Tunnels Review

This review is by Moses Stubbs in Second Year. The book and series is available in the library!

The book “Tunnels”, written by joint authors Roderick Gordons and Brian Williams, was first self-published in 2005 under the title “The Highfield Mole, Circle in the Spire” but was renamed “Tunnels” to represent the editing in the book in 2007. It is the first in a series of five, the last being not yet published.

The main character is a fourteen year old boy, Will Burrows. He lives in Highfield in the south of England with his father, the Curator of the local museum, his mother, a screen addict who spends all day in front of the telly and his twelve year old sister Rebecca, who runs the home. Will’s father, Dr Burrows, often goes out on digging trips, archaeological digs for underground long-since buried train stations and such like. Will enjoys accompanying him on these trips and together they have a large collection of old antiques like show tickets from 1932 and ration billets from the Second World War. It is a fairly dull life for Will and the book has had a few complaints for its slow and lengthy start. And then Dr Burrows begins to notice a few things out of place in Highfield. Strange “men in hats” appear and he finds that some of the building structures are not quite right. Then a strange glowing artefact finds its way to Dr Burrow’s museum desk and there is the suggestion of something deeper. Suddenly Dr Burrows goes missing and as Will and his school friend Chester Rawls attempt to find him, they find that they too are dragged down into a huge secret that extends right to the deepest levels of the earth.

An exciting novel. It is well written and is very hard to put down. It is also very surprising and the end is quite unexpected. “Tunnels” is a great book and is aimed at boys from 12-17. It will make you desperate to pick up the next in the series!