The 1940 Club is hosted by Karen of Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings and Simon of Stuck in a Book.
For my second 1940 Club book I decided to read The Big Six by Arthur Ransome. The setting is the Norfolk Broads, East Anglia. Some of the dialogue is written in a sort of cod Norfolk accent, which I found slightly annoying at times but got used to it. I lived in East Anglia for a few years.
In this one Pete, Joe, Tom and Bill are enjoying themselves messing around on the river in their boat The Death and Glory. They’re waiting for some other members of The Coot Club to join them, the club was set up to protect nesting birds as at this time bird egg collecting is a popular hobby and not against the law. The children try to educate an elderly man as to why there were no bitterns about now, he couldn’t see that it was because he and others had shot them all!
But someone is going around casting off boats up and down the river and causing mayhem. Fingers are being pointed at the children as the culprits and the whole village seems to have turned against them, even their fathers aren’t sure of their innocence!
As you can imagine this puts the boys in a horrible situation especially when the local policeman Mr Tedder is convinced they are guilty, despite having absolutely no evidence against them, and he doesn’t even bother to carry out an investigation himself.
Things go from bad to worse when shackles are stolen out of a boatyard and immediately Mr Tedder blames the boys and he’s determined to send out a summons to them all.
The other members of The Coot Club Dorothea and Dick arrive and Dorothea immediately gets down to looking for clues as to who the real culprits are. She’s methodical, writing everything down and forming her own Scotland Yard which is where the title of the book comes from, although originally it was the so-called Big Five detectives who formed the actual Scotland Yard.
Mid way through the book the boys have a trip down the river to do some fishing and this was a relief from the uncomfortable atmosphere of the village they had been berthed at. It was a relief to me too as it was quite grim when everyone had turned against the Coot Club, even the far-flung members of the club were against them, or their parents had banned them from the club. I have to say that it was rather obvious who the baddies were.
So this one isn’t a favourite of mine although there is a bit of humour right at the end, however it shows that Ransome was keen to promote the preservation of wild birds, something that wasn’t foremost in people’s minds at the time I’m sure.