FATHOM FIVE

by Robert Westall ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 20, 1980

A crackling spy chase, set in Garmouth, England, a few years after The Machine Gunners and featuring Chas McGill, who is now in sixth form and channeled for University. With a German U-boat sinking crucial cargo ships entering Garmouth harbor, Chas and his friend Cem find a radio device and messages washed up on the beach, indicating that someone is informing the Germans of the ships' expected arrivals. Adults dismiss their schoolboy suspicions, but Chas and Cem persist, aided by tough girl-reporter Audrey and by Sheila, a posh bigwig's daughter who is sweet on Chas though her parents find him beneath regard. Cem, irresistibly funny at first, shows a callous delight in tragedy and gore that bothers Chas as the teenagers get deeper into the search. They brave their way into seamy Low Street, tormenting innocent foreigners who live there but finding an ally in Nelly, a madam and Low Street boss of sorts, who is eventually killed getting information for Charles. He has other unsettling encounters, with a grieving widow and all sorts of adults he's never before imagined. He does eventually find the spy and stop the U-boat; but by then his father has turned him onto the Left Book Club and Chas has come to see his enemies as Sheila's powerful father and the other bosses. Westall bases Garmouth on his own home town, and his evident close knowledge of its characters and classes makes his cast and setting especially rounded, lifelike, and lively. The plot is brisk and suspenseful, believable but never predictable; and the class distinctions, a fact of life in so many British novels, become more than background here.

Pub Date: Oct. 20, 1980

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Greenwillow

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1980

Categories: FICTION