REVIEW: The Fitton Four-Poster
Aug. 9th, 2012 08:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feather_ghyllThe Fitton Four-Poster: G.E. Evans Peal Press
"Suffering cat-fish!"
This book is marketed as a Reward for Boys of Girls, but is mainly targeted towards the first group, for all that there are four main characters - two boys and two girls. Betty's main attribute is that she's cool (in the unflappable, distant, not warm sense), while Tess doesn't even have that. Then there's Bruin, who is fat and greedy, undermining his well-meaning nature, which leaves leading and solving things down to clever and capable "Leggy" Jim. All four are members of IIIA at Westgate Grammar School.
Now, if a gang of crooks, as they're invariably referred to in this book, hadn't stolen a film projector from said school in the midst of their out-of-London crime spree, well, according to the detective from Scotland Yard, they wouldn't have got away with it. Nevertheless, the lack of a film projector sent the children who will become known as the Lucky Four to the local museum on a sketching assignment. Therefore, they're walking through town just as a bank job takes place. Due to an accident, the crooks have to find somewhere to hide the money and French Joe happens on a spot in a museum. He will wish that he hadn't.
The characters are cardboard cut-outs, the writer seeming to have been influenced by movie gangsters (and maybe Ealing eccentrics in the museum attendant and regular customer) but wanting to put schoolchildren at the heart of the story. There is a great deal of energy to the final sequence at the museum, where all the class joins in in routing the crooks at the end of an exciting day, but it was a quick and disposable read, slightly different from the children's stories I normally read, because of its masculine energy and bias. G.E. stands for George Ewart.
"Suffering cat-fish!"
This book is marketed as a Reward for Boys of Girls, but is mainly targeted towards the first group, for all that there are four main characters - two boys and two girls. Betty's main attribute is that she's cool (in the unflappable, distant, not warm sense), while Tess doesn't even have that. Then there's Bruin, who is fat and greedy, undermining his well-meaning nature, which leaves leading and solving things down to clever and capable "Leggy" Jim. All four are members of IIIA at Westgate Grammar School.
Now, if a gang of crooks, as they're invariably referred to in this book, hadn't stolen a film projector from said school in the midst of their out-of-London crime spree, well, according to the detective from Scotland Yard, they wouldn't have got away with it. Nevertheless, the lack of a film projector sent the children who will become known as the Lucky Four to the local museum on a sketching assignment. Therefore, they're walking through town just as a bank job takes place. Due to an accident, the crooks have to find somewhere to hide the money and French Joe happens on a spot in a museum. He will wish that he hadn't.
The characters are cardboard cut-outs, the writer seeming to have been influenced by movie gangsters (and maybe Ealing eccentrics in the museum attendant and regular customer) but wanting to put schoolchildren at the heart of the story. There is a great deal of energy to the final sequence at the museum, where all the class joins in in routing the crooks at the end of an exciting day, but it was a quick and disposable read, slightly different from the children's stories I normally read, because of its masculine energy and bias. G.E. stands for George Ewart.
