I already have one of these ‘Famous Five Adventures’ – The Library Mystery, but I haven’t read it yet.

We were looking for some short reads at the library in the summer for Brodie’s summer reading challenge and I spotted The Painting Puzzle and thought why not?

There are so many reasons why I shouldn’t have.

The plot

I’m trying to remember that this book is for children younger than the original Famous Five books are aimed at. Really I am.

A new museum is opening in Kirrin and Aunt Fanny is helping with the grand opening. The Five go along and Julian is confused by a painting which he’s seen before. He thought the artists initials had been WW, not MW.

He immediately goes to defcon 5 and demands an explanation from the curator who brushes him off.

Dick pulls a random bit of paper out of a crate for no discernible reason and puts it in his pocket.

Timmy starts barking because he’s found a room full of cat statues and the Five get into trouble for being in there and are sent home.

Dick’s piece of paper turns out to be a secret message, which they take 20 minutes and 7 pages to decipher despite the fact it’s just written backwards.

They go back to the museum and Julian goes straight on the attack again, accusing the City Museum of forgery.

Which… technically is true, but for a good reason? The curator hung a fake copy because the real one was being restored and wrote the note about the fake to remind herself…

The illustrations

The book is fully illustrated in colour throughout. I will say that the style is not the worst that I have seen but they are very immature, all bright colours and weird angles.

The Five are clearly in the present day given their clothes. And George… well. George looks like a reject from an 80s hair metal band.

My thoughts

This makes The Mystery of Banshee Towers look like literary genius.

I know it only has seven chapters so there’s very little room for subtlety, but come on. Julian comes across as a total ass causing a scene over an M and a W which he could easily have been wrong about.

Why does Dick take a piece of paper that he has no idea about? He doesn’t read it and decide to keep it. He just takes a random bit of paper which could have been anything.

The secret message is ridiculous both as a mystery and a solution and is vastly over-explained as the Five finally solve it.

The curator’s “reasons” for the fake painting are beyond ridiculous. She just happened to have a fake copy? And she couldn’t just have said that the original was getting restored and they would put something else up in its place for the opening?

The padding is also terrible, like Timmy going wild over cat statues and Dick nearly falling over one. Then there’s Dick trying to get his old cup to be part of the museum displays. Even them losing the scrap of paper to the wind and Timmy chasing it only for Julian to grab it comes across as stupid. (The same thing happens in Five on a Treasure Island of course, with the copy of the treasure map, but that is dramatic and worth reading.)

What really doesn’t help is the infuriating way that RANDOM words are written in a BIGGER font all the way through the BOOK. I’ve read children’s books before which use larger text – sparingly – in place of italics or bold to highlight important words. But these are just all random and made reading it out loud an exercise it having to ignore them all and put the inflections where they actually made sense.