Books with author Peter Firth

There was something different about Sam Smith. Growing up on the family farm, Sam discovered early in life an extraordinary ability to repair old machinery. No matter how complex the mechanism, Sam could fix it. Clocks and watches, milking machines, hay balers and any number of mechanical toys came back to life in Sam's hands. It looked like others must have also noticed this extraordinary talent when, while in the last year at Finlow Primary School, Sam is invited to sit a scholarship exam for St Mungo's School, a private boarding school with a reputation for taking on gifted but impecunious students. The Black Cat Gang is the story of a group of friends who, while searching for a quiet place to meet away from the attention of others, make a sinister discovery beneath their school. After stumbling on a network of abandoned tunnels, their daring detective work leads them towards the inescapable conclusion that the use of St Mungo's Hall by government researchers during the Second World War did not end as planned. The research project the scientists had been engaged in had clearly gone terribly wrong. But what had they had they been working on, and what, in their haste to escape, were they forced to leave behind?Follow Sam and friends Anna, Hobbo, JJ, Pam, Griff and Olivia as they pool their special talents to undertake a series of startling and dangerous forays into the darkest recesses of St Mungo's School. Idealism and goodness battle greed and foolishness until the ultimate showdown, which perhaps not everyone will survive.