Review: The Mystery of the Midnight Ghost by Helen Moss

The Mystery of the Midnight Ghost by Helen Moss (July 2011, Orion Childrens ISBN 1444003291)

Review: The Mystery of the Midnight Ghost is the second in the Adventure Island series and takes place a couple of weeks after The Mystery of the Whistling Caves. Brothers Scott and Jack are staying with an aunt on the Cornish island of Castle Key and have made friends with resident Emily and her talented dog Drift. They seem to have settled into their temporary life away from London.

They are all excited when filming of their favourite film franchise, the Agent Diamond series, comes to the island. The stunt co-ordinator Max is staying at the B & B Emily's parents run and he even manages to arrange a meeting between the friends and the star of the series, Savannah Shaw.

Filming is taking place at Pendragon Manor which is allegedly haunted by a witch – the rumour is that young women who appear in the witch's attic after midnight are never seen again. Then Savannah goes missing after reportedly being seen in the old house. Is there a supernatural or down-to-earth reason for her disappearance? 'Operation Lost Star' swings into action as the friends set out to find out what has happened to Savannah.

The Mystery of the Midnight Ghost is another charming adventure story with a beautiful setting which allows the children to ride around on their bikes and camp overnight on the beach without parental supervision. They also do some proper detective work – checking handwriting samples, tracking down a witness and following tyre tracks.

I chuckled quite a few times as well as Jack comes out with some great lines. The previously unshakeable Emily goes a bit weak at the knees at the thought of a ghost but she works to overcome her fear and Scott is starting to take a few more risks. I look forward to seeing how the friends' characters change. The illustrations by Leo Hartas that preface each chapter are, like the cover by Roy Knipe, very attractive.

The good news is that I have eight more of these to read, with a further four out in 2013.

My review of The Mystery of the Whistling Caves.

Guest posts by Helen Moss for Teenage Fiction For All Ages: Don't Forget Your Life Jacket and Easy as ABC.

Helen Moss Guest Post: Easy as ABC

It's "crime writing month" at the moment so I'm very pleased to welcome back Helen Moss, author of the "Adventure Island" mystery series, which as of last week is now now up to ten books with, pleasingly, more to come.

Helen originally wrote a very funny piece last year about safety in fiction (and I've reviewed the first book in the series: The Mystery of the Whistling Caves).

Easy as ABC?

Thank you very much for inviting me to call in at Teenage Fiction for All Ages again. Books Nine and Ten of the Adventure Island series made their appearance last week and Emily Wild finally sees two of her dreams come true - an investigation involving smugglers (The Mystery of the Smugglers’ Wreck) and a spy mystery complete with hidden codes and secret agents (The Mystery of the Invisible Spy). 

 

So, after solving ten murky mysteries, is it time for Emily, Jack and Scott to hang up their night-vision goggles and concentrate on their schoolwork? Maybe Drift has earned a break from sniffing out clues and is ready to spend his retirement chasing rabbits?

Not a chance!

Not while there are still dastardly deeds and shady shenanigans going on in Castle Key!

I’m hard at work on four more Adventure Island books to come out in Spring and Summer, 2013. After that, who knows? These books are so much fun to write that as long as readers still want to read them I’m more than happy to keep going . . . 

 

Friends often ask me if it gets easier to write each book as the series goes on. In some ways, it does. It gets easier to slip back into the characters’ voices, as I know them so well. It’s also much less daunting now when I get to that point in each book (usually around the end of Chapter Five) when I have a sudden overwhelming crisis of confidence and think; There’s absolutely no way I can do this. Me? Write a whole book? That anyone would actually want to read? Who are you trying to kid? These days I can give myself a stern talking to, remind myself that this happens every time. I’ve always got through it before. I take myself off to the bookshelf. Look, you can do this! Ten Adventure Island books with your name on! Now, sit back down at that computer and stop whinging!

But there are some things that get harder with each book. Thinking of new mysteries for the intrepid Emily, Scott, Jack and Drift to solve becomes more of a challenge . . . There are, after all, only so many dubious doings that can happen on a small island off the coast of Cornwall, which could even remotely plausibly be solved by a group of kids and are not too sordid and/or boring for eight-year old readers (yep, that rules out about 99% of all real-life crimes!).

Luckily, Castle Key island does have an astonishingly high crime rate, and continues to attract a constant stream of visitors with more than their fair share of Dark Secrets, so, with the help of my wonderful editor at Orion, Amber Caraveo, who can spot a plot hole a mile off, and my husband, who has the mind of a criminal genius, we should be able to keep Emily and the boys baffled and busy through Book Fourteen and beyond.

Thinking about the ups and downs of writing a long series reminded me of one of my favourite crime writers. American author Sue Grafton set herself a formidable challenge with her alphabet series; one mystery for every letter of the alphabet; A is for Alibi, B is for Burglar and so on, through to the most recent, V is for Vengeance. All the books feature the sassy, no-nonsense private investigator, Kinsey Milhone (I have a feeling Emily Wild will be a lot like Kinsey when she grows up!).

I’ve loved following Kinsey Milhone’s cases over the years, and am full of admiration for Sue Grafton, who is now only four books away from completing her 26 book series with Z is for . . . zero or zap or zodiac. As I began to write this piece, I googled Sue Grafton’s website and was intrigued to find that she has posted her writing journal notes for several of the alphabet series; they make utterly, utterly engrossing reading for anyone who has ever tried to plot a series of mysteries, or in fact, any story at all . . . What if? Would this work? But why would anyone do that? Is that too much like what happened before? Definitely worth a look . . . http://www.suegrafton.com/journal-notes.php

Now, I’d better get back to cooking up some more trouble in Castle Key!

With many thanks to Helen and Orion Childrens.

There are currently ten books available in the Adventure Island series (with four more planned for 2013). You can read about them at the official Adventure Island website which includes a map of Castle Key Island and blogs from the main characters.

Helen Moss's own website is here.

Blog Tour: Helen Moss Guest Post

Earlier this year I ran a week of "young crime solver posts" and included in this was a review of The Mystery of the Whistling Caves by Helen Moss and I subsequently voted her the new Enid Blyton :).

I'm now very pleased to welcome Helen to Teenage Fiction For All Ages and she has kindly written a guest post on safety in fiction:

Don’t Forget your Life Jacket!

When I first showed a shiny new hot-off-the-press copy of The Mystery of the Whistling Caves to my mum, her first comment (after saying well done, that’s wonderful) was ‘Shouldn’t they have their life jackets on?’



With the utmost restraint and maturity, I managed to suppress an eye-roll. Isn’t that just what a Mum would say!

I should know! I say it to my boys every day. Well, not exactly that, because we live miles from the sea and the only body of water they encounter on a daily basis is a large puddle on the drive. But I’m forever reciting the land-lubbers’ equivalent; don’t forget your bike helmet/shin pads/gumshield/bullet proof vest (okay, I made that last one up, but you get my point?)

Sometimes I feel like a One Woman Health and Safety Inspection.

So, when writing an adventure series featuring twelve and thirteen year old heroes, I knew I had to be careful not to wrap the characters in cotton wool. After all, they are fictional and their raison d’etre is to have adventures.

An adventure book without heaps of peril would be about as exciting as reading those one of those swimming pool warning signs (No running, no jumping, no laughing, no splashing, no petting - until the age of eight, I thought that last one meant you weren’t allowed to take your cat in with you!)


J K Rowling is famously quoted as saying “I’m not writing to make anyone’s children feel safe.” I agree. Of course, it’s more straightforward when the book is set in a fantasy world. When you’re single-handedly fighting off six dragons and a giant serpent with nothing but the sword of doom, no one’s going to worry about elbow-pads. Especially when broken bones can be fixed with a healing potion or magic spell.

Adventure Island is not a fantasy world, so it’s important that the young heroes aren’t seen as doing things that are totally reckless or irresponsible. On the other hand, it’s not gritty realism either. It’s clearly a fictional island, and although the characters are (I hope) identifiable as believable people in believable situations, there is an element of "suspended disbelief". For a start, if there were really that many serious crimes per head of the population in one summer, surely the government would have declared a state of emergency by now? I’m sure that even the youngest readers understand this is not real life, but are happy to go along with it for the sake of a good adventure.

So I didn’t dwell on life jackets and bike helmets. They were left unmentioned so that readers could imagine the characters wearing them if they wanted. However, in one of the later books (which I’m currently writing) I have made a point of mentioning bike helmets when the friends cycle into the busy town on the mainland, rather than the quiet moorland roads of the island, and also life jackets when they have to venture into dangerous rocks in their rowing boat.

Other than that, I’ve come up with a couple of guidelines I try to follow in the safety/peril stakes (in conjunction with my wonderful editor at Orion, Amber Caraveo. We’ve had many a long discussion on the life jacket issue!)

The young heroes never deliberately walk into a dangerous situation without a very good reason. However, if it’s necessary to save someone from danger or avert disaster, they don’t shy away. So, when the vanishing skeleton is dashing into the disused tin mine to blow it up, the boys follow to try to stop her. When a film star is dangling from a cliff, about to plunge to certain death, Jack rescues her with ropes (making sure he has a safety line attached!). When Drift, the dog, runs under the fence of the old quarry, the friends go in after him.



Danger can also arise through situations beyond their control. In The Mystery of the Whistling Caves, Emily knows how long they have in the caves before the tide rises and cuts off the exit – and the friends are very careful to make sure that they can get out in time; they’re not to know that a violent storm would make the sea levels rise higher than usual.

One thing I do insist on – as a Mum and as an author - is that both my real and fictional kids always let someone know where they are going. Emily and Scott roam Castle Key island, but they do say where they’re going (it’s not spelled out every time, of course; that would get a bit boring. But there’s a reminder now and then.) So for example, in The Mystery of the Missing Masterpiece, Emily creeps out into the night to follow a suspect, but she leaves her parents a note to say that she is taking the dog out for a few minutes’ walk.

This lesson came home to me as a child when I copied an idea I’d seen, not in a book, but on a TV programme called, Why don’t you switch off the TV and do something more useful instead? I’m sure anyone over a certain age will remember it well!

The brilliant idea was to take a Random Walk. Go out of your front door, and at every choice point, flip a coin to turn left or right and see where you end up! I longed to try this out and finally bullied my friend, Jackie, into joining me.

I think we must have lost track of time. I don’t remember much about where we ended up. Only a lot of relieved-slash-furious recriminations from my Mum when she eventually found us in a wood far from home – this was well before the era of mobile phones, of course. What were you thinking! Wherever have you been? It’s dark! You could have been killed!

I probably said something flippant at the time, (accompanied by an eye-roll, of course!) like; “Oh yeah, killed? What by? A rogue badger?” (we lived in the middle of the countryside.) But deep down, I must have got the message that it hadn’t been one of my better ideas.

For the next few weeks my mum was suddenly very keen to let me stay at home and watch telly all day though!

Many thanks to Helen and Orion Childrens.

There are currently six books available in the Adventure Island series (with four more planned for 2012). You can read about them at the official Adventure Island website which includes a map of Castle Key Island and blogs from the main characters.

Helen Moss's own website is here.

The blog tour began on 19th at Book Angel Booktopia and day two was at Serendipity Reviews.

The New Enid Blyton?

Over the last five days, I've read and reviewed the first book in five new crime series for younger readers. So how do they compare with the popular Enid Blyton crime series? Let's compare them with the first in the Famous Five series, Five on a Treasure Island:

Five on a Treasure Island by Enid Blyton
Number of children in the gang?: 4
Any Pets?: 1 dog
Setting?: Kirrin Bay/Island, Cornwall
Dead Bodies?: None*
Mobile Phones Used?: N/A
(*I haven't reread this but I don't think there are.)

Dead Man's Cove by Lauren St John
Number of children in the gang?: 1
Any Pets?: 1 dog
Setting?: St Ives, Cornwall
Dead Bodies?: No
Mobile Phones Used?: Briefly but not integral to the plot.

The Case of the Deadly Desperados by Caroline Lawrence
Number of children in the gang?: 1
Any Pets?: No
Setting?: Virginia City, USA, 1860s
Dead Bodies?: Yes
Mobile Phones Used?: N/A.

The Case of the Ruby Necklace by Alex Carter
Number of children in the gang?: 4
Any Pets?: 1 gerbil
Setting?: London
Dead Bodies?: No
Mobile Phones Used?: Yes, a lot.

Mondays are Murder by Tanya Landman
Number of children in the gang?: 2
Any Pets?: No
Setting?: Island off Scotland
Dead Bodies?: Yes
Mobile Phones Used?: No as no signal on the island.

The Mystery of the Whistling Caves by Helen Moss
Number of children in the gang?: 3
Any Pets?: 1 dog
Setting?: Castle Key (an island), Cornwall
Dead Bodies?: No
Mobile Phones Used?: Yes, but not integral to the plot.

In conclusion, The Case of the Deadly Desperados was great fun but doesn't fit into the Enid Blyton mould, and for me, The Case of the Ruby Necklace is quite like the Nancy Drew mysteries I used to read; Mondays are Murder is very Agatha Christie in its plot and has a people-watching sleuth; Dead Man's Cove is quite like Blyton in its setting and lack of parents but features a solitary detective (rather than four, or more(!)) so the winner of the new Enid Blyton tag, in this small sample, with its Cornwall-island-setting, its gang of three and a dog, has to be The Mystery of the Whistling Caves. I expect to see stickers on her books with "Helen Moss is the next Stieg Larsson Enid Blyton".

Review: The Mystery of the Whistling Caves by Helen Moss

Here's the fifth post in my week celebrating the young crime solver.


The Mystery of the Whistling Caves by Helen Moss (July 2011, Orion Childrens ISBN 1444003283)

Review: If you were brought up on Enid Blyton, as I was, then this cover alone should win you over. I've been dying to read this one since I heard about it and it was as much fun as I'd hoped.

The Mystery of the Whistling Caves is the first in the Adventure Island mysteries and is released along with book two, The Mystery of the Midnight Ghost, on 7 July.

Scott (13) and younger brother Jack (12) are sent to stay with and elderly relative, "Aunt" Kate, on the Cornish island of Castle Key. Initially upset about this, having had to leave city life and gadgets behind, they decide to explore and visit the castle. They learn that the castle's museum will soon be hosting a display of Saxon treasure. On their way back from the castle they meet Emily, who is a similar age to Jack, and her dog Drift and that's when things begin to look up for the boys.

She invites them on to her boat to see and hear the "whistling caves" at the base of the castle cliffs but she is surprised and a little upset to discover that the whistling has ceased. When they return to dry land they find that some of the treasure has been stolen from the museum. Emily, who has helped the police before, though they didn't appreciate it, invites the boys to help her and Drift solve the case.

The gang carry out the investigation in the traditional way of checking alibis as well as eavesdropping and spying until a revelation (appropriately in a church!) sets them on the right path but one that turns both frightening and dangerous.

This is a puzzling mystery with suspicion falling on first one person then the next and the author does a good job of keeping the reader in doubt as to who the thief is until late in the book. I loved Emily and Drift. Emily is a barefoot tomboy who has her own rowing boat and Drift is a talented dog who appears to have had extra training in being a spy, obeying commands such as "keep watch". The boys soon become enchanted with the island (and Emily to be fair, though not in a romantic way) and Jack is a bit of a cheeky lad with Scott being a rather more cautious character with his extra year.

I-phone carrying old sea dogs, elderly cycling cleaners with gambling addictions - there are plenty of unusual characters on Castle Key which should make for a great summer for the gang. There are six mysteries planned - to coincide with the boys' six weeks of holiday perhaps?- two out in July, two in August and two in September. I can't wait!

I must also add how much I've appreciated the illustrations used at the start of each chapter in this series and Orion's other books such as Lauren St John's Laura Marlin series and Caroline Lawrence's Western Mysteries.

Read an extract from The Mystery of the Whistling Caves on the Orion website.