William Mayne is a witty, highly individual writer, author of that very British, very special story, "A Swarm in May" and the tricky, imaginative "The Blue Boat." ["Underground Alley"] is possibly the most accessible for the average American reader that we have yet had here.
The setting is a Welsh border town where the townspeople are preparing for the annual Town Day and the visit of a prince. The rather complicated action revolves around the discovery by Patty, a whirlwind of a little girl, of a buried medieval street which explains an ancient mystery and an act of treachery which had long ago cast the town into royal disfavor…. There is much coming and going, a good surprise at the end, and general feeling of pre-festival excitement. Patty is so real that one regrets that the author never resolves her half-concealed conflict with her young, well-meaning stepmother—one problem that should never, fictionally, be left hanging.
Ellen Lewis Buell, "Festival Towns," in The New York Times Book Review (© 1961 by The New York Times Company; reprinted by permission), September 24, 1961, p. 40.
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