Description

Was it possible for a schoolgirl to disappear without a single trace? Such a thing had actually happened at Mallingford's School for Girls, and the Headmistress was baffled.

She knew, of course, that Alison, the vanished girl, had been strangely defiant and uncommunicative when caught apparently breaking bounds, but what she did not know until much later was that Jo, Alison's younger rebel sister, had been the cause of the elder girl's peculiar behaviour.

Poor little Jo was broken-hearted at the tragic outcome of her own rebelliousness. She could not be consoled, and took Alison's pet dog to start out in search of her sister. Miraculously Jo succeeded in unearthing the first clue.

Meanwhile, Alison finds herself literally tossed into an environment quite foreign to her birth and upbringing. She has many adventures and travels the length of England on her way to the final stage of her masquerade. At one time she is but a few steps away from the room where Jo is, then Alison is whisked away to another part of the country. The police, a film-star, an actor and his charming wife all play their parts in the eventual unmasking of an unscrupulous woman who hopes to profit by keeping Alison from her friends.

Winifred Norling has, in MISSING FROM MALLINGFORD'S, produced yet another of her excellent stories for and about schoolgirls. Absorbingly, the scene moves from one set of characters to another with the ease which we have come to expect from this writer.