Fourth Year Triumphs at Trebizon

It is remarkable how certain literary genre survive: the boarding school story is one such example. This is the tenth book in the Trebizon School series and it offers the adventures of six friends, now in their fourth year, set against the usual round of 'dorm gossip, sports and minor romances. The climax of the book is the friends' success in discovering -- in the nick of time, of course -- that a documentary film about the school is to be used as a weapon of revenge by an ex-pupil expelled for petty crime. I found the book predictable and outmoded in both concept and style. I rather suspect that first-year girls might enjoy it for much the same reasons as half the population enjoys Dallas -- it offers an over-simplification of moral issues in a world far removed from that with which most children are familiar.