Book Report - Johnny Swanson by Eleanor Updale

Johnny Swanson by Eleanor Updale – Book Report

It's set in 1929 but it spends a good amount of time looking back to the Great War. Most of the main characters have been affected by it one way or another. Despite this, it's a book about looking forwards: to rebuilding new lives from shattered ones, and to the most important forwards of all - growing up. Johnny Swanson's father was killed in the war before Johnny was born. Life's hard for him and his mother Winnie as money is struggling without a man's wage coming in.
Johnny gets into the personal ads business when he sends off a two-shillings-and-sixpenny postal order to find out the SECRET OF INSTANT HEIGHT.
Johnny doesn't have that much money, so he "borrows" it in the “not actually asking but having every intention of paying it back” sense. When buying the postal order from the local post office, he creates a fictional Aunt Ada, pretending that she's sick and will be spending the two shillings-and-sixpence to buy a train ticket to come and stay with him and his mother. The response (the secret of instant height) when it finally arrives, is not quite what Johnny expected. It is to stand on a box. He feels outraged and more than a little stupid.
Rather than seek revenge, he sees the opportunity to make money in such a scheme, or rather scam. He soon starts coming up with advertisements of his own, such as “How to stop your baby wetting the bed” to which the answer would be “make it sleep in a chair!” To do this, his fictitious aunt has a new use.
Winnie, Mrs. Swanson had taken upon herself to work the extra hours to pay for the rent – which had gone up since her old landlord had died and left his properties to his greedy up-to-no-good son who is interested in nothing else but money. Completely unaware that Johnny is making money by the day she works to her limits at 4 jobs a day. She worked in the local pub, Caring for old Mrs. Dangerfield, Local launderette and Dr Langford’s cleaner.
She isn’t very impressed with Johnny when she runs into Hutch and he asks her how her “sick sister” is! She is more than embarrassed she is mortified and this results in an argument and Winnie storming out late at night in the middle of a storm.
Winnie was meant to be paid by the Langfords the next day and she went around to her job then gets the money. Only problem being that the Langford have gone missing and nobody knows where they are.
The next day Mrs. Dangerfield (who lives beside the Langfords) phones the police about a smashed window and the body of Mr. Langford was found in his bedroom- dead. He had supposedly been strangled then beaten to his death by some sort of hard object. Mrs. Langford’s body was not found. Mrs. Dangerfield also reported Winnie being at the house when this happened and Johnny's mother is taken away and charged with a serious crime, "Aunt Ada" takes on an even more important role. She's the nonexistent responsible adult supposedly looking after him, freeing him to do the best he can to prove his mother innocent.
I think that the book shows a lot of lessons. The characters are really brought to life.