Collection Book of the Week – The Mystery of Banshee Towers

Last week I had to apologise for the lateness of my collection book of the week post and yet here we are a week later and I find myself in the exact same position. Rather than apologise, I think I am just going to move the expected publication day of this post to be a vague sometime during the weekend, rather than on a Thursday. History has indicated that I will never achieve that. I have no qualms shifting goalposts as you will no doubt be aware. I hope that those of you that wait on tenterhooks every for each new post in this series will be able to accommodate these changes into your schedules.

The book for this week is another Enid Blyton book, but this time part of the so called ‘Mystery series’, thus called because the title of each book in the series  begins ‘The Mystery of…’ This series follows the adventures of the ‘Five Find Outers and Dog’. This is yet another example of Enid Blyton’s formulaic approach to her children’s adventure stories. I have often considered how these stories generally consist of the same elements – some children and a clever pet, some stupid villains that are always outfoxed by the children, a stupid policeman that never believes them, a clever, high up policeman who thinks they are just dandy, and a healthy smattering of prejudice and bigotry that would nowadays be considered very politically incorrect.

I acquired this book at the Birmingham book fair, held at the British Motorcycle Museum in 2012. It is a first edition published by Methuen in 1961. The dust cover is in fairly good condition, as is the book itself.

I know that I have mentioned it before, but I really enjoy the feel of these books and the dust cover designs are always interesting and descriptive of the contents of the book. In fact, I know of many collectors that purely collect Enid Blyton first editions for the dust cover designs.

I hope you enjoyed this week’s book, although I expect by now many of you are becoming understandably bored of hearing about my book collection, and that I am just speaking to myself. Still, I enjoy the sound of my own voice such a lot that I will continue with this series for the foreseeable future. Don’t forget, the next post in this compelling series will be available for your reading pleasure next weekend.