Excerpt
"So you and Father own a daily newspaper in America called the Terrible Times?" Eddie said, making a mental note to ask him about the human cannonball another time, because he didn't want to risk getting off the main subject now.
"Exactly." Mad Uncle Jack nodded, his beaklike nose casting an interestingly shaped shadow on the tree house wall.
"And you don't just mean a copy of an old newspaper; you mean a company that produces a newspaper everday-"
"Except Sundays," his great-uncle interjected (which, in this case, is the same as interrupting).
"-except Sundays-which is read by a large number of people on the eastern seaboard-"
"Whatever that might be," said Mad Uncle Jack.
"Whatever that might be," Eddie conceded, "in America?"
"Spot on, my boy! Spot on!" cried Mad Uncle Jack. "For years everything's run smoothly, and the editor has been in touch every six months with a report as to how the paper's been doing and a check for the profits to be shared between me and your father.except that we haven't heard from him of late, and we need someone to go from the family. Your father's bad back means that he can't go. Your mother's on crutches and, like your great-aunt, is also a woman, which leaves you or me, Edmund. I can't go, because I'm completely mad, so that leaves you. We want you to go to America as the representative of the Dickens family to find out what's gone wrong in the offices of the Terrible Times."
Eddie actually gasped out loud. What an adventure that would be!
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