Dave Jeffery: Author

This is the website for author Dave Jeffery, creator of the 'Beatrice Beecham' series and the best-selling novel Finding Jericho. The Beatrice Beecham books are for those 9-90 year olds who love adventure and mystery without any hocus-pocus. So here you will find all things Beatrice, including character profiles and regular updates, reviews and author interviews. Feel free to browse, leave a comment or a message. All are welcome. And I will always get back to you.

Become a member of this site and you will be able to post in The Newshound Forum!

If you are an existing Beatrice fan then you may be interested in a free prologue preview of the second novel: Beatrice Beecham's Fete of Fate, now posted on this site. Feel free to contact me at: davejeffery@beatricebeecham.com  

October 2008 will see the launch of the official Beatrice Beecham Fan Club. More details as they arise.

Best wishes to you

Dave Jeffery

All written content on this site (excluding reviews) ©Dave Jeffery (All rights reserved)

All Beatrice Beecham illustrations on this page are ©Deron Douglas (All rights reserved) with the exception of Beatrice Beecham's Fete of Fate jacket illustration, ©Lauren Preston-Mafham (All rights reserved).

All author photography ©Simon Tonks

For Official merchandising please visit: http://www.cafepress.com/beatricebeecham

Thanks for Visiting!

Have you signed the guest book? All comments appreciated.

Out September 2008 from Chipmunka Publishing Ltd!

Beatrice Beecham's Fearsome Feast (Revised Edition) available in September 2008 from Chipmunka Publishing Ltd

Beatrice Beecham's Fete of Fate (Part One) will be available in September 2008 from Chipmunka Publishing Ltd

Beatrice Beecham's Fete of Fate (Part Two) will be available in September 2008 from Chipmunka Publishing Ltd

Ebooks: Beatrice Beecham's Fearsome Feast (Revised Edition), Beatirce Beecham's Fete of Fate Book One and Book Two available now from www.chipmunkapublishing

Dave Jeffery will be signing all three books at Waterstones, Bromsgrove in September 2008.

The Baxter Bulletin

Beatrice Beecham's Fearsome Feast by Dave Jeffery
Middle-grade novel

When 12-year-old Beatrice Beecham is given an old cookbook that completely comes apart when it falls off her bed, she finds hidden treasures that whisk her and her friends into a dangerous mystery. The oldest and richest family in Dorsal Finn has a murderous secret, and the most powerful people in town are helping them keep it. With the help of adventurous friends and a quick-thinking librarian, Beatrice develops a theory, but the only way to prove her suspicions is to enter the Fearsome Feast contest and win an overnight stay at the mansion.

Can she do it? Not without a bounty of close calls, perilous consequences, and finding the right time and place to use her cookbook treasures, clues from a desperate matriarch long dead.

Beatrice Beecham is delightful, scrappy, and the most exciting thing that has happened in Dorsal Finn for a very long time. Dave Jeffery has created a tale that is intelligent and fun from start to finish. This is one romping adventure!

Deb Peterson (The Baxter Bulletin)

BookReview.com

What a wondrous beginning! There's an exhilarating account of an ancient ship wreck, then we flash forward as an eccentric father who's lost his job, his wife, a younger brother absorbed in sci-fi technology and the brainy narrator who hears voices of—this is too brilliant for words—popular TV chefs make their way to the house of a strange aunt in the costal village of Dorsal Finn. This combination of traditional bedtime-story elements and contemporary references to cell phones, I-Pods, Star Wars and Harry Potter will make children (7 through early teens), their parents and even grandparents feel comfortably at home.

But there's adventure afoot: treasure with anagram clues, villains (including the notorious Chorley brothers), reenactment of an historic masque (shades of Edgar Allan Poe), a past murder uncovered and, last but not least, the "fearsome feast" in which entrants concoct hideous entrees (the one that can't be eaten by the notorious Vladimir Karlof wins). "A tale's not worth tellin' if it's not told right!" proclaims Aunt Maud. And this one abounds in treasures of its own. For example, the Aunt's little comments "…she's as reliable as a one handed alarm clock" and unobtrusive bits of psychological insight— when Beatrice feels like a stranger in her new bedroom, Aunt Maud tells her about her own experience as a child in a strange bedroom when she was transported into the country during the bombing of London during World War II, "But I think the real reason I didn't want it to be mine. I was scared that if I accepted it then I would never see the world I knew ever again."

This is a great feast with course after course of satisfying dishes. It is the book as treasure hunt. Or like Aunt Maud would say, a story that "fills the coal scuttle."

Rating: Excellent!

John Lehman (BookReview.com)

Kirkus Reviews

This fun British girl-detective escapade offers eccentric characters, snooping, danger and cookery for the middle-school crowd. Young Beatrice lives for cooking, holding imaginary conversations with her favorite famous chef when she's trying to solve a problem. Uprooted to a tiny seaside village when her father loses his job, her family moves in with her colorful, elderly "Aunt" Maud, a nicely drawn character who adds some zip to the narrative—as does a quirky librarian. When Beatrice drops a centuries-old cookbook given to her by Maud, she discovers within it obscure poems that she thinks are clues to an old mystery. Teaming up with three local kids, Beatrice sets off to hunt for evidence. Clues lead them to the powerful family that owns the town, and into contention with some standard-issue bullies. Beatrice then enters the "Fearsome Feast," a contest to produce a truly inedible dish, and she gains access to the manor house with a hilarious, gag-inducing creation. Maud joins her, and the two end up in a cliff-hanger battle against conventional baddies. 

Entertaining-this may appeal to fans who like their mysteries unsullied by elements of fantasy. (Fiction. 10-12)

Reader Views Kids

Welcome to Dorsal Finn! This is a wonderful town where everyone knows everyone else’s name. Beatrice Beechham is a 12 year old girl who moves to Dorsal Finn with her parents and younger brother Tom. They have been invited to live with one of Mrs. Beecham's closest friends Maud. Beatrice and Tom refer to her as Aunt Maud. Beatrice gets to meet some of the most interesting residents including the Newshounds. She makes a very good friend in Patience, which is a very good name in this town since Beatrice will need a lot of it living here. Lucas was able to figure out any clues as they came along.

They have moved to Dorsal Finn just in time for the annual fearsome feast contest. The contest involves cooking the most disgusting dish. In the last few years no one has been able to defeat Vladimir Karloff. Beatrice decides to enter the contest. The day of the contest is a part of the Masque, a very dressy occasion. Can Beatrice come up with a dish that will turn everyone's stomach?

Aunt Maud gives her a cookbook. Anyway, it looks like a cookbook but it is actually a bunch of clues so there is a mystery to solve too. Sometimes secrets are fun to figure out and sometimes secrets are better kept hidden.

I really liked "Beatrice Beecham's Fearsome Feast." It let me visit England, learn some of their Old English language, and their customs. I had a hard time laying this book down until I was finished with it. I was sad to see the book come to a close but I was happy with its ending. I hope Dave Jeffery writes more books like this.

Reviewed by Brianne Plach (age 9) for Reader Views Kids (4/07)

Review: Amazon.co.uk

I couldn't put it down, which was a bit of a shame being as I bought it for my daughter (who is eleven). Beatrice is a great kid! She is contemporary and clever, and best of all she has the backing of the most wondrous clique of TV chefs, led by the ever buoyant Jamie Oliver.....

The story is multi layered and packed with secrets, riddles, anagrams and clues (Makes Da Vinci Code look positively childish!). It is strangely old fashioned - the creaky town of `Dorsal Fin' conceals a world of secret passages, shipwrecks kidnapping, and dastardly deeds - but the kids are bang up to date, with their DVD players, lap tops and cell phones. Part of the brilliance of the book is this mixing of the old and the new...It creates a story that is timeless; with an appeal that is ageless (I love the fact that the climax of the story is shared between Beatrice and her Great Aunt Maud).

Dave Jeffery's writing style is masterful; he weaves this tale with great skill, capturing his characters, settings and dialogue....And then there are the `sinister chapters' written in the second person, filled with menace and foreboding....Mr. Jeffery can send a shiver down your spine, intrigue and bemuse you, charm you, and make you laugh out loud...and that he can do this so unobtrusively and seemingly effortlessly, is a true indication of his power and control.

Great writing, a wonderful adventure, the most endearing characters, and something magical; I do think that this is an absolutely brilliant book....And I'm very much looking forward to the next....

Nick Hemsley

I died because of a dare.

   Well…that and a rotten floorboard.

  As it gave way, it didn’t so much snap as fold in the middle like a soggy oblong piece of cardboard.  I didn’t fall through the floor, I sank into it.

  I remember the sensation of gravity, unrelenting in its embrace, sucking my helpless body down into the basement below.  I still recall the nanosecond of bright searing agony as I hit something solid in the blackness.  Then…

    Nothing infused with a bit of something.

    I was fifteen when it happened.  Should’ve known better, right?  Truth was I thought I knew stuff.  But when it came to the test, I found out the

hard way I hadn’t put in enough study time.

    So how did it happen?  How did I put myself in that house on that night?  And more importantly, why did I do it?

    Part of it involved the search for friendship, part of it: inclusion and hope.  These were concepts that before this point in time I’d never really considered.  When I moved home to look after Uncle Ronald these three elements mutated and became one huge, hungry beast intent on charging me down and feasting on my ignorance.  So in desperation I sought a ready remedy for an increasing sense of displacement.

    If madness is relative then I must be its second cousin.  Because without question I took up an insane challenge to quash my troubles in one, huge hit.  But by this point, madness had made an enemy of me.  It had been in my life for far too long and had far too much to say for itself.

    Besides, they said it would only be for one night.  One night in a house, that had seen far too many days.  And they never told me it had so many secrets.

    So here I am, rueful and kind of alone in the darkness.

    What follows is a rough guide to how I got here.

The Amazon.co.uk top ten bestseller!

  Finding Jericho by Dave Jeffery

  Some Walls Need to be Breached

  www.chipmunkapublishing.com

Click on the icon below to purchase your signed copy of Finding Jericho