Two things for the price of one here, a sequel to the same author`s excellent Season of the Skylark, and a few fascinating insights into the lifestyle of 1950`s Britain.

Sally and her young brother Ronny live in a `rooming-house`, their father having died an undisclosed bankrupt. Things are hard as, purely from a sense of decency, Sally uses every spare coin to re-imburse her father`s creditors.

During the school holidays, Ronny tries to help by visiting the site of a factory bombed during the war. Local people use the site as a rubbish-tip and he is often able to salvage scrap metal to sell on - a friendly scrap-metal merchant has shown him how to use a magnet to establish which items are made of iron.

On one particularly eventful trip, he finds something that will change the lives of the rooming-house occupants for ever. Disturbed by a man who seems to be a vagrant, he takes to his heels. A passing policeman intervenes and finds, unnoticed by the fleeing Ronny, a partially decomposed corpse.

The action switches to a seaside setting as Sally and her fellow tenants set about a new life, little knowing they are being sought by a mysterious villain known as The Patron. They are also, naturally, being closely shadowed by Sexton Blake.

Soon we find that three of Sally`s associates are none other than the Magnus family, a trio of geriatric villains first encountered in The Season of the Skylark.

There is a good passage where Mr Magnus (aka Murdoch) reflects on the murderous leanings of one of his daughters -

"Mr Murdoch looked with sorrow at his daughter. He had not visualised this when she was taking her bible-class prize in her pig-tails and gym-slip. Although, now he came to think of it, it was rather odd how the school had got burnt down on the very day she was sent home for cutting up a grass snake."

The portrayal of an English seaside holiday resort is, presumably, a conscious echo of The Season of the Skylark and none the worse for that.

Unlike `Skylark`, which seemed (to me at least) to be a novel that had been turned into a Blake story (JTS often did this when strapped for ready cash), this appears to have been intended as a Blake from the outset.

If I had to compare the two, I`d opt for `Skylark` every time, but this is a worthy successor none the less..

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