The Mystery of the Disappearing Cat

Enid Blyton's The Mystery of the Disappearing Cat is a detective story for 9 year olds about a prize Siamese cat and the gentle friend everyone is quick to blame.

What happens

It's the start of the summer holidays and Bets can't wait for her big brother Pip to get home from boarding school. Larry and Daisy come back the next day. Fatty's parents have bought a house in the village, so he's here too, with Buster the Scottie.

The Five Find-Outers and Dog are together again. The only problem? There's nothing to find out.

Then they meet Luke, the gardener's boy next door. He's fifteen, he whistles beautifully and he's scared stiff of his boss. Mr Tupping, the gardener, is SUPER horrible. He hates children, dogs and cats, and acts as if Lady Candling's garden is his.

Over the wall there's also a cat-house full of prize Siamese cats. The star is Dark Queen, who has just won a hundred pounds. She has a little patch of cream hairs in her dark tail (Bets is the one who notices).

Then Dark Queen disappears, and Luke is the one people suspect. The children know he'd never do it. Tupping can't have done it, apparently, because he was out with Mr Goon the policeman all afternoon.

You really feel for Luke. He can carve a cat out of wood and name every bird in the hedge, but hardly anyone has ever been kind to him. So it's lovely watching the children stick up for him. And Buster gets some very satisfying revenge on Tupping's trousers!

Worth knowing before you hand it over

There's quite a lot of cruelty from grown-ups in this one. Tupping hits Fatty, boxes Luke's ears and throws stones at Buster. He gives Bets a horrible fright and rips up her strawberry plants in front of her. Luke says his stepfather would beat him if he lost his job.

It's old-fashioned in other ways too. The children play "Red Indians", with talk of scalping, and Bets asks to be a "squaw" (a word that's offensive now). Luke gets called "simple" because he can hardly read or write. If your reader gets upset by grown-ups being cruel to children, this might be a tough one. If they love a baddie to boo at and a friend to cheer for, they'll probably be gripped.

What to read next

The gang first came together in The Mystery of the Burnt Cottage, and that's the best place to start. For more Blyton with a group of children and something odd going on, The Island of Adventure begins with Philip doing algebra on an empty hillside while a voice from nowhere tells him to wipe his feet.