The Pear Affair

Nell Magnificent is very unhappy. Her grotesque parents, Melinda and Gerald, despise her, sending her to a ghastly boarding school to get her out of their sight and, worst of all, her beloved French nanny, Pear, has been dismissed by them for no apparent reason. When Nell’s parents announce that they are off to Paris for a business meeting, they are horrified when Nell insists on accompanying them. She is determined to find Pear and to escape with her from her wretched life with her parents.

When she runs away from the luxury hotel in which her parents are staying and begins her search for Pear she finds to her horror that Pear has been sacked from her job at a couture house, has vacated her flat and has vanished without trace. Nell is homeless, penniless and in desperate straits until she meets the marvellous network of young people living In Paris’s underground passages and cellars.

Eagle’s characters are beautifully created and the adrenaline level is high. Adventure abounds when Nell discovers a stolen spore sample in Melinda’s designer handbag and slowly, the dastardly plot instigated by the Mayor and her parents to infect Paris’s boulangeries with a mould-creating spore and thus build their own confectionary empire begins to unfold.

This is a rumbustious, rollicking adventure with a generous heart-and a happy ending. Those on the side of right are rewarded and the wrongdoers are punished. Caricature is strenuously avoided as the protagonists live and breathe with their own lives and concerns. Eagle explores themes of love, betrayal, friendship and greed, but never preaches. This book will fly off school library shelves!