Think I’m right in stating that as a boy I had all the pre-1990 Mr Men books with the possible exception of “Mr Snow”. Looking at all the covers apart from the latter jogged my memory.

Sadly I remember little about the stories now, despite reading them numerous times during my boyhood, plus watching the Mr Men cartoons more than once.

Reckon the last time I would’ve read these was 1983, though may have returned to them as late as 1985. Although I’ve forgotten almost everything about this title and all the others I feel that owing to the amount of times I read each publication that they all deserve to be rated five stars.

I’m grateful to Roger Hargreaves for brightening up my childhood with both his Mr Men and the Timbuctoo series of books. ( )

I somehow missed writing this one up, so I�m backdating it on August 8. A piece of trivia: I hadn’t realized that Howard was married to Amis. Interesting marriage that would be.
Now for the stories: “disturbing” comes to mind when you read the first one, and stays with you. “Mr. Wrong” is about a young woman, no life, who moves to London. She buys a second-hand car to commute and visit her parents, and discovers on her first trip that the car is haunted. There are shades of the Vanishing Hitchhiker in the way she picks up a young woman and a creepy man, but when she stops the woman has vanished. She comes to believe the car had something to do with the murder of another young woman (her’s being the ghost) but is relieved to learn the murderer is picked up. She tries to sell the car, that seems ominous now, and the next time she goes home the murderer is in her car waiting for her: the police had got Mr. Wrong, but since she may realize what’s going on, she must die. Otherwise the stories seem to be mostly about married people having affairs: they are exceptional only in their cruelty.