It’s been a busy month and I haven’t read as many books as I expected to. My ‘Goodreads’ challenge, I had decided, was a modest 100 books for 2021. I had read 98 books by Christmas Eve, so should easily have reached my target. But although I’m in the middle of four different books currently, I realised it was going to be difficult to finish any of them in two days - and I wouldn’t enjoy them.
So I decided instead to re-read a couple of my children’s books. A young friend has been borrowing, repeatedly, the ‘Five Find-Outers’ series by Enid Blyton, so I decided to choose one of those. I’ve just finished ‘The Mystery of the Disappearing Cat’, second in the series, a book which I acquired in 1969 and read many times during my teens, but which I had not read for at least twenty-five years. I was expecting to find it rather trite and was pleasantly surprised that I thought it very readable.
Set in the 1940s, it was well before the days of political correctness, so one of the 12-year-old children, whose initials are FAT and who is somewhat overweight is known as ‘Fatty’, but he takes it mostly in good humour. He’s a bit boastful at times, as he knows that he’s extremely bright, but he’s also kind, and full of integrity. His dog Buster is also an important part of the group. The other 12-year-old is Pip, who’s light on his feet but rather scathing of his younger sister Bets, who is eight - but quite a clear thinker. Their friends are Larry (13) and Daisy (12)
The children evidently come from well-off middle class families; the older four are all at boarding schools, and their parents have housekeepers and cooks, though we don’t see very much of the parents. But they’re likeable children, not at all snobbish, as becomes evident in this book. They hear someone mowing the lawn in the garden next-door to Pip and Bets’ house, and meet Luke, the under-gardener, who is 15. He’s not particularly bright or formally educated, but he’s very knowledgeable and creative, and while he feels that he probably shouldn’t be friends with the children, they welcome him and do what they can to help him.
In the garden where Luke works are some valuable Siamese cats, and a few days after the story begins, one of them goes missing - the most valuable cat. The young woman who usually looks after them is away for the day, and the owner of the house is having a tea party which involves most of the staff. All evidence suggests that Luke must have stolen the cat…. But the find-outers are quite sure he is innocent, and set out to solve the mystery.
And it’s surprisingly well plotted for a children’s book. I realised that I did remember who actually committed the crime, and how it happened - there are clues scattered through the book which I’m sure I didn’t notice when I was nine, but which helped to trigger my memory. And I’d forgotten most of the details. The book is only about 100 pages long, and easy to read; yet there’s characterisation that helps distinguish all the children, as well as Luke, and the children’s friend Inspector Jenks.
There are caricatures too - the bumbling, accusatory Mr Goon the village policeman, for instance, or the trembling Miss Trimble who appears regularly but doesn’t in fact play any significant part in the story. Luke’s boss is very unpleasant to him, and we hear of his brutal stepfather. Blyton doesn’t go into gory details, but she doesn’t ignore this kind of realism either: the children are aware of bruises and beatings, and have a strong sense of what is fair.
Enid Blyton isn’t to everyone’s tastes, and naturally some of the story is old-fashioned - but even coming to it fresh over fifty years after I first read the book, I thought it a very enjoyable book. Once I’d started I could hardly put it down.
Recommended to children of about eight and upwards who like a fast-paced adventure story. All these books stand alone, so it’s not necessary to have read ‘The Mystery of the Burnt Cottage’ which is first in the series.
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