Thunderbolt's Waxwork

Philip Pullman, winner of the 1996 Carnegie Medal with the epic Northern Lights fantasy, returns to a more domestic scale with this adventure tale, set in late Victorian Lambeth, and involving a gang of urchins, a waxworks, and a cache of counterfeit coins. When the father of a gang member is arrested, seemingly for forgery, the urchins combine their disparate and idiosyncratic talents in order to nail the real villain, but they are hampered in their efforts by the interference of various persons who are, for some reason, pursuing a dummy they've made of the local chestnut seller. The book is as rambling as this summary sounds, but it's fuelled by enough farcical japes and jeopardy to give your readers and listeners a taste for the forthcoming further adventures of the New Cut Gang.