Saturday 14 March 2020

The Highland Falcon Thief - M G Leonard and Sam Sedgman

Great adventures aboard a steam train on it's last journey! Aimed at 8 - 12 years, I loved this and I am ancient!  It would also make a great "read-aloud" book.  It's the first in a series (Adventures on Trains) of adventures with Hal and his journalist uncle Nat. 



Uncle Nat is covering the last journey of this lovely steam engine, pulling a royal train on a rail tour of the UK before going to a railway museum. (For train enthusiasts, the Highland Falcon is based on a real steam engine, The Mallard).  Even if you have no interest whatsoever in trains, if you like a mystery this will do it.  If you like mysteries on trains, this will do it.  If you like jewel robberies, this will do it! 

Hal doesn't really want to go, but his Mum is just off to hospital to have a baby, and   Uncle Nat has arranged for a ticket for Hal to join him on this adventurous journey.  So I guess he'll just have to make the best of it...... and it isn't very long before he discovers a stowaway, and a jewel is stolen.  Who?  What?  How?   Just like the very best mystery on a train tales, this has everything, including lovely illustrations which are from Hal's sketchbook, as he draws things he doesn't really understand to work them out.  There are clues, but although I thought I knew "who" halfway through, I certainly didn't know "how" until Hal and the stowaway produced the evidence.  Some great characters here, including a chubby man with fingers like pork sausages; a man with a scar on his upper lip who obviously looks like a criminal; an actress who is not very bright and then of course Uncle Nat who helps Hal solve the mystery by asking the right questions, and not telling Hal that he mustn't do this  that and the other like a parent would!  Great stuff!

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