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Gillian Cross's The Demon Headmaster Strikes Again is a creepy thriller for 8 year olds about a village where everybody says exactly the same words.
The Hunters have just moved to a quiet village because Dad has a new job at the Biogenetic Research Centre. Everyone Dinah, Lloyd and Harvey meet says the BRC is a wonderful thing and a really good neighbour. The same words, every single time. Brr.
The children have come up against the Demon Headmaster before, so they know what it looks like when a whole crowd has been hypnotised. When an old enemy turns up saying she's changed, Dinah isn't convinced. Rose Carter was once his perfect prefect. Now she pulls a face and shudders whenever anyone mentions him. Suspicious? Just a bit!
Then there's Simon, a local boy nobody believes. He has photos of a creeper growing over the BRC wall in a matter of hours, and a camera it crushed. Dinah loves science, so she looks at the evidence and decides to trust him. The two of them go back to that wall at midnight.
That's where it gets properly tense. There's a strange buzzing in the dark, a figure on the wall, a yell and a thud. The next morning Lloyd is missing, and when they find him he won't wake up. Nobody can explain how he got where he was found.
Dinah is such a good heroine to follow. She's clever and stubborn, she thinks things through, and she keeps her promise to Simon even when her brothers are cross with her.
A couple of things to be aware of. Lloyd spends a good chunk of the story unconscious in hospital, hooked up to drips and monitors. Simon's mum has died too, though that's in the past rather than something that happens in the book. For a child who worries about someone they love being poorly, it might feel close to home. For a child who loves a mystery with a shiver in it, it's a real page-turner.
If they haven't met the family yet, the first Demon Headmaster book is where Dinah arrives to live with the Hunters and walks into that very strange school.
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