A third mystery for Roger, Diana, Snubby, Loony, Barney, and Miranda, and, well, one that frankly makes me wonder if I’ll bother reading the remaining three books in this series.

I suppose my main difficulty with The Ring O’ Bells Mystery (1951) by Enid Blyton is that not only is it not very mysterious, it’s also plotted and written in the most abecedarian way imaginable. For all of its being aimed at an older audience than Blyton’s generally superb Five Find-Outer books — the vocabulary is more advanced, for one thing, throwing out the likes of “spasmodic” and “fusillade” — it’s put together as if for a far younger audience who need much more time to fix key ideas and locations in their heads.

Having been ill with flu, Roger and Diana Lynton and their cousin Snubby recover in time for the end of the school holidays and so…are immediately sent away by their parents to ‘recover’ with governess Miss Pepper who looked after then in The Rockingdown Mystery (1949). They head to Ring O’ Bells village and meet lots of people very slowly, including an old man who had a hazy memory, a woman who lives in an isolated cottage, and the strict curator of Ring O’ Bells Hall who tells them about a secret passage which she refuses to let them explore. This takes a third of the book.

They write to Barney, who then comes to visit them. And, with nowhere to sleep, he breaks into Ring O’Bells Hall and hears mysterious noises in the night, including the bells ringing which is said only to happen when there are enemies present. The kids then all break in and hide one evening, some mysterious conversations are overheard, they figure out there’s something dodgy about the passage, and explore it only to find it’s being used by a criminal gang. Cue some night-time shenanigans, and the capture of the gang, all in time for lashings of raspberry tea or whatever pre-diabetic treat awaits them.

That summary makes the book a) more interesting and b) far less arthritic than it is, with pages and pages given over to loose, purposeless exploration of the village, and the essential plot being about four chapters-worth of content smeared over countless pages. This 187-page book took me five days to read because of how slowly it drags out its events and how little intrigue or mystery there is contained in those endless, endless pages.

There’s the occasional stir of interest — like the discussion of why a woman who lived on her own in the isolated cottage (called, you’ll be amazed to learn, Ring O’Bells Cottage…recalling the fever dream that was Telefair (1942) by Craig Rice), which plays on witchcraft themes familiar from Europe and North America:

“These are only old tales and legends, with possibly no truth in them at all. Mother Barlow was probably a kindly old woman, who knew a good bit about herbs and the roots of plants, and could make medicines and ointments to cure all kinds of ills. That would be quite enough to make her a witch in the eyes of the ignorant village people!”

Equally, the minor character notes of the various inhabitants of the village are clean and capture the mind, such as the aforementioned old man looking “a little like an old English sheepdog, with its shaggy hair over its eyes”, and whose appearance is something our protagonists regard almost with awe:

The children stared at him, watching his eyes go slit-like under their shaggy eyebrows as he wandered far away back into a past that seemed as near to him as the present day of May sunshine and warmth. How curious to be so old — how strange to read the pages of history in your own mind, instead of in a book!

But, well, given that Blyton was positively o’erflowing with confidence where Fatty and pals were concerned — she’s only a few short years away here from writing arguably the pinnacle of that series, perhaps one of the best juvenile mysteries ever put to paper — this is dull fare, and only a half of a half-step away from the smugglers that Julian and the gang were dealing with on a regular basis, rendering it even less interesting to my mystery-loving brain.

I’m also, and this is an issue carried over from second book The Rilloby Fair Mystery (1950), not entirely sure what Barney actually brings to these books about him. Apart from being with the children and thus enabling them to buy a tin of tobacco, he’s really just sort of there, allowing The Boys to go on adventures while Diana sits at home and wrings a hankie, waiting for news. His monkey Miranda is cute, but, honestly, these books would be a lot more interesting were Barney not in them, not least because it would enable Roger, Diana, and Snubby to play off each other more, and those three are actually quite good fun (Snubby in particular, his spaniel Loony joined by a second spaniel, Loopy, this time around).

So, well, I own the three remaining ‘Barney’ mysteries, but I don’t know I’ll get to them any time soon. Blyton has written some of the most wonderful books about crime-solving young ‘uns, but these don’t count among them.

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The Barney Mysteries by Enid Blyton