The Thuggery Affair

This is the only book by Antonia Forest that I haven't cared for. The Marlow books were written so far apart, and each one supposedly takes place in the forties or fifties, but each one tends to take on some of the flavor of the years in which it was actually written. I love this about the other books, but in this one, that strange time-displacement doesn't work. This one is obviously set in the sixties and involves some shady activity by some wayward youths, whom the Marlows hope to catch in action. The slang is ridiculously overdone and the language makes it hard to relax and get into the story. Added to that, I didn't care for the auxiliary characters and couldn't sympathise with them. This is worth reading if you are a really big Marlows fan (I have read Falconer's Lure about forty times and this one twice, to give you an idea of its relative merits), but if you haven't read the others leading up to this point, put off purchasing this one until you are at this point in the series or are out of other Marlow reading material, because it doesn't add very much to our understanding of the Marlows and wasn't a great story on its own. That said, a weak Antonia Forest is still better reading material than a lot of other things you could pick up, and it is interesting to see her struggling with writing in a modern way when times were changing so quickly, so it is a good late addition to your collection. Girls Gone by has done a great job with these reprints, and they feel sturdy, have good print, and have some neat background info in the front of each republished title. The AF books have an intro by AF written just for these reprints, written before she passed away in 2003.