Midnight at the Barclay Hotel by Children's Mystery Writer Fleur Bradley

Reading Age: 8-11 years (grades 3-7) | Amazon: average 4.8 stars

Five invitations are sent for an all-expense paid April weekend at the historic (and possibly haunted) Barclay Hotel in Aspen Springs, Colorado. It has a pool, cupcake shop, carousel, movie theater, bowling alley, and the largest private library in Colorado. The invitation has LOTS of fine print, including no cell phone service.

Part I, Liars, Liars (or, The Players)

Everyone’s a liar: Everyone has a secret to keep. (Cowboy, librarian, CEO, actress, and detective.) And Penny, Emma  & JJ. Can you speak to setting everyone up as a secret keeper or in some cases a liar? 

Barclay Hotel/Stanley Hotel?

Fleur Bradley, can you talk about the Colorado aspects of this book?

Ghost hunting: JJ hates reading (he’s failing two classes). He watches Ghost Catchers, which investigated Alcatraz and the Winchester Mystery House (San Jose). JJ brings his ghost hunting kit: voice recorder, logbook, infrared camera, flashlight, EMF detector. Mr. Barclay’s wife roams the halls looking for her daughter. A ghost boy plays marbles in the halls. A ghost caretaker, Mr. Roberts, floats about outside. Room 217 is haunted.

JJ & His mom: JJ seems both proud of his mom as a CEO, & frustrated by his mom’s lack of time & attention. Can you speak to that?

Ghosts and ghost rules: Kids are more likely to see them. They’re relegated to where they spent most of their time alive, and they can’t talk to each other. And midnight is the ghostly hour. The grandfather clock plays “Ode to Joy” (Beethoven).

Libraries: Penny loves going to the library. There’s always something new to discover. “It takes nerves of steel to be a librarian” (22). Reading The History of the Barclay Hotel provides valuable clues.

Escape: Mr. Barclay believed the hotel should be an escape from the outside world. Barclay built all the entertainment in the hotel for his sick daughter.

Part II, Motive

In Midnight at the Barclay Hotel by Fleur Bradley, Mr. Clark says Mr. Barclay was poisoned. One of the houseguests killed Mr. Barclay a week earlier. It’s a real-life murder mystery. He orchestrated the game (Catch a Criminal) from the grave. To clear their names, the guests must investigate the murder.

As a  parent, it’s hard to overlook that  the guardians  of the kids let them run loose in a hotel where  there is a murderer  – like,

I see  you at  dinner! Is this suspension of disbelief over  this aspect a necessary element for YA in this age range? Like many narratives where kids heroically save  the day?

Three musketeers: JJ, Penny, and Emma. Emma references The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (a portal to another world). The closet leads to a sitting room – their HQ.

Also a lot of  references  to Agatha Christie – an homage?

Motive, means, and opportunity: Penny says they need to interview the suspects.

Danger: JJ and Penny get stuck in an elevator. Penny and JJ play a tic-tac-toe game with an electronic pad (ala War Games). JJ gives up, and the elevator fills with smoke. Mr. Clark says someone sabotaged the elevator and activated the game. Later, JJ gets on the carousel, which starts and moves quickly.

Bravery: Then it’s ghost hunting time. Penny admits she has had a panic attack before. She wants to be brave. JJ knows what it’s like to want people to see you a certain way.

Penny admires her grandfather the detective and visits him every year. She’s ashamed of being afraid of her parents’ scuba business. 

Motives:

In Midnight at the Barclay Hotel by Fleur Bradley, Fiona didn’t get the acting job/script deal she’d wanted. JJ’s mom would lose PB&JJ because Barclay had called in his loan. Buck Jones couldn’t buy the ranch from Barkley. Ms. Chelsea lost her library funding. (Mr. Clark had called her.) Chef Pierre served the cupcake with the poisoned frosting (he’s not a great chef).

They’re snowed in.

Part III, The Missing Puzzle Piece

Con man Gerrit Hofstra moved to the Aspen Springs area. He stole millions from rich people. Detective Walker says it may be a red herring (false clue).

The note: Emma breaks into Mr. Clark’s room and finds costumes and a note. “I know who you are. You will pay.” Signed, His Daughter

The alibis: Chef Pierre and JJ’s mom would have been in cell phone range for calls they made, meaning they couldn’t have murdered Barclay.

Additional Questions for Fleur Bradley:

You were raised in the Netherlands, surrounded by books. Talk to us about the period where you lost your passion for reading. Tell us what you love about Dahl & the BFG.

Illustrator Xavier Bonet (characters, page 71) — Talk about the illustration process. Do you have a hand in choosing the illustrator or which selections get illustrated?

How do you know when you’re including too much or too little detail for the age? Do you set out with the intention to write  for a certain age level, or does it just come naturally. Talk about writing  for  YA. There is a lot of  range in this as a category.

Penny dreams of opening up a detective agency. Carolyn had a detective agency once …

By the end of the book, JJ, Emma and Penny have all changed. Each has learned something from their mystery solving, and each had a secret that was revealed.

About Fleur Bradley

“I grew up in the Netherlands (you can look up where that is on a map), where I spent my childhood riding my bike, catching tadpoles, and reading Pippi Longstocking and Roald Dahl books. I loved to read, and I loved to draw, too. My very favorite book was The BFG by Roald Dahl. I would read under the covers well past my bedtime, secretly hoping for the BFG to knock on my window. 

“But somewhere along the way (around my high school years), I lost the passion for reading. It wasn’t until I was given a paperback thriller many years later that I caught the reading bug again. After reading many, many mysteries and thrillers, I decided to try my hand at writing (I was pretty bad at it at first, to be honest). It took a long time before some of my short mysteries started appearing in small press magazines, which encouraged me to keep writing. If you have writing aspirations, don’t give up!

“Midnight at the Barclay Hotel really started with my love for mysteries, a love that was born long ago when I was about JJ, Penny, and Emma’s age. I was an avid reader, but without a YA section (there wasn’t one at the time), I moved from kids’ books to the grown-up section pretty quickly. At the recommendation of a librarian, I read The ABC Murders by Agatha Christie, and I was hooked.

“I may have lost my love for reading for a while, but it was my love for mysteries that eventually brought me back. So I wanted to write a mystery, for kids who (like JJ in Midnight at the Barclay Hotel) maybe don’t like reading so much…

“I set out to write a mystery for kids that has some of the same ingredients as Agatha Christie’s books: a good mystery, several suspects, and an interesting, closed-off setting. After visiting the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park (of the famous The Shining), I knew I had all the ingredients for a fun—and spooky—mystery for kids.”

Here are some activities you can do before, during, or after reading Midnight at the Barclay Hotel by Fleur Bradley:

1. Find your way out of the Barclay Hotel maze.

2. Try finding all the mystery words in this Barclay Hotel word search.

​3. Find your own haunted location… If you dare! With your parent or guardian’s approval, do a search combining your hometown plus haunted location (e.g., Denver Haunted Locations). Learn why people think those places are haunted.

4. Write Fleur Bradley an email! She’ll always respond, and she’ll mail you a signed bookmark if you like! fleurbradley25@gmail.com. – Love this