The Find-Outers: The Mystery of Holly Lane
I have yet to meet a person, young or old, who has not read an Enid Blyton book. I have mentioned several times that my favourite genre is mystery, and my favourite mystery novels are the find-outers. So I picked up a find outer book from my school library, which was called 'The Mystery of Holly Lane'.
The book is the the eleventh title in Enid Blyton's fifteen-book Five Find-Outers and Dog series, in which a group of British schoolchildren play detective in their holidays. The book is an interesting read and is not too long with roughly about 200 pages. It was first published a long time back in 1943 by 'Hodder and Stoughton'.
Enid Blyton is an amazing children’s author, bestselling in the world. This Find-Outers series features 5 friends who search out mysteries like detectives, often hassling the local constable while doing so. Fatty - The leader of the children, often dresses up in hilarious disguises as he solves these mysteries.
The main characters in this book are the find-outers Fatty, Larry, Pip, Bets and Daisy, Mr. Goon, the policeman who believed that the children were a nuisance, an aged man who was robbed, his granddaughter and grandnephew, a man named Mr Henri who was his neighbour and Superintendent Jenks, who was a friend of the kids.
Enid Blyton's books have been among the world's bestselling ones, and have been translated in over 90 languages, selling more than 600 million copies. Some of her well-known works are 'Noddy', 'The Secret Seven' and 'The Famous Five'.
In this book - the find-outers are back from school for their vacations. They all meet for tea one day and decide to practise some detecting. Larry's assignment is to disguise as a window cleaner. But while cleaning, he saw a man yelling for the police. It turned out his cash was gone. The following day, all the furniture in his house was missing too! The find-outers begin working on the mystery to find out the burglar.
I loved this book. It was one of my favourites find-outers book. This book was funny and my favourite part was of course when they solved the mystery. It kept me on the edge of my seat all the time! But like all the other find-outers books, Fatty solved everything and I feel like he is given too much attention as far as solving the case is concerned. In this book it was Fatty who really did pretty much everything, getting the important clues and solving the mystery at the end, besides of course having a very good time with his disguises.
One observation, I must confess that I felt irritated by the way Larry orders the girls to stay home during the exciting night-time adventure. I know this was the accepted social norm of yesteryears but things have changed now. Also, it is shown that the policeman, Mr Goon as a fool and can't solve a single mystery.
On the food front, as usual, like most Enid Blyton books there are plenty of scrumptious teas and icecreams, cakes and macaroons, and Buster getting his favourite dog biscuits topped with meat. This was also the one where Chief-Inspector Jenks, now Superintendent Jenks takes the children out for a treat with plenty more food. So a really fun read which I thoroughly enjoyed.
I suggest this book for readers of age 8-11. There are 12 books in this entire series, but you can read them in any order. I have read about 6-7 of them.
I give this book 3.9 out of 5.