Rye Royal (by Malcolm Saville)

(Amazon UK link)

Once I get into reading my favourite series by Malcolm Saville, I find I want to read to the end. I'm interspersing them with other books so that I don't get entirely drawn into his world, as happened in my teens and twenties when I read these books.

'Rye Royal' is the 17th in the Lone Pine adventure series for teenagers. This book, unsurprisingly, is set in Rye, starting in November, and then in the Christmas holidays. The older Lone Piners have left school now - some are at college, some working. Only the twins, Mary and Richard, remain ten - and even they have matured since the earlier books.

The story revolves around a rather frail and elderly lady, who is recently widowed. She is lonely, and rather impoverished, but determined not to sell either her huge house or her husband's extensive library of books. A rather too smooth rare book collector tries to harass her into letting him see the library, but she refuses.

It's an exciting story, with some history of Rye included in passing. There are abductions, blackmail, threats... there's also courage, loyalty and ingenuity. Hard to put down once I had started.

Recommended to anyone who likes this kind of book, or has read other in the series. However it's no longer in print and - a little ironically, given the theme of the book - is hard to find and often expensive second-hand.

Review copyright Sue's Book Reviews, 17th November 2010