Sabotage on the Solar Express

Sabotage on the Solar Express by M. G. Leonard & Sam Sedgman is a train mystery for 10 year olds set in the Australian Outback, where a brand new kind of train is about to carry its very first passengers.

What happens

This is Hal's fifth train adventure with his Uncle Nat. Each one is its own mystery, and Hal fills you in on anyone he's met before.

He's on holiday in Australia and for once there's no crime to solve. He's happily sketching red desert from the window of The Ghan (the longest passenger train in the world).

Then they reach Alice Springs, where they've been invited onto the Solar Express. It runs on hydrogen made from water and sunlight, and it won a worldwide competition set up by the tech billionaire August Reza. Its designer turns out to be Boaz, who's fourteen and does his experiments in a shed on his family's cattle station (he's burned it down once already).

August's daughter Marianne is there too, and she's the one with a mystery. A man dressed as a hotel porter has left her dad a gold and silver model of Stephenson's Rocket, and the hotel says nobody like him works there. Who sends a present like that and doesn't sign the card?

Her dad won't listen. Hal isn't sure he wants to either.

The sabotage is right there in the title, so it's no secret that something goes wrong with this train. The early chapters line up people to keep an eye on. The engineer whose team built it thinks the test run is happening far too soon. One of the guests is a mining boss with a lot of money tied up in lithium, the very thing this train does without.

Hal does his detecting with a sketchbook. This time he's turning his drawings into comic strips, speech bubbles and all.

There's SO much real stuff in it as well. Why The Ghan has a camel painted on its side. Why nobody dares call a train the Hydrogen Express (the Hindenburg airship disaster, told plainly). Boaz even shows how his fuel works by setting light to a balloon of it, indoors.

If you've got a reader who likes facts with their adventure, this is a great pick. It does take its time, mind. The opening chapters are all Outback, science and suspects, and the big trip is still a day away.

What to read next

If this one goes down well, Hal's next trip swaps the desert for snow. The Arctic Railway Assassin has him and Uncle Nat heading for the Arctic Circle on a sleeper train, hoping to see the Northern Lights.