Opening Sentence: ‘…First and foremost, this is a book about death.…’

Looks like this quick and chuckle producing read has shaken me out of a reading “Blah.”

I read in the blurb that this story was a cross between Monty Python and Dickens – and being a lover of both I picked it up. Thankfully the blurb proved to be a very apt description indeed. The story starts just after book one in the series stopped, with the death of Fergal McNally when he falls out of a window. In their grief the family hasn’t noticed that Fergal’s brain is missing and the reader soon learns that the brain is making its way, in a pickle jar full of vinegar, to a spooky and dilapidated mansion in the middle of the nearby FishboneForest.

The remaining McNally children eventually discover what has happened and sneak into the forbidding forest to get their brother’s brain back. Unfortunately Mr Maggs, a crazy and dangerous teddy-bear clutching villain, doesn’t want to part with the brain, he has wicked plans for it.

I haven’t read the first book in the series, but it was not detrimental to my enjoyment of book two. HEIR OF MYSTERY was a fast read and jam-packed with laugh-out-loud silliness that was a perfect contrast to the scary stuff that was going on. Despite the size of the book the characters of the children come alive; as well as the delicious, yet wacky evilness of the baddie and his dumb sidekick.

As well as telling the story really well, Author Philip Ardagh conjured up vivid pictures in my mind, and the illustrations were great too. A perfectly twisted horror read for Halloween. ( )

In their second adventure, the four remaining McNally children are drawn to the mysterious Fishbone Forest in search of their dead brother's stolen brain, only to discover the terrifying Mr. Maggs and his sinister plan to change the world.