Pip, Larry and Daisy

[S-Dog2001]

I feel like Larry, Daisy and Pip had potential for deeper character development, but that never happened unfortunately.
We very rarely see these attributes, but possibly Daisy's interaction with children could have been highlighted more (not that there's much suggestion she especially loved children).
Larry was very skeptical of dressing up as a window-cleaner before and after he did it, so maybe this cautions side could have appeared more often with Larry?
Potentially, you could make Pip a bit more scornful generally but I'm not sure I'd want Pip to turn into a nasty person so maybe that one needs more thought.

[Debbie]

I think they do at times mix into each other, but at the same time I still feel they were definitely distinct, unlike the Secret Seven.

Larry is possibly the responsible one. The one who wants to think things through first, and a little bit uncertain about Fatty's more flamboyant way of doing things. He'd probably eventually get to the right answer with careful thought and much more round the houses reasoning. He wouldn't let a lucky comment distract him and give him the right answer. He is a good leader-simply Fatty is better!
He's also a little bit on his dignity with Fatty as leader, so perhaps slightly more likely to pull him up when he's boasting. But he did give up the leadership gracefully. His relationship with Daisy is much more an even match. He listens to her, and she listens to him. You can imagine them on their own settling down to play a game together or go for a walk and just enjoying each other's company. I don't think we see any spats at all between them.

Daisy I would say is the sort of person who is comfortable with being one in a crowd. She doesn't want to stand out, or lead, simply just be accepted as one of the group. She is confident in herself, so doesn't feel the need to carve out a position-she knows she's one of them. She mothers Bets a little, and when she is handling parts of the investigation she is generally careful but pretty shrewd. She likes Fatty, but also sees his faults, but you don't see her pointing them out like Larry does.

Pip's age gap with Bets is emotionally increased because he goes to boarding school and she doesn't, so they don't have that same tie that the Daykin pair have. He's also older in comparison, so you would expect a different relationship. They bicker-mostly Pip teasing Bets, but that's quite realistic. Actually how many boys would have let their 8yo sister hang around with them in term time? Not many I'd bet when they had a good friend of the same age.
I think some of the bickering is due to jealousy. He knows that Bets has a special place with Fatty, but he doesn't ever try and break that. That shows that he does care about her. But he also is very aware of his strict parents. I think it's mentioned that he has had two or three canings when Mr Goon has complained, so I think there is an aspect that he's trying to protect Bets too. He does seem to accept Daisy as an equal, and actually I can't think of any place where Pip is trying to leave Bets out except to protect her. He may also know that he will get the blame if they're both in trouble, which again may effect how he sees her.
He's a little bit more impulsive than Larry, and likes having fun. But I don't see him as nasty.

[Deejay]

Yes the points above are very true. Pips is indeed a typical older brother, who naturally would tease his younger sister, and also would resent the friendship Bets has with Fatty and the fact he does play second fiddle to Fatty and Larry when it comes to the leaders of the group.

Wouldn't that make him third fiddle?

I agree it's one of the let-downs of the Find-Outers, that Pip, Larry and Daisy are largely overshadowed by the strong characters of Fatty and Bets. They do play roles in all the mysteries, but they don't have nearly such distinctive personalities as the two central characters. However, you could say exactly the same about Roger and Diana in the Barney mysteries. Snubby and Barney are also such strong and well-drawn and memorable characters and the other two are just completely ordinary and possibly even boring by comparison. (Roger is even more so than Diana, as at least she has the distinction of being the only girl in that group. But unfortunately Enid doesn't give her any interesting attributes beyond that.)

The Famous Five definitely all have their own personalities and I would say the same is almost as true of the four children in the Adventure series — "almost" because the two boys, Philip and Jack, aren't as well differentiated as Julian and Dick and are almost interchangeable, except that Philip has his various interesting "pets" and Jack has Kiki! And I would say the Secret Seven are proof positive that the more characters you have in a story, the harder it is to give them all memorable personalities and roles. Apart from Peter as the sometimes-too-bossy leader, Janet as his sister and Jack as the one with the annoying sister called Susie, what is there that stands out about the other four? They're pretty much just there to make up the numbers.

But, going back to the Find-Outers, Bets and Fatty are such enjoyable characters to read about that they do carry the stories pretty well, especially as Enid also knew how to write a good mystery and make it really readable and exciting at a child's level of understanding. Bets can be slightly annoyingly babyish at times, but I've always felt Enid put her in specifically for the benefit of younger readers, since Bets is someone they can relate to, and having her ask questions about difficult words and concepts gives Enid the opportunity to explain these things in a way young children can understand, as a natural part of the plot. I was only about 7 when I first started reading the Find-Outers books and I could really relate to Bets, especially being the "baby" of my own family. I already knew what clues and suspects were, but I've never forgotten it was thanks to Bets, in Burnt Cottage, that I first learned the definition of insurance! (A pretty sophisticated concept to put in a children's book, but Enid handles it perfectly.)

Yes I meant third fiddle!

Agree with your comments regarding FFO. Larry, Pip and Daisy could have been developed better as characters and played more of a part. In FF, all of the characters have distinctive personalities and each have their own role within the group and in solving mysteries.

Secret Seven definitely has too many characters. I couldn’t even name you all of the children in the group and indeed Peter, Janet , Jack and Susie are all I can remember and Scamper.

[Daisy]

Secret Seven definitely has too many characters. I couldn’t even name you all of the children in the group and indeed Peter, Janet , Jack and Susie are all I can remember and Scamper.

Janet's two friends are Pamela and Barbara and the other boys are Colin and George.

[S-Dog2001]

She likes Fatty, but also sees his faults, but you don't see her pointing them out like Larry does.

Interestingly, I've noticed that her attitude to Fatty's boasting seems to soften as the series goes on.
In the first few books, she tells Fatty to shut up as much as Pip and Larry do, (at the very beginning of the first book, she describes Fatty as a 'conceited creature', and says 'why should he think we want to know him?')
However, as we get nearer the middle of the series, Daisy doesn't particularly criticise Fatty's boasting, and it is only Larry and Pip who tell Fatty to shut up. Even they don't do that nearly as much as at first - probably because they know him much better, and Fatty also becomes less conceited.

[Irene Malory Towers]

In the mystery of the Spiteful Letters when Fatty pretends to be away in China solving a mystery Daisy says that without Fatty they are like rabbit pie without the rabbit. So by the fourth mystery she has recognised Fatty's position in the group is fundamental.

[Deejay]

Secret Seven definitely has too many characters. I couldn’t even name you all of the children in the group and indeed Peter, Janet , Jack and Susie are all I can remember and Scamper.

Janet's two friends are Pamela and Barbara and the other boys are Colin and George.

Ahh yes, of course. Thanks Daisy!

[StephenC]

An interesting comment about the Secret Seven having too many characters. Pam and Barbara always seemed to me, to be one person in stereo, and were pretty much indistinguishable from each other. The series would have worked better if EB had got rid of both of them, and replaced them with Susie, who would have breathed new life into the series, which really fell away from Three Cheers onwards. Colin and George often seemed fairly one dimensional as well. And as Fatty took over from Larry, I would have had Jack replace Peter as head of the Secret Six.

[Deejay]

Yes, an excellent suggestion about Susie. As annoying as she could be, she was a great character and would have made things a lot more interesting than some of the other characters.

[Courtenay]

I have heard the idea put forward that Enid included some of these nondescript "everyman" (or rather, everyboy/girl) characters in many of her stories so that all her young readers could imagine themselves as part of the story. I'm not too sure about that theory, though. I think it does work for the Wishing-Chair and Faraway Tree stories, where Peter and Molly, or Jo, Bessie and Fanny (sorry, I don't do the updated versions ), are all pretty much generic boys and girls and don't show a huge amount of individual character. But they themselves aren't the point of the stories they're in; they're just participants in magical adventures where the really memorable parts are the strange lands they visit and the exciting, quirky, non-human characters they meet, like Silky and Moon-Face and the Saucepan Man.

However, in Enid's more "realistic" stories — well, not as in gritty realism, but the ones set in the "real life" world and with no magic involved — I've always found that the characters I relate to, and that I would most like to be, are the ones who DO have strong individual personalities, not the ones that are just there to pad the story out. In reading the Galliano's Circus books, I wished I could be Lotta; in the Famous Five, I admired George but felt deep down I was more like Anne (not that I liked doing the housework, but I'd have been too scared to go on some of those more dangerous adventures!); and in the Five Find-Outers, I related really strongly to Bets, as she was the youngest character and I was the youngest in my own family. So I'm not convinced that the less individual members of the Secret Seven really do work as "characters you yourself could be". How many children really want to be a nobody, after all?

[pete9012S]

..Susie. As annoying as she could be, she was a great character ...

Quite right Deej - I've always admired Susie - I think she's absolutely great!!


When I think of the main characters in the Find Outers series the ones that come instantly to mind are Fatty, Goon, Buster, Bets, Ern, Inspector (sic) Jenks.
Baddies that come readily to mind are Twit, Fangio, Holland.

Everyone else is perhaps part of a cast of supporting players. Cleverly intertwined and interleaved into the plots and stories by Enid to make each mystery ebb and flow with grace, precision and dramatic interest?

[dsr]

An interesting comment about the Secret Seven having too many characters. Pam and Barbara always seemed to me, to be one person in stereo, and were pretty much indistinguishable from each other. The series would have worked better if EB had got rid of both of them, and replaced them with Susie, who would have breathed new life into the series, which really fell away from Three Cheers onwards. Colin and George often seemed fairly one dimensional as well. And as Fatty took over from Larry, I would have had Jack replace Peter as head of the Secret Six.

All valid points. I would be tempted to lose or merge Colin and George as well, though I can see something not quite right in the name "Secret Five"

It is possible, in theory, to have a large cast of entirely distinguishable characters - Antonia Forest did it with her Marlows series. But of course they are entirely different books - the Secret Seven series was shorter and wouldn't fit that template at all. What Enid could have done would be to highlight a different subset of the SS - maybe in one book the boys could all follow a red herring and the girls get most of the action, or Peter could be away and/or ill in bed so Janet or Jack took over as leader. Yes, maybe Susie could have been involved once or twice as well! Colin had one moment of glory with the general's medals, I think, but apart from that it was all Peter, Janet, a bit of Jack, and 4 others,

[S-Dog2001]

I do think Ern is a great character, but I feel like he overshadows Larry, Pip and Daisy, possibly slightly unfairly as although his detective skills aren't bad, I think the other three Find-Outers out-class him in terms of ability to solve mysteries.

[Lucky Star]

I think Ern is there as a foil to the others. While a nice guy he's clearly drastically different in class, brains and manners to the other five. He also provides much scope for comedy and is a handy link between Fatty and Mr Goon. He overshadows Daisy, Larry and Pip in the books he appears in because Enid uses him as part of the plot thus he becomes more important than his status would otherwise warrant. Ern is possibly the best supporting character Enid ever wrote into any series.

[Debbie]

It is possible, in theory, to have a large cast of entirely distinguishable characters - Antonia Forest did it with her Marlows series.

The advantage AF had though is the Marlows are different ages and stages. You're never going to confuse Head Girl Karen with flighty middle girl Ginty or the little girl twins. Karen and Rowan are less distinct than the others in a lot of ways, and they are close in age and at a similar stage of life (leaving school, although they do that very differently)! In some ways Ginty and Lawrie are alike (both self centred, expect to get what they want, and not really bothered how) and Rowan and Nicola are alike. But you're not going to confuse them because the age difference means that despite the likeness they're doing different things according to age,
EB had the issue with the SS that they're all pretty much the same age. I assume Janet is the year younger than Peter, but the girls are all her form at school, and the boys are Peter's form.
If she'd made them different ages then I think there naturally would have been more distinction between them.