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Mysteries 1-3

Larry, Daisy, Pip, Bets, Fatty and Buster the dog are normal boys and girls until a flare starts up nearby at Mr Hick's workroom. This is when they turn into detectives for the police...

But one annoying policeman Mr Goon is looking for the culprit of the mystery too. Can 'The Five Find-Outers and Dog' solve the mystery before he can? They suspect many, but only at the end is the real prisoner...

Follow Larry, Daisy, Pip, Bets and Buster the doggy by reading this fabulous story including Enid Blyton's wits and hilarious jokes ;)

Great book, really good, some spelling mistakes but they're just typos, but, really, really fabulously great :) ( )

Frederick aka "Fatty" is a great character. The mysteries being written for children are a tad easy to figure out and the language is a bit too jolly for me. Nearly every other sentence uttered by one of the Five Find Outers contains an "I say--" which is as bad as the Hardy Boy's over use of "golly." Nonetheless, a very enjoyable read. ( )

It seems incredible to think that Enid Blyton, the world's sixth most popular author (right up there with Shakespeare), is virtually unknown in the United States, but so it is. Whether this strange reality is owing to the anti-American prejudice some have perceived in Blyton's work, or simply to the fact that the U.S. has a long-standing and very prolific tradition of children's series of its own, I couldn't say. But as someone with a great interest in children's literature, I have long thought that I should familiarize myself with her work.

The first entry in her Five Find-Outers and Dog series, also sometimes styled the Mystery series, which began publication in 1943, The Mystery of the Burnt Cottage introduces the reader to five young children who, together with Buster the dog, join together in a detective club. Larry and Daisy (Lawrence and Margaret Daykin), Pip and Bets (Philip and Elizabeth Hilton), and Fatty (Frederick Algernon Trotteville), join forces when horrible Mr. Hick's cottage is destroyed by fire, determined to find the culprit. As the children search for clues (or, as Bets would have it, "glues"), and interview suspects, they find themselves one step ahead of their nemesis Mr. Goon, the village bobby. Will the Find-Outers solve the mystery in time? Will the authorities pay any attention if they do?

I found this first foray into the Blyton universe moderately entertaining, and rated it at two and a half star. While I can certainly understand why children's literature scholars criticize her work - the language here was somewhat choppy, the characters rather shallow, and the narrative seemed cookie-cutter convenient - Blyton still delivers a fairly engaging story, that "reads" quickly. Some have argued that the very qualities which especially irk the critics - repetition and easy digestibility - are great aids in the acquisition of reading skills. I tend to agree. ( )