In my previous post I talked about the characters – and I was glad to see some comments agreeing with me about Anne – and the general story.

Retcons all round

For those of you unfamiliar with the term retcon is short for retroactive continuity, which basically means a new installment/episode of a book, tv or film series introducing material which contradicts earlier information given.

Sometimes these are plausible(ish) like Moriarty coming back from the dead after the Reichenbach Fall (or Dirty Den returning after being shot and falling into the canal, if 1980’s soap references are more your thing).

Other times they are much less possible and open to nitpicking like Dr Grant mentioning Ian Malcolm’s funeral at the end of Jurassic Park, yet him being alive in the next book.

Anyway, there are various things in this book that come off as a bit unbelievable or sometimes plain wrong if you’ve read the original books.

First up there’s a hidey hole in the hallway of Kirrin Cottage (yes, I said cottage, not farm.) George apparently just keeps on finding new ones. I picture the cottage like the room Gerald Whinfrey stays in in Whinfrey’s Last Case from Michael Palin’s Ripping Yarns. There he finds 23 different secret passages which reveal themselves one after another and he has a hard time deciding which one to escape via (also yes, I have referenced that episode in another Famous Five context – Peril in the Night Train.)

Do we really believe that the Five never found any of these when they were younger? The way it’s written implies that George is still finding them to this day.

The whole catacombs map thing is also exaggerated (and I’m not sure it makes sense when you think about it).

First Anne thinks that Clay couldn’t be using the catacombs as they’re dangerous and there’s no known map. Then she remembers that

There used to be one! It’s been lost for countless years, but George must have worked out a clue about where it was hidden.

So it is known, then?

Then we get the flashback portion of the book, set just after the events of Five Go to Smuggler’s Top.

‘Didn’t you say something about a map of the catacombs, Sooty, the very first time we climbed down into the passages from the trapdoor in Marybelle’s bedroom?’ asked George.

‘Yes, there’s supposed to be a secret map hidden somewhere’, [Sooty] replied. ‘That’s what the old stories say. But it was lost long ago.’

I couldn’t even remember them discussing a map of the catacombs before, but it is there – one single throwaway remark.

‘Well, I told you this hill was full of tunnels,’ said Sooty. ‘This pit is down in the hill and these tunnels lead into the catacombs. There are miles and miles of them. No one explores them now, because so many people have been lost in them and never heard of again. There used to be an old map of them, but it’s lost.’

From this point on everyone behaves as if this one map is an established fact.

I’ll save the rest of the not-making-sense for my main nitpicks later.

Inside Smuggler’s Top scenes are set in a tower which does not resemble the only tower mentioned in the original book – where Block was smuggling from. I was going to be generous and say that the house could have more than one tower. But I actually checked the book.

‘That must be Smuggler’s Top, right at the summit,’ said Julian, pointing. ‘It’s like an old building of centuries ago—probably is! Look at the tower it has. What a wonderful view you’d get from it.’

and

The house’s one tower stood sturdily at the east side of the house, with windows all round. It was not a square tower, but a rounded one, and ended in a point.

rather prove my point.

Then we have what’s more of a nitpick than a retcon where George refers to the bedroom with the window seat/secret passage as ‘that bedroom my father stayed in all those years ago‘ and later ‘my father’s room‘. Surely she means Sooty’s bedroom, which Uncle Quentin happened to stay in for a brief period that one time?

Anyway, this room is directly below the tower room that George and Anne were locked in. There’s never any suggestion in the book that the tower is directly above Sooty’s room or that Sooty’s room is in the tower. It doesn’t expressly say it’s not, but given that Sooty’s room is down a long corridor, and the tower has a landing and then a spiral staircase… it seems unlikely at best.

The nitpicks

Now there are certainly nitpicks in the original books. And there are specifically nitpicks that this book tries to avoid and makes almost worse.

In Five Go to Smuggler’s Top they put Timmy into a big laundry basket as obviously he can’t climb down a rope ladder. Yet there are other scenes (which I can’t remember off the top of my head) where Timmy magically appears at the bottom of a ladder without explanation.

This book tries to make sure that doesn’t happen. So Fran puts Gilbert inside her jacket for the first long ladder – but let’s remember that Fran’s a child and Gilbert is a border collie, not a chihuahua. She later abseils down a rocky cliff with him tucked under her arm.

Later George climbs down a slippery ladder with a torch in her teeth, but she and Gilbert land at the bottom with no mention of her actually having picked him up.

On a related note we are also supposed to believe that George, alone, can carry a burly guard up a ladder.

The map/catacombs/train/port thing makes very little sense. To be fair it makes about as much sense as the original spook train in Five Go Off to Camp. To modernise the book we have a proper port with goods presumably being checked as they enter it. To avoid this Clay has built a train track from a warehouse at the port all the way into the catacombs of Smuggler’s Top. And nobody at the port notices them loading their boat (a yacht, not even a cargo ship…) with way more goods than came in the gate? Or the extra people who keep appearing out of the warehouse? Also; wow what an expense that must have been.

To return to the map, well, why are they after it exactly? To stop Clay who they suspect is using the catacombs – but they already say he must have added new tunnels thus changing the layout. Yet the original Five navigate the catacombs several times without the map – including that time in the flashback where they seem to walk straight to the hidden clue to the map without any wrong turns at all.

Which leads me to why did whoever own the map decide to paint over it and hang it in Smuggler’s Top, then leave a clue in a journal in the catacombs?

Minor niggles include:

• Smuggler’s Top having had lots of high tech security features added but the locks being easy to pick. (There was an element of a trap being laid, so I can let no alarms blaring slide.)
• The children and Anne having a lengthy conversation right in front of Clay while he presumably waits politely for them to finish, and more conversation during what’s supposed to be a fight scene
• Belle is said to be acting weird without any sign of her acting weird
• The secret passage in the Mermaid Inn is accessed by turning a coat hook the right way up. Surely that’s far too obvious and would lead to accidental access?
• In the heat of the adventure Anne meekly goes back to the inn to call the police. There’s no suggestion of finding a phone at Smuggler’s Top, using a mobile or trying a neighbour, but I suppose they wanted her out of the way so that George and the kids could be the heroes again?
• Clay takes Gilbert as a prisoner, as in puts him in a crate and loads him onto the train to take to the port. Why? Sure, lock him up to keep him from being a nuisance (obviously they can’t kill him, it’s a children’s book) but it makes no sense to try to smuggle him out with all the valuable goods.
• The number of times the crown with the big diamond is mentioned. The crown which is always just loose. Not in a box or anything to protect it, just sitting on a pedestal underground and then being carried about in the open.

The illustrations (aside from using a style I’m not keen on) also have a couple of issues. One shows the stolen loot as if it was gold coins and gems spilling all over the floor. While I wouldn’t put this past the folk who keep a crown loose, it doesn’t match the description in the text.

Towards the end there’s an illustration of them having a picnic and Dick has his walking stick next to him, only it’s so short it would never reach the ground if it was in his hand.

Do I have anything good to say about this?

I think Brodie would have enjoyed it, as he has all the discerned taste of an 8 year old and is the target audience.

There’s a nice call back where Alf is looking after George’s dog like he used to look after Timmy.

It was good to reunite three of the five, characterisations aside, and to see Marybelle again. It was almost good to see Smuggler’s Top though the security systems and the modern lift spoiled it, as did much of the plot.