The Mystery of the Rammed Key

Story Extract 

Trailer (Transcript from the front page intro box):  Ingrown in wood, an ancient key was found in the crown of a huge tree.  Repercussions of third-grader Bruno's research in a certain old cellar are not yet over and his whole family faces formal supervision, when another problem emerges:  How to pick this strange discovery up, undamaged and without attracting unwanted attention in the town?  To make matters even worse, also Dr‧ Barton was struck by strange difficulties.  Non-existent beings appear on his photographic materials, and all scientific explanations fail here completely.  After developing the last photo plate, the guests having dinner in the mysteriologist's living room on No‧ 5 Misty Road find themselves stuck in unpredictable danger...

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Readers

For older schoolchildren, adults, and the elderly.  Those who remember the era of communism - the middle and older generation of today - will surely be amused by the joyful and serious troubles of children and adult heroes, whose great story had begun in this in this tragicomic period.  The series gradually continues into the 21st century into our present day, and then beyond.  Thus, all age categories can find their own enjoyable aspects in this freely adjoining continuation.

Contentual Complexity

Language readability was comprehensively assessed, and the average group of readers was set at a level from 12 years upwards.  However, there are also much younger child protagonists in the book.  On the other hand, there are also intellectually above-average children among the readers.  The comprehensibility of the text can therefore be divided into several zones:  

1.  Gifted younger schoolchildren ● The youngest of the main characters in this story is 8 years old.  Since he is one of the frontal characters, a considerable part of the book contains childhood adventures.  These are close to the schoolkids' soulset, but they won't bore the adults either (who will often have to deal mentally and practically with the antics of the third-grader Bruno and his friends).  It's safe to say that if your child is already enjoying books by Verne, May, Doyle, Rowling, or Dumas, they will probably be entertained by Okram's novels as well.  However, second-graders and younger elementary school students will find the book too difficult.  Parent-and-child reading works well for younger pupils:  The parent reads and explains, the child listens and asks questions.

2.  Youth ● Pupils and students of eight-year grammar schools form an average group of beginners for cases from 5 Misty Road.  

3.  Adults ● The intermediately positioned hero among the main characters is middle-aged:  The university-educated Doctor Barton works in a local speech therapy clinic.  The clientele there is diverse, but his practice is inherently dominated by pediatric patients.  During diagnostic and treatment sessions, the speech therapist learns much gossip about the family lives of Bruno's fellow schoolmates and their peripeteia with some problematic teachers - including the school principal himself.  The Doctor has to maintain professional secrecy about these and many other things he hears, but the impact on his decisions and the plot of the story is undeniable - to the point of taking literally comical turns.  Dr· Barton is the mastermind behind a group of adults brought together by a reader-engaging chain of fateful coincidences.  Along with Bruno's parents (Engr· Bolek and his wife Linda), mathematical associate professor Alivieri, security agent Hubert, and occasionally other helpers, the speech therapist finds himself in more than one dilemmatic situation.  The logopaedist turns into a tireless enigmatologist after work.  Together, they work collectively to solve weirdish cases from the neighbourhood, which are then worked into individual books.  The archivist and writer of the stories is a gifted young lawyer whom the Boleks and Dr· Barton found half-dead in bushes and saved his bare life.  At the outset of their assorted searches, no one suspects that many of the mysteries unravelled will later coalesce into an unheard-of background mega-mystery.  For a full understanding of some of the criminal, psychological, social and philosophical aspects, the reader's age is assumed to be over 40.  However, anyone can read these books without deep intellectual dives, as the main axis is developed in a light adventurous-romantic style with sparks of winsome humour.

4.  Seniors ● The oldest of the core group of main protagonists is Grandma Estela.  An old  "seamstress underschooled", as she describes herself, she is the soul of Dr· Barton's household.  Thanks to the occasional antics of this action-prone pensioner, and judging by her old-worldish vocabulary to the point of total obsolescence, she is considered by many to be a mere naive grandam.  Connoisseurs of mystery stories set in the mysterious suburb, however, have already had the opportunity to become acquainted not only with her exquisite cuisine but also with her deep compassion, warm empathy, and eager helpfulness.  Add to this the not infrequent glimmering of antediluvian moral principles and the seepage of values inculcated in the "Real Reformated Schoolhouse Signorinal in Gr· Rotterville".  You can probably already imagine the old woman's humorous collisions with the present-day authorities, the delight of Bruno's parents at her meddling in the educational affairs of a contemporary schoolboy, or Dr· Barton's exultation at the results of her often overenthusiastic impromptu missions.  The poor Grandma is already troubled by the first signs of dementia, which she resolutely fights.  Despite all the adversities of health and fate, she remains a rich source of life knowledge and historical context.  It is not infrequently that it's she who catches a critical detail in the tangle of convoluted evidence.  They simply cannot do without Grandma Estela.  The most mature readers among Grandma's peers (or near-peers) will surely agree.

Availability Information

The first commercial English Edition is under preparation, with no specified time frame defined.  The related preprint is already available for free full-text reading.

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