Meet the author

Hannah Tunnicliffe.

Writer · New Zealand

Hannah Tunnicliffe: New Zealand novelist turned children's writer whose Detective Stanley comics, drawn by Erica Harrison, serve up a pancake-loving dog sleuth and proper, funny mysteries for newly independent readers.

Hannah Tunnicliffe is a New Zealand author, best known to adult readers for novels including The Colour of Tea, who lives by the sea near Auckland. In our corpus she is the writer of the Detective Stanley comics, created with illustrator and friend Erica Harrison and published by Flying Eye Books. The books follow a pancake-loving, Sherlock-ish retired dog detective coaxed back into service to crack twisty, satisfying whodunits, a museum broken into but nothing stolen, priceless plants vanishing from the botanical gardens. Warmly funny and beautifully coloured, with a loveable sleuth and a proper mystery each time, they are built for children moving on from picture books and for comic-mad young readers. Honesty and a gentle sense of fairness run quietly beneath the jokes.