Justice Jones Books in Order

The Justice Jones series introduces younger readers to Elly Griffiths’ love of mysteries through a spirited heroine in a classic boarding school setting. The books are set in the late 1930s and early years of the Second World War, when the rules of school life collide with bigger changes in the world outside.

Justice Jones is the daughter of a criminal barrister and a popular crime novelist, so she has grown up around talk of trials, clues and plot twists. When her mother dies, her father sends her to Highbury House Boarding School for the Daughters of Gentlefolk, a rather chilly establishment on the edge of the Romney Marshes. Justice has never been to school before, and everything is new: dormitories, uniforms, strict teachers and the unspoken hierarchies of girls who have been there for years.

In A Girl Called Justice, she arrives to find that a young maid has recently died in suspicious circumstances. A snowstorm soon cuts the school off from the outside world, trapping pupils and staff together in a creaking building full of locked doors, secret staircases and rumours of ghosts. Justice begins to keep a casebook, note down questions and sneak out after lights out, gradually piecing together the truth with the help of a few loyal friends.

Later books send her into new corners of the same world. In The Smugglers’ Secret, Justice is assigned to visit an elderly gentleman at a lonely house called Smugglers’ Lodge. Whispers of hidden tunnels, a strange new matron and the shadow of the First World War all feed into another mystery. A Ghost in the Garden brings an unnervingly self possessed new girl to the dormitory, a midnight feast, a ghostly sighting and a missing schoolmate whose ransom notes seem to come from the pages of a crime novel.

By The Spy at the Window, war has broken out. The girls help with chores as staff are called away, and a boys’ school is evacuated to share the buildings. Odd noises, a face at a high window and talk of enemy agents make Justice suspect that something more than childish pranks is going on, and she once again has to balance sleuthing with staying out of serious trouble.

The tone of the series is warm and accessible, with plenty of cosy school details – midnight feasts, feuds, lessons, sports days – alongside real danger. Justice is clever, stubborn and sometimes impulsive, but she cares about fairness as much as excitement. Young readers get puzzles to solve, friendships to root for and a gently handled sense of the historical moment, all wrapped up in stories that echo the feel of classic school tales while adding a modern awareness of class, gender and justice.