| March 1, 2017 – Avan N. Cooverji says: I feel the best book in the series is The Mystery of the Invisible Thief. It requires a lot of deduction and is almost a very grown- up sort of mystery that requires good brains like Fatty has solve it. Also the character of the cocky thief Twit is very well portrayed as is Goon who always blunders and in fact becomes friend with the wrong doer. The weakest of the series seems to be the last one, namely, The Mystery of Banshee Towers, here the story does not have the same grip and seems to ramble on for the sake of constructing a mystery. Adere is not much fun in it either. It does seem a far cry from the other Five Find Outers books and am a little puzzled as to how it turned out be so after reading so many really good ones in the series. |
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Daisy says: The reason why the last book of the series isn't quite as good as the others, I think, is because it was published in 1961 and Enid's health was starting to fail. Also there was a four year gap between The Mystery of the Strange Messages and Banshee Towers. |
| January 2, 2019 – Mr. Perton says: Must agree about The Mystery of Banshee Towers. It was just too literal for my liking. My favourite of the series is The Mystery of Tally-Ho Cottage (I'd love to know somewhere with a title like that). Fatty has a ball in this one playing dress up (in one memorable incident as an Indian man from Bong Castle, a name which always makes me laugh), and again Blyton demonstrates her wonderful sense of time, place, and atmosphere. Both The Mystery of The Strange Messages and The Mystery of The Missing Necklace are solid entertainment too. |
| March 7, 2020 – Sunil says: All books, except The Mystery of Banshee Towers, are good. I rank them as follows: 1. Mystery of Tally Ho Cottage 2. Mystery of the Strange Messages 3. Mystery of the Invisible Thief 4. Mystery of Holly Lane 5. Mystery of the Missing Necklace 6. Mystery of the Pantomime Cat 7. Mystery of the Hidden House 8. Mystery of the Burnt Cottage 9. Mystery of the Missing Man 10. Mystery of the Disappearing Cat 11. Mystery of the Spiteful Letters 12. Mystery of the Strange Bundle 13. Mystery of the Vanished Prince 14. Mystery of the Secret Room 15. Mystery of the Banshee Towers. |
| November 20, 2023 – Ivanhoe says: Strange Messages is easily my favourite. An excellent mystery, with the characters perfectly interacting with each other, and all sounding more mature as individuals than usual. It's as if they are growing up away from their childhood. Even Bets has outgrown her glues. Invisible Thief is a great idea but for me, the culprit was given away almost from the start. Just the details as to how it was done remained. And actually I don't think that was totally convincing. Missing Necklace and Pantomime Cat are good reads, ( spoiler alert!) though the latter was a waste of time trying to work out who did it! Apart from the occasional annoyance that sometimes the characters were missing the obvious, the series is truly excellent and a pleasure to read at any age, young and old. |
Enid Blyton
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Keith Robinson