I have been a fan of Malcolm Saville’s ‘Lone Pine’ series since my early teenage years, when I came across some of his books on my grandmother’s shelves. In the 1970s Armada books published abridged versions of this series at affordable prices for teens, and I acquired them all - or almost all of them. I re-read the series regularly, and inevitably liked some of the books better than the others.
‘Sea Witch Comes Home’, 13th in the series, was possibly my least favourite. The reason is that it doesn’t include many of the Lone Piners - just David Morton and his twin siblings Dickie and Mary. And Mackie the dog, of course. It’s not in a familiar setting, either, and the family they go to stay with - Paul and Rose - are rather quarrelsome; they want help as their father has gone missing, but they don’t want to reveal too many details - and can’t agree about what information to share anyway.
The last few times I re-read the series (which happens about once every decade now) I didn’t re-read this book. I missed out a few others, too, in my last read-through, around 2009-2010. But since then I have managed to acquire full editions of all the series, many of them in Girls Gone By form with interesting introductions and details about publication history. I’m very much appreciating reading the full text of some of the series which I only ever read in abridged form, but still wasn’t particularly looking forward to ‘Sea Witch’.
To my surprise, I thought it an extremely good read. It’s not a typical Lone Pine book; there’s not much discussion of the club, and most of the teens are not involved anyway. It’s more of a thriller-adventure story that just happens to involve the Morton family. It mostly revolves around the Channing family: Paul and Rose as mentioned above, and their father. Because Saville writes from multiple viewpoints, switching them with different chapters, we know what Mr Channing is doing, even though his children don’t.
And it’s quite an exciting plot involving cleverly stolen paintings by an artist whose work was not particularly admired during his lifetime. I assume John Jackson is a figment of Malcolm Saville’s imagination but the locations where most of the action happens are real, set on the East Coast of England. It’s even set in historical context, in 1953, when a natural disaster happened, described in much detail in the last chapters of the book.
The abridged versions of Saville’s stories still cover the plots, and some of the conversation, but anything considered extraneous was cut to fit the Armada format. And so this book, I imagine, was quite bleak: and yet, reading it now, the places and conversations between the characters are what brings it alive. I checked the hand-drawn maps at the start of the book rather more than I usually do; of course some of the buildings and the cast of people are fictional, but the author evidently knew the area and places everything and everyone in believable situations.
If you love the Lone Pine club and prefer to read books that explore their growing friendships and which are primarily from their viewpoints, then this one really doesn’t fit the pattern. Perhaps I wouldn’t even have liked this full edition much as a teen, when I was keen to read more about the low-key romances that start to blossom in later books in the series. I was also less interested in the behaviour and point of view of adults forty-plus years ago.
But reading it now, almost as if it were a standalone novel, I thought it excellent. I had totally forgotten the story - it must be thirty years or more since I read it - and at times I could hardly put it down. It could make a good introduction to the series for anyone - adult or older teenager - wanting a realistic, fast-paced adventure story with some tension; just don’t expect it to be a significant part of the Lone Pine series.
Unfortunately Girls Gone By Publication books go quickly out of print, and second-hand editions tend to be highly priced. But there are marketplaces and social media groups where they are sometimes found less expensively; it's well worth looking out for a GGBP edition if you want to read this book.
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