The Secret Five and the Stunt Nun Legacy

John Lawrence

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Lovereading Price £6.99

RRP: £6.99

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Why I wrote this book

It began life as a light-hearted short story, a respectful parody of my childhood author-heroine, Enid Blyton. I was in the middle of a creative writing degree course and having to write deep and meaningful dissertations on most unfunny subjects such as defamiliarisation (huh? exactly...) and I suppose the story was a release for my natural humour. I put it aside to finish the degree, start writing groups, write poetry, pantos and prose, but now and again the story would find its way to the top of the work-in-progress file. Enough was enough, I had to get these characters out of my hair – the story became 90,000 words, and a thoroughly enjoyable labour of love. Encouraged by the result, and by the members of my writing groups, I rewrote it, re-rewrote it, had reassurance that yes, it was funny, and sought out a publisher.

Why is the book different? Where do I start? While maintaining the Blytonesque anchoring points, the narrative meanders playfully in and out of other styles; it mischievously uses and ignores writing rules. The supposedly one-dimensional ‘child’ characters show signs of a second or even third dimension, damn them, and are subject to curmudgeonly authorial commentary and a textual self-awareness. But then there’s the dog, Whatshisname – he, in particular,  deserves a trilogy of his own; he above all, never lost his sense of purpose; he was the one to lead the narrative in and out of philosophical territory. And he, unlike the four ‘children’ didn’t hide away from the author to complain about their treatment as characters. Ungrateful wretches.

Why should a reader buy it? Reviewers have (thankfully) described it as funny. Even hilarious, bless ’em. Mind you, they all had a sense of humour, so if the potential reader is a stickler for writing most correctly, is one who avoids parodic literature, and has a sense of humour that’s on the blink, tell them not to bother. No, really, it’ll pass them by and be an awful waste of money. Otherwise, if you’re up for the time-travelling romp, it’s a feel-good book like no other, will make you laugh and, maybe, resonate with memories of childhood reading.    

Which three authors’ work would you compare your writing to?
None, this is a John Lawrence... but if pushed, it has elements of Jasper Fforde, Douglas Adams, Spike Milligan.

Synopsis

The Secret Five and the Stunt Nun Legacy is a quirky parody of children’s adventure stories in which our young-adult heroes – Betty (bossy), Daniel (unstable), Ricky (hungry), Amy (naïve) and their dog Whatshisname (fat) – think that they live life on the edge, dominated by secret passwords and meetings at the most inappropriate times. They have a tetchy relationship with Whatshisname, who might just be cleverer than they think; they also have a tetchy relationship with the author, who definitely isn’t. The characters sometimes become uncontrollable – Ricky walks out of the book at one stage and, at another critical point, Daniel demands that his character wear spectacles. A feeble attempt by the author to kill off his characters fails miserably. But at least we discover, at long last, how dinosaurs became extinct.

Eventually, the Five allow the creaky plot to gather pace and they end up time-travelled to 1964 Salzburg, where the hills are alive, trying to stop a stunt nun from conceiving. Three of them are accidentally zapped back to 1880, where they meet and give inspiration to a young and impressionable Herbert George Wells, whereas the remaining two land in 1980, where they meet George and Andrew and thankfully suggest a much better name for their boy band Bash!

There follows kidnapping, Sweeney-type characters, Pinteresque plays, and buckets full of ineptitude on the part of the Five – apart from Whatshisname, who regularly philosophises about life, death, the existence of Dog, and peanut butter.

This is a book for adults, in which many writing rules are left in tatters and the style of certain classic children’s fiction abounds. The author plays with the traditionally simple sentence structure, the abundance of dreaded adverbs and qualifiers, plot holes the size of Saturn. It is crammed with humour, occasionally a little cheeky, never offensive, but always unashamedly silly.

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