FORMER Dragon School pupil Robin Stevens found inspiration for her prize-winning children’s book in the Jericho Cafe.

Miss Stevens was awarded £2,000 for Murder Most Unladylike, which won the Best Younger Fiction category at the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize awards.

The 27-year-old, whose parents Robert and Kathie Stevens live in North Oxford, won the category prize for the story, which was the first in a series of boarding school murder mysteries.

The novel for young adults, set in an all-girls school, features two schoolgirls called Daisy Wells and Hazel Wong, who set up their own secret detective agency at Deepdean School for Girls.

The story tells how they find a science mistress lying dead in the gym and then set out to solve the mystery.

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A sequel to Murder Most Ladylike called Arsenic for Tea was published in January and a third book in the series is due out in July.

The writer, who picked up her award at a ceremony in London on Thursday (March26), said: “I’m delighted to have won the category prize – the stories are now being sold in France, America and Taiwan.”

Miss Stevens’s father was Master of Oxford University’s Pembroke College when she was aged five to 12. She attended the Dragon School in Bardwell Road, North Oxford, before becoming a boarder at Cheltenham Ladies’ College and then studied English literature at Warwick University.

Miss Stevens, who now lives near Cambridge and works for a publisher in the city, added: “I wrote a lot of Murder Most Unladylike in the Jericho Cafe in Walton Street.

“I am back in Oxford a lot as my parents still live in the city.

“I like spending time in Oxford bookshops – I worked in Blackwell’s for about a year.

“I read a lot of young adult fiction but I also enjoy reading classic crime novels by authors like Agatha Christie.”

Murder Most Unladylike has also picked up an Oxfordshire Book Award for best primary novel.

“I have never won an award before so it was great to win two in a week,” Miss Stevens added.

“I grew up in Oxford and it really fired my imagination.”

Melissa Cox, head of children’s buying for Waterstones, said: “Crime capers are proving increasingly popular in children’s fiction right now but this wonderfully witty book crosses genres with panache and charm by setting a murder mystery in an all-girls’ boarding school.

“It’s great fun from start to finish.”

The overall Waterstones Children’s Book of the Year prize was won by Roy Biddulph’s illustrated book Blown Away.

For further information, visit robin-stevens.co.uk