Officer Gentry and the Ghost of Mavis Adder

Officer Gentry is eleven years old. One embarrassment in his life is his father, who spends a great deal of time inventing things. In this book Officer finds a television remote control stuffed down the back of the settee in his living room, only it isn’t a remote control at all, but a time machine. With a friend of his, the intelligent Vicky Simpson, he uses it and finds himself back in Victorian times. But things aren’t going to be as easy as he thought they might be. Everywhere he goes there seems to be danger. He bumps into a Victorian boy, Charles, but the boy’s father is a brutal drunkard who they have to escape from. They hide in a church porch where they are scared witless by, of all things, a ghost! Eventually the three children are cornered in a cellar with only one entrance, and the brutal drunkard is fumbling his way through it. They must escape, but where to? Or rather, when to? The story skips along at a break-neck speed as they negotiate dangers in strange times.