The Secret Series (Enid Blyton) has one or two narrow escapes from being detained by them. The novel was originally written as a serial and, in 1938, published as a full-length novel. It was one of Enid Blyton's earliest adventure novels, preceding The Famous Five, The Five Find-Outers, The Adventure Series, The Secret Seven, and school books which would appear in following years. The children, reunited with their parents again (and Jack now adopted as part of the family), go on holiday at the rugged Cornish coast with a family friend, Miss Dimity ("Dimmy", who would appear in several further books in the series), and
Enid Blyton came from "stupid people who don't know what they're talking about because they've never read any of my books". Although Blyton's works have been banned from more public libraries than those of any other author, there is no evidence that the popularity of her books ever suffered, and by 1990 she was still described as being very widely read. Although some criticised her in the 1950s for the volume of work she produced, Blyton astutely capitalised on being considered a more "savoury" English alternative to what was seen by contemporaries as an invasion by American culture in the form of