Five Go to Smuggler’s Top

Enid Blyton's Five Go to Smuggler's Top is a secret-passage mystery for 9 year olds that starts with a tree crashing through the roof of Kirrin Cottage.

What happens

It's the Easter holidays, and Julian, Dick, Anne and George have only just got back to Kirrin when a huge gale blows the old ash tree down onto the house. The girls' bedroom is smashed to bits. They'd have been in their beds if Julian hadn't yelled.

So Uncle Quentin, feeling rather guilty, packs all four off to stay with a scientist friend at a house called Smuggler's Top. It sits on top of a steep hill in the middle of a marsh, and there's only one road across. Step off it and the mud will suck you down.

There's one big problem. Mr Lenoir won't have a dog in the house. Will George go anywhere without Timmy? Of course not. She hides him in a hedge down the road and whistles him into the car once they're safely away (that's very George!).

Then they meet Sooty, the Lenoirs' boy, who is cheeky, fearless and full of tricks. Straight away he takes them through a sliding panel in the study and up a secret passage that comes out in his bedroom cupboard. He's even rigged up a buzzer to warn him when anyone's coming.

That's the joy of it. The house is riddled with hidden tunnels, there's a strange servant who can't hear but somehow seems to know what you're saying, and lights shine from the tower at night that nobody will explain. Hiding a great big dog from a fierce grown-up in a place like that is a brilliant setup.

This is an old book, though, and in places it shows. The boy is called Sooty because he's very dark, with black hair and "a brown face", and nobody in the story thinks twice about it. He jokes about getting a thrashing from his stepfather, and George is described as looking more like a boy than a girl. Some readers will sail straight past all that. Others might want to talk it through, and that's no bad thing.

The Five have clearly had plenty of adventures before this one, but a newcomer won't feel lost.

What to read next

If they love the Five wanting to get away on their own, Five Go Off in a Caravan is another good one. They're bored stiff at home for the summer, George wants to go somewhere with no grown-ups at all, and then a circus comes down the road behind an elephant.