Whiffy Newton in The Mystery of the Marble Beach Mugger

Rebecca Lim

Whiffy Newton in The Mystery of the Marble Beach Mugger

First published by Rebecca Lim in 2017

Copyright © Rebecca Lim, 2017

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

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Contents

Cover

About the Book

About the Author

Praise for Whiffy Newton

Also by Rebecca Lim

Title Page

Copyright Notice

That Was the Year that Was

Marble Beach

A Menacing Encounter

Something Very Fishy Going On

A Co-op Called Nigel

Of Severed Heads and Other Nasties

The Masked Mugger Strikes

Old Enoch Wylley’s Curse

Things Get Ugly

Minimum Chips Under Threat

The Legend of Sandy Bottom Cove

A Pain in the Old Trapdoor

Turning the Tables

Marble Beach Does Itself Proud

Cover

About the Book

It's summer at last! And the mysterious Agency for Creative Enterprise has packed Whiffy and his father off on an all-expenses-paid holiday to sleepy Marble Beach so that Dr Newton can finish testing his latest loopy invention, The Hydrolator.

But Marble Beach's residents are being terrorised by a fiend who strikes at the worst time and place - dinnertime and in the vicinity of Marble Beach's only fish and chip shop.

Can Whiffy and his best friends, Doreen and Paz, discover the identity of the Marble Beach Mugger before minimum chips become merely a fond memory for the town's terrified and hungry citizens?

About the Author

REBECCA LIM is a writer and illustrator based in Melbourne, Australia. Rebecca is the author of seventeen books, including The Astrologer’s Daughter (a Kirkus Best Book of 2015 and Notable Book, CBCA Book of the Year for Older Readers), Afterlight and the bestselling Mercy. Shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s Literary Award, Aurealis Award, INDIEFAB Book of the Year Award and Davitt Award for YA, Rebecca’s work has also been longlisted for the Gold Inky Award and the David Gemmell Legend Award. Her novels have been translated into German, French, Turkish, Portuguese and Polish. She is a co-founder of the Voices from the Intersection initiative.

Praise for Whiffy Newton

'A very amusing book. Whiffy Newton would give even Mma Ramotswe a run for her money!' - Alexander McCall Smith, bestselling author of The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency.

Also by Rebecca Lim

Mercy

Exile

Muse

Fury

Wraith

The Astrologer’s Daughter

Afterlight

FOR YOUNGER READERS

The Sweet Life

Cover Girl

Sista Fashionista

Star Style

Whiffy Newton in the Case of the Dastardly Deeds

Whiffy Newton in the Riddle of the Two-Tone Trousers

Whiffy Newton in the Affair of the Fiendish Phantoms

Whiffy Newton and the Mystery of the Marble Beach Mugger

Five-Minute Tales Messiest Monster Ever

Five-Minute Tales Bravest Princess Ever

Title Page

Whiffy Newton in The Mystery of the Marble Beach Mugger

By Rebecca Lim

Copyright Notice

Published in 2017 by The High Street Publishing Company

Copyright © Rebecca Lim 2006

The moral rights of the author have been asserted.

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication shall be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.

First published in 2006 by Funtastic Limited

Written and Illustrated by Rebecca Lim

Author: Lim, Rebecca

Title: Whiffy Newton in the mystery of the marble beach mugger

ISBN 978-0-6480392-9-7 (ebook)

Dewey Number A823.4

1

That Was the Year that Was

All in all, it’d been a pretty good year.

Whiffy Newton (real first name Alfred), Doreen Wing, and Paz Colón (real first name Pasquale) had set up The Agency—the unofficial, hush-hush detective outfit that usually came up trumps for discretion and results.

Those who utilised The Agency’s services around Kentwood High knew only to pass on word of its existence to those in dire need. Consequently, the three best friends had been kept pretty busy at school all year, tracking down the pilfered gourmet lunches of the unusually timid, or the missing personal items of the seriously put-upon. But what really set The Agency apart was their knack for cracking real live mysteries.

Since they’d begun putting their amateur sleuthing skills to the test, they’d solved The Case of the Dastardly Deeds (involving psycho-vandal androids), The Riddle of the Two-Tone Trousers (concerning multiple vengeful acts of trouser villainy), and The Affair of the Fiendish Phantoms (relating to several spooky ‘hauntings’ instigated by a pack of malicious pseudo-scientists) in fairly short order. They had come through this series of hair-raising adventures relatively unscathed, and displaying their usual cheerfulness.

And not only that, between them, they’d managed to pass every single subject. Doreen superlatively (a Doreen-like word for, ahem, rather well), Paz nearly almost as, and Whiffy?

Well, his surprise B+ for Science had had his dad in transports of delight, but his C- for Maths was, um, perhaps better not mentioned. The rest of Whiffy’s marks had fallen somewhere in between, which was still enough to ensure that it would be a great summer.

As the bell rang that would see them leaving surly, beanbag-shaped Mr Cottle’s Year 7A form room forever, Whiffy turned to his two best friends in the world and gave them the double thumbs up.

***

The year could also be classed as superb for a number of other reasons. First and foremost being that Whiffy had finally shaken his irrational fear of The Three Thugs, a.k.a the biggest bullies in Year 7—Solly Banfrey and his two farting henchpersons: Piggy Lugton (compulsive farter and person responsible for stealing Whiffy’s lunchbox one day and giving him the horrid nickname by which he was now universally known) and Jugs Morrison (the toughest broad in Year Seven, called ‘Jugs’ because she had them).

There still wasn’t much to say about pint-sized, greasy-haired, Death Metal T-shirt loving Solly himself, except that he exerted some kind of evil magnetic hold over his hulking cronies that made them do whatever he wanted. Including aiming spitballs down the back of Whiffy’s usually bum crack-baring trousers and leading the invariable Whiffy-baiting song in Tuesday morning’s third-best Maths class.

As Whiffy had entered that very class for the last time that year, the goons had struck up their usual boring, hateful chorus:

Here comes Whiffy

With his blinky, blinky, blinky

And his ‘Please write it bigger?’

‘Coz I can’t see the figures!’

They’d been about to launch into another ghastly verse, when Whiffy did something thoroughly unexpected.

Instead of sitting in the front row, alone, like he always did (on account of his aforementioned eyes) therefore placing himself, and his bum crack, squarely at the mercy of the thugs two rows behind, he’d sat down immediately behind them. Whipping something triumphantly out of a small, brown box, Whiffy had proceeded to put on his brand new, just-for-the-classroom, now-I-can-see-the-blackboard-so-there, glasses.

His dad had finally (just in time for the end of the year) taken him to the eye doctor who’d confirmed what Whiffy had suspected for some time—he was chronically short sighted.

Even Mrs Doddits, their usually-on-another-planet-altogether Maths teacher, had done a double take as she’d entered the classroom and spotted the empty front row, doing another double take at the new plastic furniture occupying Whiffy’s face.

For the first time in their lives, the Three Thugs had found themselves the closest to the front. Needless to say, their singing had died away in confusion by the time Mrs Doddits banged her ruler on the board to start the class.

At her enquiring look, Whiffy had replied airily, ‘Carry on, Miss. Write any size you like today.’

Halfway through Mrs Doddits’ scintillating round up of (ho hum) spheres and cones and (eek!) slack variables, Whiffy had popped up a casual hand to note that he could see Jugs Morrison and Solly Banfrey apparently defacing school property with their compasses.

‘Might be wrong,’ he’d said modestly, tapping his new eyewear. ‘But I can just make out the word: Toejam.’

Mrs Doddits—who automatically blanched at the mention of rogue bodily functions—promptly gave Jugs (real first name Beatrice) and Solly (real first name Mervyn) detentions—to be served that very afternoon.

A little later, while Mrs Doddits was ploughing grimly through random distributions with the air of someone who’d given up any hope of being rescued, Whiffy had raised his hand again and observed gravely that Piggy Lugton had just randomly distributed a massive Silent-But-Deadly to the great discomfort of the rest of the class. The rest of the class had nodded enthusiastically, knowing there was safety in numbers.

Piggy (real first name Elmore) had also found his afternoon dance card suddenly rather full.

When the bell rang, Solly had sliced one hand across his throat and mouthed, ‘We’re going to kill you,’ at Whiffy as Mrs Doddits had led Solly away.

To the admiration of his classmates, Whiffy had just shrugged. The prospect of his death was nearly four months away and he wasn’t going to waste a second of his summer thinking about it.

Although the new spectacles had come far too late in the year to improve Whiffy’s marks—meaning he’d probably be stuck in the same