Go Ahead, Secret Seven

Go Ahead, Secret Seven by Enid Blyton is a proper old fashioned mystery for 7 year olds that begins with a secret society running out of things to solve.

What happens

Nothing has happened for ages. There has not been a meeting in weeks. Then Susie, who is Jack's sister and not a member and never will be, bumps into Peter in the street and tells him the password.

She found it in Jack's hanky drawer. She has told every girl in her class. She is extremely pleased with herself.

So Peter calls a meeting mostly out of spite, and that is how the whole thing starts.

The meeting is half the fun on its own. Cocoa in a shed, six candles, honey sandwiches, a chocolate cake, and a golden spaniel called Scamper with his own plate of goodies on the floor.

They choose a new password. Then Peter announces that if there are no mysteries about, they will practise for one. Shadowing. Watching strangers and writing them down. Finding a spy hole.

Everyone takes this terrifyingly seriously, which is the joke. Janet goes to the railway station with a notebook. Pam and Barbara giggle at the bus stop and come back with nothing useful at all.

And George, who wanted a real case and not homework, goes out after dark in rubber shoes to follow a man with a bag. It goes wrong for him in a way that is properly unfair.

Worth knowing before you hand it over

To hide in the dark George blacks his face, and when a stranger grabs him the man's first question is whether his face is blacked or whether he is dark skinned.

It is a 1950s book being a 1950s book. Nothing more is made of it. In the same scene two grown men say the boy needs a good hiding, meaning a smacking, and his parents agree he is in disgrace.

If your reader is used to older books and you are nearby to say that people talked like that then, it passes in a page. If you would rather it did not land unexplained, read that chapter first.

What follows is the good part. A man walks a frightened dog down an alley into a walled yard with one way in. He comes back without it. No gate, no kennel, no whine, and a boy with a torch and a cut hand who cannot work out where a dog can possibly go.

The Seven being children is what makes it work. They are bossy with one another, they mark each other's efforts, and Peter tells Pam and Barbara their notes are very poor indeed.

What to read next

Susie is every bit as infuriating in Puzzle for the Secret Seven, where the Seven have another quiet spell before a house goes up in flames and a valuable violin disappears.