Did Missee Lee, the classically educated pirate, who rescued the Swallows and Amazons after they were shipwrecked off the coast of China, sail the seven seas in a boat like this one (above) which ferries present-day tourists across Hong Kong harbour?

I hope so – it would have been a slight consolation for the Walkers and the Blacketts, who are horrified to discover Missee Lee wants to keep them prisoners.

And, to the dismay of Cap’n Nancy, teach them Latin.

Twenty-two gong Taicoon

But it’s better than the alternative – although Nancy, at least, might have enjoyed walking the plank…

That’s if Missee Lee, a 22-gong Taicoon and leader of the Three Island pirates, didn’t chop off their heads first.

It would be nice to say I fell in love with Missee Lee, tenth in Arthur Ransome’s Swallows and Amazons series, when I was knee high to a grasshopper – Nancy Blackett would have been my heroine.

A marathon reading of Arthur Ransome’s much loved children’s adventure story Swallows and Amazons takes place on the lake shore north of Coniston Boating Centre, starting at 9am on Sunday 3 September, 2017. The novel’s 31 chapters will take around nine hours to read, and will involve at least 35 readers.

For more information click here or follow @ifnotduffers on Twitter

But, I was a little bit older and, like so many of my favourite good reads, stumbled on the book by accident after it featured in a BBC Radio Four story time slot.

I was hooked – bought the paperback and devoured it before the final episode of the radio serial aired.

And then read the rest of Ransome’s adventures.

Of course, all the stories have to be taken with a huge pinch of salt – Missee Lee, for example, was written in the 30s when attitudes were very different and it was perfectly acceptable to present stereotypical pictures of foreigners.

‘Velly irritating’

Which, in this case, means cod-Chinese accents and an inability to pronounce the letter ‘R’.

Velly, velly irritating.

And you’d have thought Ransome would have known better too.

After all, he travelled widely in Russia as well as China and married Trotsky’s secretary.

However, there’s no point judging a book by the politically incorrect social mores and prejudices of the times in which they were written.

San Francisco

Otherwise, you’d never read anything written before the millennium.

And, there’s such a lot to like about Missee Lee from the comedy of Roger enjoying his status as Missee Lee’s star pupil to Uncle Jim posing as the American mayor of San Francisco.

There’ll be a long wait for his ransom to be paid, Miss Lee shrewdly observes.

Of course, it all needs to be taken with a huge pinch of salt – but isn’t that true of almost every story that appeals to adults almost as much as it does to youngsters?

A good one to read aloud to your own Swallows and Amazons on the 50^th anniversary of Ransome’s death.

Review by Sue Featherstone.

Available to buy on Amazon.

There’s no such thing as a right time to have a baby.

But six months into a new relationship is definitely not good timing.

Especially as Kat and boyfriend Max are still finding their feet as a couple.

And his snarky mother is doing everything she can to ensure Max dumps Kat and gets back with his ex-girlfriend. Continue reading →

Single dad Eddie is quick-witted, warm-hearted and devoted to his daughter Daisy.

He’s almost perfect – even his ex-partner Jean, Daisy’s mother, is still more than a little bit in love with him.

In fact, they’d probably still be together if she hadn’t jumped into bed with his best friend Jason.

But it wasn’t her fault – Jason looked at her with lust in his eyes while Eddie, working flat out to build his tattoo business, would collapse asleep with exhaustion. Continue reading →

One of my stand-out cinematic memories is the death of Bambi’s mother in Disney’s wonderful 1942 animation.

The hunter raises his rifle and every child in the movie theatre, and quite a few adults, me included, wails in anguish.

It’s one of cinema’s most heart-breaking OMG! moments.

There are two such blood-thumping, sharp-intake-of-breath, stop-the-clock plot twists in Beneath the Skin, RL Martinez’s stunning sequel to In the Blood, the equally memorable opener to her Witchbreed fantasy series. Continue reading →

As you’d expect from someone who cut her writing teeth at Jackie magazine, author Karen King writes with confidence and style.

Hand on heart, romantic fiction isn’t my preferred genre – I’m more of a whodunit fan – but if anyone could convert me, King could.

Her new release from Accent Press, The Cornish Hotel by the Sea is a perfect demonstration of her story-telling expertise: a nicely believable plot that builds at a satisfying pace without getting bogged down in long descriptive passages, which could have been a temptation given the glorious setting.  Continue reading →

It’s not often I get to the end of a book and find myself lost for words – although perhaps that’s an appropriate response to a book titled The Silence.

I turned the last page and thought: ‘Oh!’

(Strictly speaking, I didn’t turn the page, I swiped my kindle. But you get the point.)

And, it wasn’t: ‘Oh, that was unexpected.’ Or even: ‘Oh, I enjoyed that.’

Although both of those are true.  Continue reading →

Quite by coincidence I’m writing this review of Nordic noir thriller Wolves in the Dark by Norway’s legendary Gunnar Staalesen shortly after a particularly intense trek with my Friday Nordic walking group.

Appropriate really because this latest instalment of Staalesen’s long-running Bergen-based Varg Veum series is equally intense, with a brutal plot and at least one genuine sharp intake of breath moment.

As the novel opens, Veum, who debuted in 1977 in the bizarrely titled The Buck to the Sack of Oats, is still reeling from the death of his great love Karin. Continue reading →

Goodness me! There are enough red herrings in One to Watch, the new thriller from Rachel Amphlett, to feed a smorgasbord of crime fiction readers.

First, the guilty person just HAD to be X.

Then it was definitely Y and I never saw Z coming until the last couple of pages.

Although, perhaps that’s because making Z a murderer breaks one of the cardinal rules of classic crime fiction.

Unfortunately, I can’t tell you which one because then you’d know whodunnit. Continue reading →

My dad was ten-and-a-half when the Second World War broke out.

And he was 12-or-thereabouts when his father took him out in the fields near their Warwickshire home and taught him how to load and fire the old rifle hidden behind a coat in the hallway.

The lesson was just in case Grandad wasn’t home when the Germans invaded and Dad needed to defend his mother and sisters and younger brother against the enemy.  Continue reading →

Maggie Thatcher was newly installed as the UK’s first female Prime Minister the last time I read Walter Greenwood’s Love on the Dole.

She took office in May 1979 in the middle of a recession and in the wake of Labour’s Winter of Discontent.

And, as she entered the door of No 10 Downing Street for the first time as premier, she spoke some lines from a prayer by St Francis of Assisi.

‘Where there is discord, may we bring harmony. Where there is error, may we bring truth…where there is despair, may we bring hope.’ Continue reading →