The Mystery of the Strange Messages by Enid Blyton
Findouters challenge: Book 14. This is the second of the findouters cases to involve mysterious letters, the first being the Mystery of the Spiteful Letters. This time though, the target is not random people around Peterswood but a certain Mr Smith against whom they are directed and Mr Goon to whom all the notes are addressed. The notes are anonymous and composed of words/letters cut out of newspapers and magazines. Nobody is seen leaving the notes but they appear all over Goon’s house. Goon immediately suspects Fatty and goes to warn off the findouters but this turns out to be a blessing in disguise for our five who have no case to solve (as usual) in the holidays. Goon too soon realises that it wasn’t the findouters who are playing a trick and enlists Ern’s help―actually hires him to help. And so the Findouters start off on another exciting mystery, this one with plenty of hidden secrets and also more to it than first meets the eye. Like in the Mystery of Tally-Ho Cottage, Ern takes on a more active role in this one and does himself proud.
Before I get to my reactions to the actual book itself, I have to rant about the updated eds. Totally my fault, but somehow, I bought a new edition (2011) of this one, something I actively avoid doing usually, and every change they made―pointless in my view (except may be one, but even that didn’t make sense) jarred. For instance, Fatty always called his parents ‘mother’ and ‘father’―which has been changed here to ‘mummy’ and ‘daddy’―why? Do children today not know what ‘mother’ and ‘father’ means, or is it so hard to understand that perhaps in the past, people addressed their parents differently? Elsewhere ‘daily woman’ becomes ‘cleaning lady’―again something that needn’t have been changed, anyone can easily look it up―isn’t that the point of books (or one of the points, at any rate) that you learn new things― new words/expressions, new things about other places and cultures, about your own culture/ country, about the past. Such pointless changes simply ruin the book for me, it loses its sense of time and place, which is part of its value. A third change that stood out was all the references to ‘fat boy’ which is what Goon does call Fatty are changed to ‘big boy’―this I get why it was changed but for one, it wasn’t used in the sense that it is understood today (something else that children today can’t understand, apparently―if we go by the changes), and two, it was meant to be nasty, which ‘big boy’ simply doesn’t convey. Grrrr….
Apart from the edition, Blyton herself made a bit of a mistake in this one, with Mrs Trotteville claiming that she’s been living in Peterswood from nineteen years, when she and her family only moved here in book 2 of the series―and if it were indeed nineteen years since then, our findouters ought to have been in their thirties now 🙂
But anyway, now finally the story itself. While the updated text, as I said, was jarring, the story itself was interested. The opening was different from the usual (one or the other of the children having to be received from the station, holidays with nothing to do)―this one begins with Goon puzzling over the anonymous notes and takes off from there. The mystery was one of the more interesting ones with as I said a little more complicated than it seems at first and it was fun to see how Fatty worked the whole thing out. Of course, it was him that put together everything at the end. Bets this time has some good ideas but one major clue comes from Ern and his attempts at writing por’try (I always forget that all his poetry begins with ‘The Poor Old’ or ‘Pore Old’ 🙂 ) and Ern indeed has a very active role in this one, helping the findouters and Fatty when he is needed the most, and proving himself brave, loyal, and clever. The solution was among the more interesting ones and was rather enjoyable. There was disguising of course, though only once, and actual investigating by all the findouters. On the foodmeter, this one was average, there was food, plenty, but not overflowing. Sid and Perce’s antics are brought in, and with it some laughs, though they themselves don’t make an appearance. A fun read though spoiled for me by the edition (which I must get rid of asap and replace with an older one).
Literary Potpourri 
I fully agree with you. I don’t hold with adapting a book to suit readers with below average IQs. It’s a ridiculous trend. I wonder who introduced it. I’ve never been to England, but I’ve spent my childhood engrossed in the Fatty books, and totally loved them; still do. In the process, I learned so much about life in a small town in England, boarding schools, the English countryside, the bike rides, the food they ate. It was all such fun, and never felt alien, which today’s children are supposed to feel.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Exactly- I hope they come to their senses eventually and revert to the original text.
LikeLike
And illustrations.
LikeLike