had housed Schola Sceleratorum, the secret school for criminals, where Amanda had discovered that Nick wasn’t the person he’d claimed to be. The factory where they’d held her father and beat him till he nearly died. That factory, which Nick had deliberately destroyed by igniting the highly flammable sugar dust inside.
“Look,” said the evidence teacher. “Whatever happens, we can’t alarm the students or the parents. We have to keep this quiet.”
“I think we can all agree on that,” said Headmaster Thrillkill.
“It wasn’t our fault,” said the dead bodies teacher.
“No, of course not,” said the self-defense teacher. “We did everything in our power to protect it.”
“I don’t think we did,” said the poisons teacher. “If we had, it would be here, wouldn’t it?”
“I don’t see how you can say that,” said the police procedures teacher. “I’ve got the checklist right here. See? Every requirement followed to the letter up until the 22nd of February. Then boom, gone. What else could we have done?”
“Fault is not the issue,” said Thrillkill. “The point is that the situation is dire. We need to correct it immediately. Suggestions?”
This was freaky. Amanda had never heard the teachers talk this way before. She’d never seen them panic, and that scared the wits out of her. These were hardened detectives with years of experience. They’d faced down the world’s most evil criminals without blinking. Or had they? What was that crack in Professor Also’s armor she’d seen the time someone had mentioned the Khyber Pass? Or when Professor Ducey had slipped and accidentally revealed that someone in his family had been a dirty cop? Even if they’d occasionally made mistakes, she was certain that these people were the toughest in the world—the Navy Seals of detecting—and they were close to unflappable. Except that now they were flapping like a pair of your grandfather’s BVDs in a hurricane. The situation was more than unsettling. It was downright weird.
“Hey, you’re eavesdropping!”
Amanda whirled around to see that prissy little Wiffle kid standing before her, the one who was always getting on her case about not following the rules. What a Goody Two-shoes he was, always complaining that her behavior didn’t measure up to some mythical standard. And here he was doing it again, except this time she was eavesdropping, and if he tattled the teachers would be furious.
“Shut up,” she said in a stage whisper. “Thrillkill asked me to come to his office.”
“Not like this,” said the kid, who seemed to have gotten a really bad haircut over the break. His pale red hair looked as if someone had taken a machete to i
t. “You’re not supposed to listen to other people’s conversations.”
“I’m not listening,” she protested. “I’m waiting for a lull.”
“Are too.”
“Am not.”
“Are—”
“What’s going on out there?” Headmaster Thrillkill poked his head out. His beard was covered with crumbs. “Oh, Miss Lester, I’m glad to see you. I have a task for you. Will you please stop by my office after your classes? Now off you go.” He shooed the two first-years off, then turned back to the teachers and closed the door behind him.
“He’s going to give it to you,” said the kid. “Wish I were a fly on the wall. Probably something about how you helped that crook Nick Muffet infiltrate the school and—”
“You are a fly,” said Amanda. “You’re nothing but a bug, David Wiffle. I feel sorry for you. Go back to your dog poop.”
“Ha ha! You wish. You just can’t deal with the fact that I’m descended from an aristocrat. I’ll have you know that my ancestor, Sir Bailiwick Wiffle, was the most popular and successful detective of the 1930s, way beyond . . .”
But Amanda wasn’t listening. What was up with Thrillkill? He hadn’t taken them to task for their arguing, and he’d given no indication that he thought they’d been eavesdropping. The omission only added to Amanda’s worry, especially because he didn’t seem to remember that he’d asked her to come to his office in the first place.
What could the headmaster want from her? Did it have anything to do with the argument the teachers were having? She didn’t want to know. The man had thawed a bit by the end of last term, but he was still demanding, gruff, and awkward. And yet if she didn’t know what he wanted she would be caught unaware by whatever it was, and that might be even more unpleasant.
“And by the way, it wasn’t cool what you and that criminal did to me. You got me in a lot of trouble over that kicking thing. I’m not done with you, Lester.”
Amanda Lester, Detective Box Set Page 33