Five On a Secret Trail

Brief Summary by Poppy Hutchinson (from http://www.enidblytonsociety.co.uk/): Camping out, alone, in the moorland, near Kirrin Cottage – George and Anne see a series of strange flashing lights, one night from a derelict cottage, nearby. They also become acquainted with a strange young boy, who is involved in a local archaeological dig and when they are reunited with Julian and Dick, who have just returned from France – there is plenty to talk about! The Five gradually become aware of the fact that someone is trying to scare them away from this desolate spot on the Common – but the question is: who and why?


Random thoughts:

So we start with George at Kirrin Cottage still waiting for her cousins. Timmy gets injured and has to wear a cardboard collar so that he can't scratch his ear and reopen the wound. He looks funny and people laugh at him, which makes George mad. So she decides to "run away" with Timmy and camp in the commons near Kirrin Cottage while she waits for the others. I say run away because she doesn't ask permission and just leaves a note, although Aunt Fanny is OK with it. Which is a good thing, because otherwise where was she going to get supplies? Anyway, I liked the beginning. It rang true to George's character, being protective of Timmy and getting upset at his having to wear the collar and people laughing at him... much more upset than Timmy himself. Also, the fact that the children are not together for a good part of the book adds variety.

Anne is the next one to arrive and she joins George, and soon the two girls are camping together. They have a nearby spring to get water and an old cottage in ruins which provides shelter in case of very bad weather. They don't know if the boys will join them. Julian and Dick are in some kind of school trip in France. Don't the girls get to do things like that? Anyway, the trip sounds like fun, but the boys won't be having adventures over there. That magic only works when the Five are together.

The girls meet a funny boy. He is something of a joker and he is working on an archeological Roman dig nearby, but he doesn't want the girls going there and pestering him. I thought he had seemed more friendly than that. The girls agree not to go where they are not wanted, and he agrees not to go by their camp either. However, they encounter him again a bit later and he remembers nothing of this, and even accuses the girls of being crazy, while the girls think that he is the crazy one, or trying to play a weird joke.

We know the girls aren't crazy, so it's clear the boy is the crazy one... either that or he has a twin. And, of course, it will be later discovered that he has a twin.

The twins had had a fight and were pointedly ignoring each other, so that's why they were never together, but it was not very realistic that they would take it as far as accusing the girls of being crazy when they must have realized the source of the confusion. In spite of that, I have to confess that I rather enjoyed the whole farce. I guess I'm easy to please that way.

Meanwhile the adventure is being set: Anne sees lights and hears noises near the ruins of the cottage. George thinks she must have been dreaming. But later, during a storm, the girls take refuge in the cottage and they see someone peering in through a window at them.

The girls are scared and decide to return home next day. It's a bit uncharacteristic of George to run away. I have to admit that at this point of the series George is depicted as a bit less formidable than she was in the beginning, but still, running away... Well, she was doing it because of Anne, but she didn't even try to convince her to stay and investigate...

Fortunately, as they are about to leave, Julian and Dick arrive unexpectedly. With the two boys the group is complete and there's no way they'll run away now.

The adventure starts in earnest from there. I thought the children had a great idea, pretending to leave and then hiding to watch and see what the bad guys were so eager to do in the old cottage.

I hate it when George is excluded from dangerous activities, though. She wants Timmy to remain with Anne while she goes with the boys, but she accepts the excuse that if too many people go it will be more difficult to hide. Once that's accepted, there's no question that the ones to go are Julian and Dick. It bothers me that the boys never get to accept that George is as good as any boy, even though they should know better. The conventional "girls need to be protected" values of their time are too strong. Even George seems to accept them.

The boys successfully spy on the bad guys, who have a contrived conversation where they tell each other what they already know as a way for the boys to get all the information the plot requires them to have.

The plan of the bad guys is deliciously convoluted and inept. So, one of them has stolen valuable blueprints, and has the brilliant idea to hide them in an underground passage in the middle of nowhere. Casually it happens to be close to Kirrin Cottage, where the only other copy of the blueprints is (more on that later). Then he falls ill, but he draws some kind of map and gives instructions to his accomplices to retrieve the blueprints. However, the instructions are absurdly vague, and his accomplices are left looking all over the countryside in search of a stone slab. Basically they have little idea of where it is.

Apart from that, the adventure is pretty standard Famous Five stuff. Mysterious lights in an old ruin, secret passages, hidden stolen goods, one kidnapped child...

By the way, do check the Eileen Soper illustration of the woman who pretends to be a farmer to get information from the children. She looks so incredibly suspicious and spooky in that picture! :D

Finally, they recover the stolen goods and the kidnapped twin and they get to Kirrin Cottage and summon the police there. None of them knows what the blueprint is and whether it's valuable. George seems to think that since her dad is a scientist he will be able to identify every single blueprint in existence in the world. And sure enough, not only he is able to identify it, but he casually happens to be working on it. In fact it's a very important secret and Uncle Quentin has one of the only two copies, and the other one is the one that has been stolen. The bad guys, who had been locked in the secret passage, get picked up by the police.

OK, so that's it. This book is regarded by many fans as one of the weakest in the series. My impression is that it was not so bad. It had many of the things that make me enjoy these books. The stuff about Timmy and her collar was good. I liked the stuff with the twins, even if it's corny and even though it's just weird that one of the twins didn't explain the situation sooner. I enjoyed the children camping. The adventure stuff was not that bad, even though at this point, having listened to so many books in the series one after the other, secret passages and mysterious lights are not as exciting unless Blyton does something special with them. And here she doesn't, it's all a bit routine and by the numbers. To tell the truth, there are coincidences and plot holes in many of the books but perhaps this one has more than its fair share. It also lacks the descriptions we are used to when the children explore a new location. The setting here was near Kirrin Cottage and, aside from the ruins and the Roman dig nearby, had nothing to give it any particular personality.

All in all, certainly not among the best of the series, but it did not give me the impression that it was not worthy of being part of the series. I still enjoyed it.


Next up: Five Go to Billycock Hill ( )

1972 dustjacket

Another fun little adventure :-)
Not much more to say than that ...

Adrianne ( )

Spannend ( )