REVIEW: Mystery at Gull's Nest
Aug. 16th, 2022 10:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feather_ghyllMystery at Gull’s Nest: Roberta Moss, Andre Dakers,
Despite the appealing title, this isn’t a particularly good book. By the second chapter, when something happened that the main characters really ought to have called the police aboud, but didn’t, I’d lost patience. When the police do get involved, they’re a bit useless, though, but the whole mystery plot is daft. It’s mainly an excuse for the two heroines to describe things as ‘baffling’, be plucky during their adventures, cry out a lot in surprise, relief or worry, and taste the tang of the sea in the dialogue of the various sea dogs they encounter.
Said heroines are Teresa ‘Terry’ and Ruth Dix, sisters whose parents are conveniently abroad. They’re headed from boarding school to stay with their uncle at Gull’s Nest over Christmas. But Captain Roger Trager, retired, doesn’t meet them at the train station at Winchelport, the first sign that something isn’t right.
Something is very much not right, but what ‘the enemy’ is up to isn’t explained until the very last chapter, and is beside the point as the story is mainly about the sisters trying to find and rescue various people that ‘the enemy’ has kidnapped. They repeatedly get close enough for him and his ‘confederates’ to move their prisoners to various dramatic locations. Fortunate coincidences keep bringing the sisters back on their trail.
In fairness, the locations are a strong point, relatively speaking, in particular a deserted lighthouse on ground reclaimed from the sea. Winchelport is next to the fishing town of ‘Ryesea’. I’m not sure whether the writer has just changed the names of places in the Cinque Ports area or was alluding more vaguely to it. There was one physical characteristic of ‘the enemy’s’ that could have been a lift from Malcolm Saville, but this is far weaker and less realistic than anything I’ve read by him.
Despite being the youngest, Terry at first seems like the driving force. She’s a tomboy, willing to rush in, while the more feminine and sedate Ruth likes to weigh things up before committing. Inevitably, she has to do quite a lot of brave and dangerous things. Oddly, it was never made clear how old the girls are.
The writing varies from being quite vivid to being tremendously boring, and there are a lot of typos scattered throughout. I pretty much ploughed through it because I hate not to complete a book and promised myself a vent in my write-up.
Despite the appealing title, this isn’t a particularly good book. By the second chapter, when something happened that the main characters really ought to have called the police aboud, but didn’t, I’d lost patience. When the police do get involved, they’re a bit useless, though, but the whole mystery plot is daft. It’s mainly an excuse for the two heroines to describe things as ‘baffling’, be plucky during their adventures, cry out a lot in surprise, relief or worry, and taste the tang of the sea in the dialogue of the various sea dogs they encounter.
Said heroines are Teresa ‘Terry’ and Ruth Dix, sisters whose parents are conveniently abroad. They’re headed from boarding school to stay with their uncle at Gull’s Nest over Christmas. But Captain Roger Trager, retired, doesn’t meet them at the train station at Winchelport, the first sign that something isn’t right.
Something is very much not right, but what ‘the enemy’ is up to isn’t explained until the very last chapter, and is beside the point as the story is mainly about the sisters trying to find and rescue various people that ‘the enemy’ has kidnapped. They repeatedly get close enough for him and his ‘confederates’ to move their prisoners to various dramatic locations. Fortunate coincidences keep bringing the sisters back on their trail.
In fairness, the locations are a strong point, relatively speaking, in particular a deserted lighthouse on ground reclaimed from the sea. Winchelport is next to the fishing town of ‘Ryesea’. I’m not sure whether the writer has just changed the names of places in the Cinque Ports area or was alluding more vaguely to it. There was one physical characteristic of ‘the enemy’s’ that could have been a lift from Malcolm Saville, but this is far weaker and less realistic than anything I’ve read by him.
Despite being the youngest, Terry at first seems like the driving force. She’s a tomboy, willing to rush in, while the more feminine and sedate Ruth likes to weigh things up before committing. Inevitably, she has to do quite a lot of brave and dangerous things. Oddly, it was never made clear how old the girls are.
The writing varies from being quite vivid to being tremendously boring, and there are a lot of typos scattered throughout. I pretty much ploughed through it because I hate not to complete a book and promised myself a vent in my write-up.
