I've been thoroughly enjoying my monthly dive into classic genre fiction written for children, even though not everything that I focus on ends up fitting into that project. I knew I wanted to tackle a book by Angus MacVicar at some point, because he's a Scottish author hardly remembered today but prolific and important in his time for his children's science fiction, mostly written after World War II, and for his thrillers and autobiographical work. In particular, I wanted to dive into his 'Lost Planet' series, which was apparently the first science fiction series translated into Hebrew and so manifested a huge influence on the genre in Israel.

However, I found that, while I own three of that eight book series, I don't have the first, so I had to place that goal on pause. Instead, I realised that I do have all four books in his 'Atom Chasers' and 'Super Nova' duologies, along with another novel called 'Satellite 7', every one of which sounded like it ought to be science fiction too. Unfortunately I tackled the hardbacks first, only to find that the 'Atom Chasers' books are really thrillers for children that merely start against a backdrop of advanced technology, hence the name. However, I enjoyed the first enough to quickly devour the second too and so ought to review both of these quick but vibrant reads on the basis that they're probably unjustly forgotten today.

We're in the fictional village of Dunglass, on the Mull of Kintyre, about as close to Ireland as you can get in Scotland. What Wings didn't get into their famous song is that they've built an atomic research station there, which is naturally as secretive in 1956 as you might imagine. It's a massive step forward for the UK, pushing technical boundaries as ever, but the locals, led by a delightfully blustering old laird, Major Morrison, don't want it there. The local kids, of course, are fascinated, and we start out with Constable Grant finding three of them looking at it through the fence.

They're our leads and the stuck-up constable forces them to identify themselves, even though he knows precisely who they are because Dunglass is tiny and everybody knows everybody. As it's all for our benefit, we don't mind. They're Sandy Campbell, who's the son of the minister of the kirk; Jack Galbraith, who's the son of the postmaster, who lives right next door to Grant; and wee Willie Niven, son of a local farmer. Sandy and Jack are thirteen, while Willie is eleven and keen to reach twelve at Christmas.

They're our leads, because naturally it's these three who realise that there's something going on beyond the white coats and barbed wire fences. These sorts of novels tend to underline how it's a clump of local kids who have the time and opportunity to wander around and notice things that a busy adult population simply miss, and this is no exception. Surely there has to be a spy hiding in Dunglass who's eager to steal atomic secrets from the station and, just as surely, nobody has any interest in believing three kids, one of whom hasn't even become a teenager yet.

Well, almost. They form a secret society called the Atom Chasers, thus confusing readers like me almost seventy years on into thinking that this is science fiction, to tackle the mystery. However, a fourth member does join soon enough and, in a neat touch, it's nobody this particular trope tends to include, namely Major Morrison, who turns out to be a driven and capable man behind all that bluster. His influence is how they manage to tour the atomic station in the company of its director, Sir Wilfred Steele, and naturally they figure out what's really going on and unmask the spy.

Given that this is a relatively short book, running a mere hundred and sixty pages in hardback, it doesn't offer MacVicar a heck of a lot of opportunity to build his characters, beyond, of course, a quartet of Atom Chaser leads. Even there, the most obvious path he takes is to highlight courage in the kids, not only through the willingness to act in dangerous situations but also to do so when utterly scared to do so. Willie is the most obvious bundle of nerves but he musters up the courage he needs to do what must be done when it gets to be that crucial.

Of course, we get to meet some of the boys' parents, if mostly the minister, Rev. Walter Campbell, and his wife, and there are a string of suspicious characters in the area given attention enough to know that we have to weigh up their true motives.

There's Mr. Ingersoll, a bird watcher who walks all over the moors with his cameras and telephoto lenses, snapping pictures of buzzards and the like. There's Miss Cunningham, a mysterious cousin of Major Morrison, who's writing a book on the standing stones of Scotland, so also traipses over the moors, because there's a prime example right there outside Dunglass. There's even a young tinker, Donald Sween, who shows up out of nowhere but has no apparent interest in leaving. Who is the spy? And, if the others aren't in on it too, why are they really in Dunglass?

It's hard not to fall into this novel quickly. MacVicar may not have a lot of room to build character and complicate his plot, but he does well with the space he has and the kids are easy for us to get behind. They're good kids, as they kind of have to be, but they're not extra-good kids. They're able and willing to get into trouble and screw up by spilling the beans to the wrong people and all that makes them more human. Adding Major Morrison into the Atom Chasers was an inspired idea by MacVicar that's the icing on the cake.

He uses the Scottish countryside well too. This is the golden age of kids getting out there into the countryside and exploring, a natural wellspring for adventure stories. Nobody was sitting in their room with their PlayStations in 1956. They were out on the heather in the middle of nowhere and well aware of places like the atomic station, the standing stones or the Anchorite's Cave, in which they see mysterious lights and outside of which they find a mysterious parachute.

All in all, this is a bundle of fun. If you can find a copy, you'll whizz through it in a single sitting, but you'll enjoy the heck out of it and wish you had a copy of the sequel ready to go, as, fortunately, I did. That's 'The Atom Chasers in Tibet' and I'm reviewing that this week too. ~~ Hal C F Astell

For more titles by Angus MacVicar click here