One final mystery for Fatty, Bets, Daisy, Larry and Pip as, nearly seven years after first discovering them myself, and after a literary life spanning some 18 years, the Five Find-Outers and dog reach the end of the road.

Four years had passed in the real world since Blyton last wrote about these characters, and while they certainly never aged in real time there is a sense of them growing up in a way, or at least of Blyton feeling like they’re no longer the giddy youths they were:

“I wish you wouldn’t call him Frederick, Daddy,” said Bets. “It does sound so silly.”

“I should have thought that Frederick was a much better name for a boy in his teens, than the absurd name of Fatty,” said her father. “I wonder Frederick allows people to call him by that old nickname now.”

“But Fatty is fat, and the name suits him,” said Pip. “Anyway I don’t think my nickname is very suitable for me now that I’m a bit older. Why can’t I be called by my proper name of Philip, instead of Pip?”

And, in a move that reeks of getting the old gang back together, Mr. Goon’s nephew Ern is also on the scene, this time with a dog in tow who will cause much merriment with Fatty’s scotty dog Buster. The one thing missing is a mystery, at least until it’s mentioned that perhaps the children might use their hols getting out from under their parents’ feet — why not a visit to the local attraction of Banshee Towers? You know the one — that ominous old fort on the coast where a banshee is heard to wail every Thursday afternoon.

So, after a third of the book passes time amiably but without any discernible purpose, they attend, see the magnificent paintings on display, hear the banshee, stumble onto the secret of the wailing, foil perhaps the laziest crime yet covered in these books and, er, that’s about it. It doesn’t all happen in the same afternoon, but so perfunctory is much of the mystery-making that you sort of feel Blyton would have been better wrapping it up quickly and the kids deciding that there weren’t really any proper mysteries in Peterswood any more, thus giving up their lives as Find-Outers to go and grow up and become useful member of society.

I’ve heard much about The Mystery of Banshee Towers (1961) being the weakest entry in this series, and given that Blyton was 64 years old and 14,273 books deep into her career at the time of publication it’s perhaps understandable that it’s not brimming with the brio of the strong titles in this corpus. But it’s not without merit: Banshee Towers is a suitably atmospheric setting for the mystery, with Ern’s captivated delight at the paintings of sea views adding a little colour to proceedings. I like the idea of the central clue being “the smallest mystery we’ve ever had”, and there’s a nifty use of an auditory clue in the closing stages which shows Blyton isn’t completely phoning this one in. Plus, for anyone keeping score, she adheres strictly to Ronald Knox’s third rule, and even introduces the conceit in question rather neatly.

Plus, the baddies herein are well-drawn in very little space and, while they become a little slavering and inflexible towards the end, there’s some genuine peril of sorts in their treatment of Fatty and Ern when they are discovered where they should not be — harking back to the likes of The Mystery of the Secret Room (1945) and The Mystery of the Missing Necklace (1947). Blyton is to be applauded for the way her baddies were, sometimes, just unpleasant people, almost as a warning to children who thought this sort of thing was all japes and jolly hockey sticks, and I’m pleased to see this carry through even in this late part of this series.

Sure, the mystery is no great shakes, the idea that they key clue would be overlooked by expert criminals is frankly laughable, and the essential working of the core plan raises as many questions as it answers, but apart from the slenderness of the plot — and other books in this series have suffered from similarly padded narratives, though it’s noticeable that this is easily the slimmest spine out of the fifteen books on my shelf — this isn’t entirely bad. Hell, I’ll remember it in a month’s time, and one of the books in this series was so very nondescript that, when I finished it, I looked at the cover and couldn’t work out why the image shown there had been chosen (spoilers: it was the finale of the entire thing…and I’d already forgotten it).

However, it speaks volumes that this is the book in the series about which I have the least to say…and, fittingly, I shall attempt not to pad this review out past its natural length. Where stronger titles in this collection have delighted in unusual clues or occurrences — the pattern on the grass in The Mystery of the Invisible Thief (1950), say — and where even the weaker ones have mixed in some ideas of things beyond the ken of their young protagonists (and, no doubt, of their target market, too), this immediately stumbles over its answers, and treads water the rest of the time with side issues like Goon kicking Ern out of his house, veering at times alarmingly towards social realism. Perhaps the spirit for young fiction was turning — Nancy Drew had already been revisited and updated for a new audience, after all, so clearly something was on the march…a discussion to be had by people far better informed than I.

At the end of the day, The Mystery of Banshee Towers isn’t a disaster, but shows its weaknesses in how much it reminds us of earlier adventures featuring this quintet. Blyton had done some wonderful work in penning these mysteries, and it’s understandable that her ingenuity would run its course one day; instead of lambasting this for perfectly forgivable flaws, then, let me instead wrap up by acknowledging the fun I’ve had with these books, and especially in discovering a side of this author that I had no idea existed. At their best — and you can expect a ranking in due course — they really are superb mysteries, and I look forward to revisiting them many times in the years ahead.

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