Archer’s Goon
Fact: A Goon is a being who melts into the foreground and sticks there…When the Goon turns up demanding "Archer’s two thousand", life turns upside-down. As Howard desperately tries to get to the bottom of this peculiar demand, he discovers that the town is run by seven crazy wizards (not all of whom live in the present!) and someone is trying to take over the world!Exciting, bizarre and truly hilarious!
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For more information about the author and her work, visit her website at: dianawynnejones.com
First published by Methuen Children’s Books Ltd 1984
Published by HarperCollins Children’s Books 2000 HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 77-85 Fulham Palace Road, Hammersmith, London, W6 8JB
The HarperCollins Children’s Books website address is: www.harpercollins.co.uk
Text copyright © Diana Wynne Jones 1984
Illustrations by Paul Hess 2000
Diana Wynne Jones and Paul Hess assert the moral right to be identified as the author and illustrator of the work.
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Source ISBN: 9780006755272
Ebook Edition © SEPTEMBER 2014 ISBN: 9780008116705
Version: 2014-09-29
To Fiona
CONTENTS
This book will prove the following ten facts:
1 A Goon is a being who melts into the foreground and sticks there.
2 Pigs have wings, making them hard to catch.
3 All power corrupts, but we need electricity.
4 When an irresistible force meets an immovable object, the result is a family fight.
5 Music does not always soothe the troubled breast.
6 An Englishman’s home is his castle.
7 The female of the species is more deadly than the male.
8 One black eye deserves another.
9 Space is the final frontier, and so is the sewage farm.
10 It pays to increase your word power.
The trouble started the day Howard came home from school to find the Goon sitting in the kitchen. It was Fifi who called him the Goon. Fifi was a student who lived in their house and got them tea when their parents were out. When Howard pushed Awful into the kitchen and slammed the door after them both, the first person he saw was Fifi, sitting on the edge of a chair, fidgeting nervously with her striped scarf and her striped leg warmers.
“Thank goodness you’ve come at last!” Fifi said. “We seem to have somebody’s Goon. Look.”
Howard looked the way Fifi’s chin jerked and saw the Goon sitting in a chair by the dresser. He was filling most of the rest of the kitchen with long legs and huge boots. It was a knack the Goon had. The Goon’s head was very small, and his feet were enormous. Howard’s eyes travelled up a yard or so of tight faded jeans, jerked to a stop for a second at the knife with which the Goon was cleaning the dirty nails of his vast hands, and then travelled on over an old leather jacket to the little, round fair head in the distance. The little face looked half-daft.
Howard was in a bad mood anyway. That was Awful’s fault. Awful had made him meet her coming out of school because, as she said, he was her big brother and supposed to look after her. When Howard got there, there was Awful racing out of the gates, chased by twenty angry little girls. Awful was shouting, “My big brother’s here to hit you! Hit them, Howard!” Howard did not know what Awful had done to the other little girls, but knowing Awful, he suspected it was something bad. He objected to being used as Awful’s secret weapon, but he did not feel he could let her down. He swung his bag menacingly, hoping that would frighten the little girls off. But there were so many of them and they were so angry that it had ended by being quite a fight. And the little girls called names. It was being called names that had put Howard in a bad mood. And now he came home to find it full of Goon.
He banged his bag down on the kitchen table. The Goon did not look up. “Who is he supposed to be?” Howard asked Fifi.
Fifi jittered nervously. “He just walked in and sat there,” she said. “He says he’s from Archer, whoever that is.”
Howard was big for his age. On the other hand, so was the Goon big for whatever age he was. And the Goon had that knife. Howard thumped his bag on the table again. “Well, he can just go away,” he said. It did not come out as fierce as he had hoped.
Here Awful put her word in. “You go away, Goon,” she said. “Howard’s bag’s covered with the blood of little girls.”
This seemed to interest the Goon. He stopped cleaning his nails and gave the bag a wondering look. He spoke, in a strong, daft voice. “Don’t see any blood.”
