The Mohole Mystery

(US - The Mohole Menace)
(FR - Pionniers des ténèbres, lit "Pioneers of Darkness")
(PT - A ameaça de Mohole)

Publishing details:

UK: Faber h/b, 1968, in print until c.1973.
US: Criterion Books h/b, 1969.
FR: Éditions de l'Amitié, 1973. ISBN 2-7002-0015-2.
PT: Edições Dêagã.

Synopsis:

A drilling project in Dudley, West Midlands, has found a huge underground cavern 20 miles beneath the surface of the Earth. Microbes have been found and it UNEXA have decided to send a man down in a capsule to search for other forms of life. Serge, as the smallest of the team, is sent down the borehole in a tiny rocket-propelled capsule, but it is damaged when it lands on the pile of debris left on the cavern floor by the drilling and he is stranded. What is worse, strange egg-like creatures that can roll uphill are attacking him!

Commentary:

A big change from the usual space based adventures here, but none of the excitement is lost as all the usual technical hardware - rockets, spacesuits and so on - are adapted for the journey into the cavern. This, incidentally, is the last Walters novel in which the alien life is malevolent.

Reviews:

From CHILDREN'S BOOK NEWS THE MOHOLE MYSTERY        HUGH WALTERS     Once again Hugh Walters has produced a well-written exciting account of the activities of Chris Godfrey and his friends Morrey, Serge and Tony. In this instance exploration does not take place on Mars, Mercury or other planets, but into the interior of the earth in the tradition of Verne. The setting for the descent into the Mohole is Dudley in Staffordshire toward the close of the present century. Readers who know Dudley will experience Trease's "shock of recognition". There is a thrilling build- up of tension from the opening stroll in Hyde Park on a hot summer's day to the terrifying encounter of Serge with the egg-shaprd creatures and the lethal bacteria in the much hotter underground cavern. As usual the author is technical but not unbearably so, and more than half of the book is devoted to preparations for the adventure. It is satisfying that, when the attention of so many young people is directed to man's conquest of space, Hugh Walters should point out that we know so little of our earth. Boys of ten and over will demand more when they have devoured this.

Our four heroes of so many space adven- tures turn their attentions to their own planet in The Mohole Mystery. They take on the job of exploring a cavern some 20 miles beneath the earth's surface. Condi- tions there are as inhospitable as ever and it requires all the selfless bravery to which we are accustomed to bring the incident to a satisfactory conclusion.

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