Need help finding a book!

[AbreathofFrenchair]

I've tried Google and Reddit and no luck.

I was around 13 years old when I got it from the library which would have been 1993/1994

It's a group of children that spend some time wandering round London, stealing food etc but they all live in the underground.

They go down to the underground and get to their living quarters by going through the tunnel once a train has gone and then the network where they live is accessed through the doors/open arches in the underground tunnel walls. They can move across the whole of London in this network.

I absolutely loved the book but cannot remember the title or author and would love a copy to see if it's as good as I remember!

Absolutely no idea on that one sorry.

I think somebody tried to find this book a few months ago. But I can’t remember any of the suggestions.

Try asking one of the 1990s nostalgia groups on Instagram. They never seem to fail in asking! Knees deep in the 90s for example.

This is a real long shot but could it be King Solomon's Carpet by Barbara Vine? Pen name of Ruth Rendell who was an excellent writer. It's not a children's book but you could have borrowed it in your early teens. Published in 1991. It's a thriller
It's about various characters moving around the Underground network including a young boy named Jasper and his school friends. When he is older Jasper 'surfs' by riding on top of the carriages.

Might it be The Underground Conspiracy by Catherine Storr. It was published in the late 1980s.

I have no idea of the title but your description is ringing bells for me. I am sure I have read something very like this.

I have read King Solomon's Carpet & I don't think that is it as in that book, they all live in a disused school.

I'll keep thinking about it & see if I can remember.

This is familiar to me as well but I can't recall more than you OP!

This is the Barbara Vine one:

King Solomon's Carpet - a prize-winning crime classic from bestselling author Barbara Vine

Winner of the Crime Writers Association Gold Dagger Award

'The tension grows ... an overwhelming sense of foreboding ... when the unravelling takes place, it is brilliantly unexpected and original' The Times

Jarvis Stringer lives in a crumbling schoolhouse overlooking a tube line, compiling his obsessive, secret history of London's Underground. His presence and his strange house draw a band of misfits into his orbit: young Alice, who has run away from her husband and baby; Tom, the busker who rescues her; truant Jasper who gets his kicks on the tube; and mysterious Axel, whose dark secret later casts a shadow over all of their lives.

Dispossessed and outcast, those who come to inhabit Jarvis's schoolhouse are gradually brought closer together in violent and unforeseen ways by London's forbidding and dangerous Undergound

Could it be Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman?

Neverwhere wasn't a group of children though.

It sounds vaguely familiar to me 🤔

The Borribles (part of a trilogy). Michael de Larrabeiti

@AbreathofFrenchair
Did you find it?
I thought it was The Borribles by Michael de Larrabeiti. I loved this book.
They were a streetwise bunch of London kids who had pointed ears and if their ears were clipped they were forced to grow up. Quite anti-authoritarian and they didn't publish the third in the series as it was the time of the '85 London riots.

Will have a look at all of these and report back, though if it isn't, I will definitely have some new books to read!

Thanks all for your help, I'm just hoping I've not mixed two books together and made one that doesnt exist!

Hi, I'm not the OP but I did try to find a very similar sounding book a while back on here; under a different username.

I found "my" mystery book is Underworld by Peter Beere. I got it free on Kindle Unlimited recently.

Possibly, hopefully, this is also your book OP @AbreathofFrenchair ???