The Mystery Series

The Vanished Prince

Characters

Mr. Goon Fatty (Fredrick Algernoon Troterville) Pip (Philip Hilton) Daisy (Mageret Daykin) Larry (Laurence Daykin) Buster (dog) Inspector Jenks

About the author

Enid Mary Blyton (11 August 1897 , 28 November 1968) was an English children's writer also known as Mary Pollock. She was one of the most successful children's storytellers of the twentieth century. Noted for numerous series of books based on recurring characters and designed for different age groups, her books have enjoyed popular success in many parts of the world, and have sold over 600 million copies. Blyton is the fifth most translated author worldwide; over 3,544 translations of her books were available in 2007 according to UNESCO's Index Translation. One of Blyton's most widely known characters is Noddy, intended for early years readers, however, her main work is the genre of young readers' novels in which children have their own adventures with minimum adult help. Series of this type include the Famous Five (consisting of 21 novels, 1942-1963), based on four children and their dog), the Five Find-Outers and dog,(15 NOVELS; 1943-1961, where five children regularly outwit the local police) as well as the Secret Seven (15 novels, 1949-1963, a society of seven children who solve various mysteries).

Summary

The Mystery Of The Vanished Prince starts out with a lot of fun and games. Everyone is tanned including Pip and Bets, After hearing about the Prince Bongawah, who is staying at a camp on the hills between Peterswood and Marlow, Fatty decides it would be fun for his friends to put their tans to good use by dressing up in colourful clothes and pretending to be relatives of the Prince. Ern Goon, chooses that moment to turn up with his two younger brothers, Sid and Perce, and Fatty immediately introduces his "distinguished visitors" as Princess Bongawee (Bets), Pua-Tua (Daisy), Kim-Pippy-Tok (Pip) and Kim-Larriana-Tik (Larry).

Here follows a lot of parading around the village with Ern holding up the State Umbrella (a golfing umbrella) for who he believes is the younger sister of Prince Bongawah.The visitors talk lot of nonsense, made-up gibberish with a little broken English thrown in. Then Mr Goon comes across the parade and, like his nephew, is completely taken into the point that when Prince Bongawah unfortunately goes missing from the camp two days later, Goon telephones the Chief Inspector Jenks and assures him that he'll track down Princess Bongawee and speak with her.

But despite how unlikely all this is, it does set things up nicely. Goon's report to his superior of four additional royal visitors, which he subsequently discovers to be makebelieve, gets him so hot and bothered that he completely fails to listen to Fatty when offered genuine information about the Prince's disappearance. Not until the end does he realize that Fatty might be telling the truth about a few things. Then they find out one of the fair folks are included in the princes disappearance. With the help of Rollo a gypsy boy they find out how the prince appears to have been kid-napped at the school campus but in fact he was kidnapped earlier, on the way to the camp. The prince's driver was in with the kidnapping. The car was stopped, and the prince taken off, while a gypsy boy is substituted for the real prince! This gypsy boy is apparently very good at acting but not very good at keeping secrets. He tells Fatty everything even down to where the real prince has been taken to.

Thinks I like

The book was mysterious, It has many ups and downs. Every one in this book is united except Goon. We learn to be brave and courageous like Fatty. I learnt a trick that is to come out of a locked box room. Suspense is kept till the last movement.