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Dinah Galloway is looking forward to travelling with her friends, Pantelli and Talbot, across the country to Toronto to appear on the television show Tomorrow’s Cool Talent. At twelve years old, Dinah is loud, tactless and very inquisitive, but she possesses a magnificent singing voice, one that will one day make her a star. With her older sister, Madge, and her agent, Mr. Wellman, coming along as chaperones, Dinah anticipates lots of fun, even if Pantelli is obsessed with trees, and Talbot with history, and even if her beautiful and accomplished sister has gone all gooey over her upcoming wedding to Jack.
However, just days before their departure, a strange little chain-smoking man shows up at the Galloway house. Ardle McBean has just finished a seven-year prison sentence, and has come to collect the king Dinah’s father has been keeping for him. The problem is, Dinah’s father has been dead almost seven years, killed in a car crash, and Dinah’s mother has no idea what Ardle is talking about. She calls the police, and Ardle takes off. But Dinah remembers another visit from Ardle, one made just weeks before her father’s death, and recalls talk about a king. She feels a grudging sympathy for the soft-talking ex-con, and starts to look for the king, which Ardle has assured her is worth $80,000. With Talbot’s and Pantelli’s help, Dinah locates her father’s belongings in the attic of the house, but cannot figure out what Ardle means by the king. Things get complicated when Ardle is hit by a car and winds up gravely injured in hospital, and someone tries to break into the Galloway house.
The trip by train from Vancouver to Toronto is filled with mystery and adventure. An alarming number of shady characters board the train as passengers, and it isn’t long before someone shoves Dinah into a laundry bag and demands that she turn over the king. As Talbot, Pantelli and Dinah learn more about the king, and begin to track down where it might be hidden, people begin to suffer strange accidents and to disappear. With her flare for the dramatic, Dinah manages to create a mess of operatic portions before the train pulls into Toronto’s Union Station.
Shadows on the Train is the fifth book in Melanie Jackson’s Dinah Galloway series, and is sure to be popular with readers who enjoy mysteries with a liberal dose of comedic relief! It’s hard not to like Dinah, who rushes into danger, yelling all the way, but whose heart is soft enough to exact revenge for her lovelorn sister and to help out a six year-old who has lapsed into silence. An entertaining read!
FernFolio Editor