Bunkle's Brainwave

Bunkle #10

by M. Pardoe

A chance encounter with a Scottish cousin leads to surprising developments, and once more Bunkle and his mother and father get involoved in an amusing and exciting adventure in which he and three young Scottish cousins play a major part.

275 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1952

About the author

Margot Pardoe was a children's author. She wrote as M. Pardoe, and is best known for her Bunkle adventure series.

Reviews

[Tig · Rating 3 out of 5]

In this late Bunkle book, Bunkle and his parents bust a poaching ring in the Scottish Highlands. Bunkle books are always enjoyable and for me also particularly fascinating for the accurate picture they give of life during and post the Second World War. This book begins with the De Salis' old car giving out at the same time as their name gets to the top of (we deduce) a long waiting list for a new car. They can't afford it but they have to have a car for their market gardening business so they contemplate 'selling the Raeburn' and buying the car. Yes, these people are seriously upper middle class, in the big house/no money sort of way. There's a delightful description of them driving up to Scotland to stay with Mrs De Salis' cousin who is a Scottish lawndowner. The house is shabby, all they eat is fish and game they've fished or shot themselves, but their attitudes are highly patrician. They're outraged when they receive a note threatening to kill 'The Monarch' a magnificent twelve point stag, they all adore, not because they want to save its life but because they're saving it up for Malcolm, the eldest son, to shoot on his twenty-first birthday. Pardoe's flaw are the passages where children try to work out what is happening with lots of speculation and possible scenarios being rehearsed endlessly and these are evening more laborious than usual. There's also a lot about Bunkle's 'hunches' - he has a conviction a hearse he saw miles away down in England must have something to do with it because he's got a feeling about it and sure enough the very convoluted and implausible poaching plot does involve some unusual vehicles. I don't read Bunkle for the plots, but for the vigorous depiction of a disappeared age, for the interesting dialogue and delightful characterisation, and these are all present here. Pardoe is also rather good on class - her characters are undeniably upper middle class but the books show a respect and interest in people of all classes - the scene where the De Salis family stop at a truck stop cafe is nicely free of snobbery. Unfortunately, the depiction of the poachers is not as well done. Their argument that no one can own an animal and why shouldn't it go to feed hungry mouths is at least given, but never explored, and the scales are tipped in favour of the landowner by descriptions of poachers tommy gunning animals randomly because God forbid if you want to kill an animal you shouldn't stalk it for miles in a properly sporting manner.
So yes, some flaws but even this late book in the series is, as ever, thoroughly entertaining and packed with interesting detail about a long-gone world.