Rowling tells us stuff but doesn't let us register that we know it

I finished my Christmas reading. 13 books in seven weeks. Not bad.

Now back to Harry Potter. When the gift books started flowing in back in December, I was about 100 pages into The Goblet of Fire, the fourth novel in the series and the first of the really long books. This morning, I plunged back in.

And the first thing that struck me was how skillfully J.K. slips Barty Crouch Jr.'s attack on Mad-Eye Moody, a key plot point, into the novel without the reader realising that something major has happened.

We are first made aware of the incident when Malfoy reads out Rita Skeeter's article describing the attack in the Entrance Hall at Hogwarts. Malfoy uses the article to tease Ron, focusing not on the attack itself and its possible significance to the story but, instead, on the fact that Ron's dad was sent to investigate it.

The passage of the book is even more tricky because Rowling then has Moody himself enter the scene and intervene in the wand duel between Harry and Malfoy that ensues. By burying the revelation that Moody had been attacked deep within a very exciting, action-packed scene (after all, Moody transforms Malfoy into a ferret to punish him, then McGonagall arrives to chastise Moody), Rowling gives us key information but immediately draws our attention away from it.

I remember reading this book for the first time and, when it was revealed that Crouch had actually trapped Moody in his own box and taken on his identity, I felt tricked. How was I supposed to have guessed that?

Then I re-read the book and found out that Rowling had, in fact, played fair with her reader by telling us about the attack early on in the novel. I simply wasn't attentive enough to notice it.

And neither was the hero trio. Instead of asking Moody what happened, they get caught up in the drama that follows and thoughts of the attack itself disappear.

Fab writing. She gives us loads of information that could help us figure out the plot but distracts us from it almost immediately, so that we don't, in fact, catch on.