The Honours - Tim Clare

As adventure stories go, Tim Clare has a few surprises in store in The Honours, surprises that are too good to give away in a review.  Suffice to say, the story starts out as one kind of book set in the 1930s, with a young girl gathering suspicions that there is a Bolshevik invasion of England being plotted by a group of suspiciously behaving individuals in an English country house, and then it suddenly blind-sides you into being something entirely different, opening the book up to another dimension entirely, so to speak.

There is of course also the possibility that 13 year old Delphine Venner is imagining things and even showing signs of early madness. After all her father, an artist, has been exhibiting strange manic behaviour and has had to check himself into a health clinic in the country estate of Alderberen Hall, taking his wife and daughter with him.  There's no question that Delphine is an unusual girl. Expelled from boarding school for tying Eleanor Wethercroft up in the boiler room, she's strong willed and what you might called spirited and resourceful; a busybody even, into everything. Getting into mischief, it's no time before she is sneaking around in secret passages she has discovered in the hall, where she eavesdrops on some troubling conversations.

It's December 1934, and it appears that Delphine has indeed stumbled upon a conspiracy of some sorts being discussed between Ivan Propp, the organiser of alternative therapies at the hall and the owner of the Estate Lord Alderberen with the possible involvement of a few of the other residents belonging to the suspiciously named Society for the Perpetual Improvement of Man. What they are up to is not so clear.  The idea of a Bolshevik invasion of England seems far-fetched and could be nothing more than the fevered imaginings of a child with a vivid imagination who has heard too many war stories from her father. It turns out however that the truth is even stranger than you can imagine...

The Honours then takes a surprising turn for the bizarre in a kind of From Dusk 'Til Dawn way, but it's not exactly Tarantino-esque.  Clare's writing here has a wonderful blend of classic boy's own adventure - albeit from the perspective of a 13 year old girl - with a period 1930s lilt and even a touch of classic Jules Verne or H.G. Wells. There's nothing however the faintest bit pastiche about The Honours, which is also far from a typical YA adventure when it takes a turn towards dark horror in an unexpected way about which it's better to say nothing other than it open up a whole new adventure to delve into in the even more thrilling sequel The Ice House.