Danger at Dead Man’s Pass

M. G. Leonard's Danger at Dead Man's Pass is a train mystery for 10 year olds about a family curse, a missing will and a boy detective in disguise.

What happens

Hal is coming out of football practice on a freezing March evening when he spots a tall figure waiting in the fog at the school gates. It's Uncle Nat, a week early, with a letter.

The letter is from a baron, an old friend of Uncle Nat's. His wife's cousin has been found dead on the railway line near the family's house in the mountains of Germany, his face twisted in terror. The doctor says heart attack. The family says curse. And someone claims to have seen a witch standing on the tracks at Dead Man's Pass.

An hour later Hal is on a train. Then the Eurostar to Paris, lunch in a restaurant that looks like a palace, and an overnight train to Berlin.

This isn't the pair's first case together, and the travelling is half the fun. Hal orders steak and chips in his best French and gets a plate of raw minced beef with an egg on top. He learns that the Eurostar is so long the engineers use bikes to get from one end to the other. A Frenchwoman in their sleeper compartment snores like a monster!

To get inside the family home, the two of them go undercover as distant relatives. Uncle Nat becomes Hal's dad for the trip, and they practise their cover stories in the bunks with a game called The Hot Seat. Calling him Dad every single time turns out to be surprisingly hard.

Hal is a lovely detective to follow. He's twelve, he draws everything to help himself think, and he builds a family tree in his pocketbook as the names pile up. He's also noticed that Uncle Nat is keeping something from him. What's the secret word hidden in the baron's letter? (Hal works that bit out for himself.)

The spooky side is there right from the letter. There's a death before the story starts, talk of a ghost and a witch, and a curse said to fall on the family's sons. The opening chapters are more shivers than scares, with lots of ordinary cosiness in between.

If you've got a reader who loves maps, timetables and working things out before the grown-ups do, this is right up their street.

What to read next

If they'd like to go back to where Hal's train adventures began, try The Highland Falcon Thief. Hal doesn't want to go anywhere with his uncle, and he's packed off on a steam train to Scotland while his mum has the baby.