Best Puffin cover art ever, I love the way the artist has the random puffin sitting on a rock on the back cover. But I should really hate to meet the children's mother who combines a breathtaking insouciance towards her children ("certainly you may go and play on the wrecked freighter while the tide is coming in") with an equally astonishing snobbishness (one hears in early-to-mid-20th century British crime novels about the attitude of the upper class towards the police, but this woman is quite crushing in her ability to put investigators in their place). Then there is the cartoon cut-out American who is a millionaire with a yacht (of course of course) and keeps gushing about how "cute" the kids are -- including the teenage boy for goodness' sake -- and using other inappropriate Americanisms at the rate of about one per sentence. I had him figured for one of the smuggling gang (he was such an obvious fake as an American) but no such luck. ( )