A MESSAGE FROM M. J .TROW
I am so pleased to be able to introduce Maxwell’s latest adventure to everyone, as always, it was a pleasure to be able to spend some time in his company as I write and I hope that you will enjoy it too. One of the big enigmas in this book was actually choosing the title. The storyline was kicked off by a wandering thought that struck me while researching for a non-fiction project and that is, can history ever be truly proven? Even if something is written down, it could be a typo. A prank. Something written down by a scribe working out his notice. Archaeology? Well, we don’t know what colour dinosaurs were, for instance. After hundreds of years, we have only recently discovered that some had feathers. And so on.
So, it struck me that Maxwell has been teaching for what he describes as centuries and hordes of children have wandered off into the world with hopefully a decent amount of knowledge in their heads, but much of it will be just that bit garbled. That afternoon when they should have been reading up on the defenestration of Prague but it was sunny and there was a butterfly … well, we’ve all done it. Along with students with minds like goldfish, you can add a nice dollop of fake news scaremongering, some over protective parents and their diametric opposites and before long you have the perfect storm, with Maxwell, along with his wife, son, cats and unstoppable neighbour Mrs B. caught up in the eddies.
So, the title. At first, it was called Parallax, but that sounded a bit too sci-fi. Some of the ‘top fans’ suggested Mystery but (hopefully) they are all that. But from there, we got to a riddle wrapped up in a mystery inside an enigma and there it was, the title! But whatever you call it in your head while you read, I hope you will have a good time with Maxwell and his crew – and please, don’t guess whodunit too soon!