Another school hols, and another case for the Five Find-Outers.

A conference brings the great and the good of coleopterology to Peterswood, including Mr Belling — a school friend of Mr. Trotteville — and his daughter Eunice. And so Fatty finds himself playing host to the overbearing, disconcertingly confident Eunice and going out of his way to avoid her at every opportunity:

“She talks non-stop — she lays down the law to me — to ME, imagine that! And she follows me about wherever I go. She even came knocking at my bedroom door this afternoon to borrow a book –and then she sat herself down by my bookcase — and wouldn’t go.”

It marks something of a change that the young person roped into the adventure isn’t someone the Five want to spend time with, and Eunice really is a horror…even the adults find her wearing:

Mrs. Trotteville sympathized with Fatty just then, because she had become very tired of Eunice at the bridge table that evening. Eunice had had remarkably good cards, and had won every game. She had then proceeded to give the others a most competent lecture on how the game of bridge ought to be played, and Mrs. Trotteville had suddenly longed to shout at her.

In the midst of all this, Superintendent Jenks calls by to tell a group of teenagers that a dangerous prisoner has escaped and is expected to be lurking in the area — most likely in plain sight, and more than probably drawn to the conference happening that week…because, I guess, the call of an academic conference is great even for felons on the run. And so Fatty and the others begin their investigations, looking for the scar-faced man while, of course, deliberately antagonising policeman Mr. Goon who is equally keen to seize the opportunity to capture the criminal in his midst.

The plot here is pretty thin, as perhaps befits a series going into its thirteenth entry, and it’s telling that most of the notes I made for this title concern things entirely unrelated to the core story — we’re canonically told that Peterswood is in Buckinghamshire, a short distance from Marlow (Fatty is able to run between the towns while undertaking cross-country training to improve his cardio-vascular capacity in order to play tennis better…no, I’m not kidding) — or just humorous asides which amused me in the lulls between anything plot-based happening, like the following from when the group attends the local fair:

“Look. Let’s go in here — where that clown is calling out something about boxing. If it’s clowns boxing, it ought to be funny.”

It wasn’t.

Interesting, too, is the carrying through of lessons learned elsewhere in the series, like Fatty remembering here to dirty up his nails when donning a disguise because in an earlier book (I forget which one) Bets had spotted him on account of his pristine hands. Not that I wish to give the impression that the book is bad, it’s just obviously going to turn out to be a case of someone disguised as someone else, and in this sort of book you just know that there will be insufficient declaration of characteristics for the reader to play along. Indeed, when the culprit is unmasked and we’re told how the telltale scar on their upper lip was disguised…well, I guess that’s possible, but I’d not have thought of it myself. See also the declaration about familial likenesses which blows The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920) by Agatha Christie out of the water when it comes to how genetics work.

Oh, and one cannot hiss the sentence “I’ll keep an eye on that woman.”

Perhaps the sole piece of plot-based intrigue comes from what I’m going to call — given the aforementioned lack of rigour — an impossible vanishing of a man from a caravan. He’s overheard arguing with another man therein, and then three people (two women and one of the men) leave…yet the caravan is empty when Fatty enters it almost immediately afterwards. Sure, the other guy could have jumped out a window or down a hatch in the floor, but I was clutching a little at straws for interest and I’m saying this qualifies.

That aside, this is simply…fine. It’s more satisfying than earlier entries like …Hidden House (1948) and …Strange Bundle (1952), but coming so soon after — and essentially recycling the core concept from — the excellent …Tally-Ho Cottage (1954) makes this tawdry by comparison. If you start here then you’re not going to be put off the series, but when Blyton has done such great work with other titles it’s a shame to find oneself so squarely in the middle of the road. And, with two books remaining in this part of Blyton’s long and storied career, it’s perhaps easy to see the end of that road from this point on the map.

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