Peter Dickinson's first three children's books, The Weathermonger, Heartsease and The Devil's Children, form a trilogy. They are all set in a Britain chronologically of the near future yet also of the past, for the 'Changes' have taken place, causing the country to become an island … fragmented into a series of rural communities, united by a common hostility to machines of any sort and by a tendency to try to return to the modes of living and thought th...

The classic journey-adventures of the past, from [Frederick] Marryat and [Walter] Scott downwards, have most of them been journeys of body and spirit together: the most stringent and compelling accidents have their full effect when we can see how they have changed the protagonist other than by merely breaking his head. The divagating and dangerous journey taken [in Tulku] by Theodore Tewker into Tibet is, to outward appearance, a flight; surviving a Boxer raid on his father's mission in China, the bo...

Peter Dickinson [is] a comparatively new writer whose stories about 'The Changes', a time when men in England had learned to fear and dread machines, and so destroy them, have been one of the most refreshing discoveries of the last few years. (p. 124) The first of these three books, The Weathermonger, is a straightforward and vividly exciting adventure story. The Changes have only affected Britain; Europe is still as she was, but she cannot mount a rescue expedition because, for reasons which ...

The mystery novel without an integrated background is missing a useful dimension; there's the disturbing sense that the action could have taken place anywhere, or at any time. Few mystery writers in recent years have settled their tales in more ingenious environments than Peter Dickinson—who created an entire New Guinean society for his first novel last year ("The Glass-Sided Ant's Nest"). Any minor reservations I had about that book do not apply to his second, "The...

A boy, a bear, and a holy man are the three chief characters in [The Dancing Bear], a historical novel set in sixth-century Byzantium…. The author has successfully made use of historical details to further the plot of the story, since a knowledge of the sophisticated civilization of the Byzantines and an insight into the customs and habits of the ancient Slavs and Huns are essential to an understanding of Silvester's experiences. The story itself consists of a series of lively and amusing road...

In "King and Joker," Peter Dickinson paints an oxzymoronic picture … of an imaginary British royal family…. On a social level, the members of the royal family are rather like high-wire performers in a circus. If they fall, they have so far to go; there is suspense in the spectacle of their keeping their balance.

[The] first chapter [of The Weathermonger jolts the reader] out of present time and space into a marvellously unpredictable, incredible story; and since he knows no more than the boy Geoffrey knows, he shares Geoffrey's frightening bewilderment at finding himself, without memory of the past five years, on a rock with an unknown girl in Weymouth Harbour…. (p. 143) The children's escape to France, their superbly funny interview with General Turville, their return to England to find the ca...

Stage properties, the line-drawings at the head of each chapter, scenery, plot and theme of The Blue Hawk, all suggest a very early period of Egyptian culture, but this is not an historical novel. Peter Dickinson leaps still further from any actual historical starting-point than he did from Byzantium in The Dancing Bear. As in that book, he produces an illusion of authenticity while taking freedom to arrange events and choose characters as it suits him. At the same time, the associations with an exotic past...

[Annerton Pit] is Peter Dickinson rather below par, with a trendy plot showing the terrible brittleness of the ultra-contemporary. The theme may be eternal—do ends justify means?—but the militant conservationists who blow up motorways and plan to take over an oil rig are a dismally catchpenny collection…. [These] conspirators are a weak pastiche of newspaper realities…. Peter Dickinson has at hand a [rich] and … subtle substructure. The book is masterly in its presentation...

In which one of the perils of series novels is illustrated: James Pibble, the British detective hero of Peter Dickinson's [The Lizard in the Cup], is apparently beloved for his past adventures in previous novels, but the author has forgotten to re-create his character in this current episode, set on a Greek island. We find Pibble reluctantly hard at work there among the highly exotic entourage of Thanassi Thanatos, an Onassis-type zillionaire who is, perhaps, about to be murdered…. Dickinson &...

In ["Heartsease"], Mr. Dickinson has returned to the situation which he used so effectively in ["The Weathermonger"]: England in the grip of the ideas and superstitions of the Middle Ages. But although the setting is the same the mood is not and the humour and originality which characterised "The Weathermonger" have been replaced in "Heartsease" by a more serious and straightforward attempt to examine life in a society dominated by fear of machines and...

Peter Dickinson's three books about the 'Changes', which cause the people of England to turn against machinery and withdraw into a dark age of malicious ignorance, appeared at almost the same time as [John Christopher's 'White Mountains' trilogy]…. Peter Dickinson is even farther from the SF mainstream than John Christopher. In the first book to appear, [The Weathermonger, Geoffrey] and his sister Sally set off through hostile countryside in a splendid antiqu...

Any book in which James Pibble appears is, ipso facto, going to be a good book, and so it is in Peter Dickinson's "The Lizard in the Cup."… The book is not only a travelogue about one of the Greek islands, and a basic introduction to drug traffic. It is about people. Dickinson is one of the most natural and literate of mystery writers. His people talk as people really talk; they have understandable motivations; and each person emerges as a believable character in his own right. B...

One of the main differences between the thriller and the detective story proper is that the former demands an open, the latter a closed environment. The classic example of the second is the country-house murder. Peter Dickinson, in a series of highly intelligent novels, has taken this formula and stood it on its head by creating a succession of strange closed societies that are not simply neutral arenas for the conflict between murderer and detective but are fascinating in their own right. In them the crime...

The Devil's children is the third book in which the Changes in a near-future Britain are described through their effect on certain individuals and places. In this book we are at a point not long after the mysterious antipathy towards machines has exposed Britain to a new ideological tyranny. In Shepherds Bush a girl of twelve has been separated from her parents in a panic evacuation of the disease-ridden city. Nicola is adopted by a band of Sikhs looking for somewhere to settle; because of their race...

Peter Dickinson is the critic's joy, as well as the child's. Other writers, including the best, settle into a uniform excellence which is wholly to be admired but which scarcely lends itself to individual appreciation. Mr Dickinson keeps us guessing. Will the next be about a society without machines, or a school of Loch Ness monsters, or the second sight, or the Byzantine Empire? Probably not, for he has had his say on these matters. The Blue Hawk seems to be about Pharaonic Egypt…. A l...

In recent years, Peter Dickinson has been attracting attention for a series of low-keyed mysteries written with extraordinary concentration. It is not so much that the man is an unusually fine prose stylist. Even more, he has the ability to suggest, to leave things unsaid, and over his books hangs a suspended cloud that can scare the reader. Dickinson maintains his high standard in "Sleep and His Brother."…

A powerful, wholly original novel is constructed with enormous skill and written with rare perception and intuition [in Annerton Pit]. [In the story of the characters'] incarceration and of their attempts to escape from the chill, slimy, terrifying underground labyrinth, the horror of the deliberate, detailed writing approaches that of Poe. But there are also intimations of Dostoevsky, for the greatest impact of the novel is psychological. Martin, who has secretly been an idealistic young supporter o...

Leave it to Peter Dickinson to dream up something unusual. This British writer creates mysteries that can have all kinds of threatening undertones, and that have an unusual milieu…. Dickinson has imagination, and he also is a sensitive writer. Every new book of his can be approached with anticipation. His latest is "Walking Dead."… In it he poses an ethical problem. A scientist who is an expert on rat and monkey behavioral patterns finds himself framed for murder on a Caribbean i...

In Dickinson's first-rate novel about second sight, Davy Price has inherited The Gift of clairvoyance from a legendary Welsh ancestor…. [The] gift becomes a terrifying burden when Davy's mind is flooded with the mad imaginings of a half-wit out to destroy the Prices. From Wolf's distorted visions which are masterfully described as Van Gogh-esque nightmares of swirling shapes and overly bright colors, Davy discovers and helps foil a robbery scheme involving his father. Ironically,...

[The Poison Oracle is] a bit of Strange, rather bizarre. Set in Now, in the real world, in which an English psycholinguist is working with a "genius" chimp in animal/human communication while in the employ of an oil-rich Arab ruler at the unique "castle" of the ruler…. The plot—the "suspense"—is more the psycholinguist's survival in the swamp in the clutches of the sacrificial-minded natives than solving the puzzle of who killed the Sulto...

Davy Price [of The Gift] had the unique ability to see other people's thoughts in his own mind…. Past and present, legend and fact are woven into an intricate web of suspense and climax in the psychologically charged confrontation of the boy with a crazed killer whose violent thoughts have been forced into Davy's consciousness. Adult emotions and experiences … are handled subtly and honestly. The author has avoided sensationalism by consistently retaining the perspective of his a...

The great reward of writers for the young is that they are expected to tell stories. The readers look for secondary worlds to find themselves in and the critics examine 'How does the author do it?' The virtues of narrative, response and criticism meet in this remarkable novel [The blue hawk], the story of Tron, the young priest in an Egyptian (?) land where the Gods hold sway and the priests make the rules. Rarely have I read such vividly imagined scenes as that of the dead king's barge...

What puts "The Poison Oracle" considerably above most books of its kind is its thoroughness of detail. Dickinson, as might be expected from the author of so scary and offbeat a novel as "Sleep and His Brother" … has an unusual kind of mind. He also is a first-rate researcher who seems to know a great deal about Arabic languages, linguistic theory and Arabic customs. Thus "The Poison Oracle" transcends the pure mystery. But between the covers is a classic myst...

[The] cunning narrative scheme and the peculiarly subtle divulging of the central surprise bring [Emma Tupper's diary] closer to Peter Dickinson's detective stories than to the "Changes" books, Here, it is true, is the same concern for the state of Britain, the same obsession about machines, that have informed all his children's books; man's effect on his environment provides a firm, if implied, moral for an exceptionally exciting story…. Tension and surprise...

Virtually unreviewable is Peter Dickinson's unusual and absorbing book [Chance, Luck and Destiny]. Its four sections, 'Magic and Witchcraft' being added to the three of the title, are anthologies of facts and fictions, unquestionably enhanced by the author's commentary, which never seeks to make mystery where there is none and frequently dismisses fallacy, yet reveals the strangeness of the workings of chance and coincidence in people's lives…. Difficult to evaluate...

The distinction between the three concepts in the title of this fascinating compendium [Chance, Luck and Destiny] is enforced by the story of Oedipus, told in sections and, at first, without identification, with the finding of the exposed infant standing for Chance, his adoption by the childless rulers of Corinth for Luck and the final tragedy for Destiny. Between the several parts of the story of Oedipus lie anecdotes, reflections, examples, statistics…. A curious mixture of guesswork, reason and of...

[The Sinful Stones] has the great virtue of being different, just like Peter Dickinson's two earlier stories featuring Inspector Pibble of New Scotland Yard. And that's rare with a character in a series. In each adventure Pibble's persona grows in the round so that by the opening scenes of his current case the middle-aged cop is engaged in retracing time lost…. The story is laced with mystery and a kind of nostalgia for the Edwardian days which Pibble must re-live to make the pre...

If Peter Dickinson's "The Sinful Stones" … had been a first novel, I would have praised it as a rewarding debut of unusual character; but inasmuch as Mr. Dickinson's previous two crime novels (especially the second, "The Old English Peep Show") have disclosed the awesome range of his creativity, my enthusiasm for "Stones" is somewhat muted. It is uncommon of milieu and well peopled, but less than compelling of plot. (p. 41) Allen J....

[With The Dancing Bear, the] author shows how individuals adjust in alien surroundings. He also points to the need of adolescents to establish their own identities: the daughter seems happy to adopt Hun society while the slave, trying to decide whether he is merely a thing, or an individual in his own right, accepts the Roman model for its civilized standards. These are important matters. That he uses them as the backbone in an absorbing tale is a measure of the quality of this writer. (pp. 252-53)