Given that it revolves around loosely-codified magic, a world of ‘normal’ folk living below a world of ‘giants’ in the sky, and a pigeon who is an art critic, The Beanstalk Murder (2025) by P.G. Bell is a far better book than it has any right to be.

When a giant falls out of the sky and crushes the town of Market Square, it’s a reminder to some people of the war fought between them and the land of the giants years ago, which saw all magic beanstalks in the kingdom — leading between the two worlds — cut down and contact forbidden. However, Meadow Witch Eira Sedge figures that the giants should be told that one of their own has been murdered — a wound on his head indicates as much — and dropped through one of the “thin places” between the realms to, presumably, hide it from searchers in the land above. And so an old magic bean is unveiled, and used to grow a beanstalk to send a message up to the giants…a beanstalk which, due to the bean’s age, soon crumbles and dies, leaving Eira’s granddaughter, trainee Meadow Witch Anwen, and her hated enemy, “glamourist” High Magic user Cerys Powell, stranded up with the giants.

Woof, there’s a lot to unpack in that paragraph, and most of it takes place in the first three chapters.

It is tremendously to P.G. Bell’s credit that at no point does any of this feel overwhelming, and he is to be congratulated on how clean and uncluttered the rest of the telling of this crossover mystery is. When murder is suggested among the giants, it will surprise no-one that Anwen and Cerys start to investigate, and, as well as a bunch of clues and red herrings scattered across the path, the eventual answer is actually pretty complex — but so well-structured and the information so intelligently parcelled out that younger readers shouldn’t have a difficult time keeping up (I’m not sure I, an adult man, could explain the solution as neatly as Bell does, and I’ve read the book).

And, far from being merely well-structured, Bell’s writing is a delight, with some lovely descriptions…

Eira Sedge was small and round, and looked as if she’d been partially knitted. 

…some intelligent detection (“What did his sleeves look like?”) and some excellent jokes (“He likes the murals…”). It’s also pleasingly aware of the need to make sense: when it’s clear where the murder took place, with the golden bust of the victim that was used to batter him (“Imagine being killed with your own face!”) left clearly on display, why has the murderer gone to the effort of hiding a body that everyone would know to search for? There’s a good answer to that, and it’s the sort of thing a less intelligent book would have overlooked, losing itself in the circular argument that the body needed to fall from the sky so that the story could begin.

The way magic is used, too, is done cleverly, explained in-story because there’s no magic in the giant’s land and they want to comprehend, but still done with a light touch. I love the delineation between the practical Meadow Witch magic Anwen uses and the more ostentatious High Magic in which Cerys is training. I’m not even going to try to go into it here, because I’d do a lousy job and give the impression that it’s badly explained in the book — and it really isn’t, Bell has worked wonders in weaving the purpose and limitations of the two streams into his narrative.

Fun is had, too, in the two worlds knowing nothing about each other on account of the verboten nature of any contact and so the girls are able to make friends — human and animal, the Palace Mischief are a delight — and then weave in the hesitancy of acknowledging that one of the people they know is likely a murderer. And, alongside this, I love the weird little touches Bell throws in, like the dead man having fans of his music…

“I bet he crept out in disguise to mix with normal people like you and me, and get inspiration for some new songs. That’s probably why his lyrics are always so raw and authentic.” He developed a bit of a faraway look in his eye. “Yeah, Thibault’s out there somewhere, connecting with real life.”

…and the constant reminders of scale in the giants’ world, like the girls living in a doll’s house that’s a mansion to them. For something that could easily disappear under the diaphanous weight of its own whimsy, there’s a rewarding amount of thought going into this, and it really elevates the whole thing that each aspect has been given such careful deliberation, and worked in so seamlessly.

You can cavil from an adult perspective that, for example, the killer unmasks themselves when an indicator I’m not sure would really point in their direction is uncovered — the book deduction is very good, by the way; Christie would have been delighted with it — and that one key element goes unfortunately unexplained (rot13: gur gjb crbcyr jub cbffrff gur zntvpny thvgnef pna…gnyx gb rnpu bgure?), but as a thrilling time that will connect well with a young audience, not talk down to them, and provide a few nice lessons along the way (“Mice. And pigeons.”), The Beanstalk Murder is an expertly-wrangled book, and a delight for young and old.

So, onwards to Bell’s next Fairy Tale mystery, The Big Bad Wolf Murder (2025), and I sincerely hope that more are on the way.

~

Fairy Tale Murder Mysteries by P.G. Bell

1. The Beanstalk Murder (2024)
2. The Big Bad Wolf Murder (2025)