Map for The Tall Man

This nice map from the Swiss tourist website jungfrau.ch shows many of the locations in The Tall Man. You can see that the villages of Böningberg and Rinigen do not actually exist. In the book, Jane Shaw combined the two villages of Ringgenberg and Bönigen.

Places in Jane Shaw: Mürren

In The Tall Man, the Waring children split up to investigate the hotel guests. Clarissa accompanies the Wicks and Mr. Broadbent to the village of Mürren for the day. She describes it as "glorious".

Quote of the Day

I've often wondered since what the Rinigen guests in all their gorgeous clothes thought of the procession which now trooped down the stairs. However smart we were when we started the evening, we had been through a lot since then, and we were by no means smart by this time - we weren't even clean. Meieli's eyes widened when she looked up and saw us; but nobody moved. In a deep hush we walked across to Frau Rinigen, and Clarissa held out the bundle of crumpled velvet...

From THE TALL MAN, Chapter 9, The End of the Adventure.

The Tall Man Frontispiece

Quote of the Day

"We're almost there," said Thomas, self-appointed navigator. "Go straight ahead now and we should just about hit the landing-stage."

"We usually do," muttered Clarissa, who was rowing.

"Tish was busily rehearsing the password in a quiet voice, "Rosen-rot, Rosen-rot-"

"Don't talk so loud," I said. "Remember how voices carry across the water. We don't want the Tall Man to hear us-"

"You need not wor-r-ry," said Meieli's acid voice from the darkness beside us. "He has heard you. The Tall Man has just gone."

From The Tall Man, Chapter 4, Rendezvous with a Robber.

Quote of the Day

Thomas and I had cameras, really decent jobs, thirty-five millimetre, with light filters, telescopic lenses and so on, which I am sure you will agree was much more exciting than pendants, although perhaps not for girls. The first photo I took - by special permission - was of the Red Roses of Rinigen, but unfortunately it didn't come out.

From THE TALL MAN, Chapter 9, The End of the Adventure.

The Tall Man

This is the frontispiece of the last of the Thomas books, The Tall Man, published in 1960 by Nelson.

The Tall Man

Quote of the Day

Next morning we went into the village to buy our lanterns for the celebration of the Swiss National Day. The lanterns were nice, like round paper balls with a candle at the bottom and with sticks with which to carry them. They were all different colours, but the ones we liked best were the striped ones and the red ones with the white cross of Switzerland on them. They were rather expensive, we thought, so we only bought one each.

From THE TALL MAN, Chapter 8, The First of August.

Quote of the Day

And that was the end of the adventure; next day we met Aunt Maddy and Uncle James - looking rather pale - at Interlaken and from then on, our holiday ran on more usual lines. But very nice lines - trips on the lake, excursions up the mountains, cream-cakes and 'caffy-glassys' in Interlaken.

From THE TALL MAN, Chapter 9, The End of the Adventure.

Quote of the Day

COME and keep us company, wrote Aunt Madeleine. Your Uncle James and I are going to Switzerland for a few weeks. Please come. Meet us at Zurich on the 29th of July and we shall all go on to Böningberg.

From THE TALL MAN, Chapter 1, Lost - An Uncle and Aunt.

The Tall Man: Rinigen Castle

And here are the Warings at Rinigen Castle in The Plot, Chapter 3 of The Tall Man.

Places in Jane Shaw: Ringgenberg

In The Tall Man, the Warings travel to Switzerland and stay in the village of Böningberg, and one of the stops they make is Schlöss Rinigen, or Rinigen Castle. What Jane Shaw actually did was mix the names of two villages: Ringgenberg and Bönigen, which become Rinigen and Böningberg in the story. The children visit the castle, which is partially inhabited by the Rinigen family. In reality, Ringgenberg Castle was originally built in the 12th century and later fell into decay. A church was built into the ruins in 1670. At various times during the 20th century and the early 2000s, restoration work was done and it is now open to the public. The castle is a Swiss heritage site. Here is a view of the two villages that were combined in the story.

Quote of the Day

This time he really did laugh - at our faces, I suppose. "Och, that wasn't difficult," he said. "Young Thomas was going round all the folks in the hotel this morning asking for the loan of their Kurkartes. He looked quite thrilled when I said that I had lit my pipe with mine."

Tish and I glanced at each other quickly... But of course that was a joke. We weren't likely to be so silly again - it was quite impossible to believe that Dr. Maclaren was a crook.

From THE TALL MAN, Chapter 7, We Make Our Reports.

Quote of the Day

So we rolled back to the Chalet du Lac in style and thanked Dr. Maclaren again and dashed upstairs to look for the others. Thomas was in bed.

"What's the matter with Thomas?" I asked. Usually Thomas has to be dragged to bed by the ear if there's anything exciting going on.

Clarissa grinned. "Thomas has had a tiring day," she said. "But he wouldn't tell me about it till you came."

"Some people," said Thomas, "go about in taxis doing their detecting. But others have to walk--"

From THE TALL MAN, Chapter 7, We Make Our Reports.

Quote of the Day

Clarissa tried to be elder-sisterly. "We can't go sneaking out of the hotel at half-past eleven at night. Aunt Maddy wouldn't like it."

"What the eye doesn't see the heart doesn't grieve over," said Thomas. "It's a bit of luck, really, Uncle James getting malaria."

We all shrieked at Thomas for such a selfish attitude, but of course the awful thing was that he was right, in a way; we certainly would be more free to come and go without Aunt Maddy's eagle eye on us."

From THE TALL MAN, Chapter 3, The Plot.

The Tall Man (illustration)

The Warings take the train to Interlaken, passing the Jungfrau along the way.

The Tall Man (blurb)

The blurb for The Tall Man, the last of the Thomas series. published in 1960 by Nelson.

Quote of the Day

"And you think that the man is in our hotel?" said Dr. Maclaren. "You surprise me. They all look a decent respectable lot to me. Well, come on, we'd better be getting back ourselves or nobody will think that we're decent and respectable. And I don't imagine that there will be a boat or even a train at this time of night, so we'd better have a taxi..."

So we rolled back to the Chalet du Lac in style and thanked Dr. Maclaren again and dashed upstairs to look for the others. Thomas was in bed.

From THE TALL MAN, Chapter 7, We Make Our Reports.

The Tall Man (illustration)

A scene from Chapter 6 of The Tall Man. David and Tish are in a sticky situation on the chair-lift when it grinds to a halt on the way down to Grindelwald. Illustration by Gilbert Dunlop.