The Secret of the Old Mill (1927 ed.)—Not the One You Remember!

Have you ever checked out The Secret of the Old Mill by Franklin W. Dixon from your local library?  If so, then that likely isn’t the one I’m writing about here.  You see, the third book in the Hardy Boys series so prevalent at bookstores today bears very little resemblance to the original edition of it, in print for over three decades beginning in 1927.  How come?  Well, to understand, there’s a couple things you have to realize.

First, the Hardy Boys books were not really written by Franklin W. Dixon.  In fact, there never was a Franklin W. Dixon.  The Stratemeyer Syndicate, founded by Edward Stratemeyer, had a brilliant idea of how to keep a book series going as long as they wanted.  Invent a false name for the writer and have several different authors add titles to the series!  That way, if the main author died or lost interest in the series, someone else could step in to fill his place.  Also, if the regular author got writer’s cramp or was taking too long, someone else could step in and contribute a book.  To keep the titles somewhat similar, the syndicate would produce an outline of the story, then send it to the author.

Thus, the series, invented in 1927, was still going strong thirty years later, when, for various reasons, the editors at Grosset & Dunlap decided to revise the Hardy Boys books.  Revise is too slight a word, however, and too narrow a categorization of what the revision process entailed.  The original books had all been slightly over 200 pages; after revision, they went down to 180 pages, so part of the revision involved shortening the story slightly.  In many of the stories, the plots were mostly unchanged—but in others, the “revision” was actually a completely new story—still sold under Franklin W. Dixon’s name, but having hardly anything to do with its predecessor—other than the title managed to fit it.  The Secret of the Old Mill is one of the ones that was essentially entirely rewritten,  and if you’re expecting Aunt Gertrude’s arrival, Fenton Hardy’s disappearance, or an electric eye that warns the criminals when their secret lair is approached, then you’re clearly not familiar with this story.

No, this Secret of the Old Mill starts in rather sad fashion for the Hardy Boys.  Waiting for their father at the train station, they graciously make change for a traveller’s five-dollar bill.  Shortly thereafter, they try to buy something with the bill and discover its counterfeit.  It turns out there’s been a lot of counterfeit money circulating around Bayport, and this won’t be the last time the Hardy family finds themselves victims of funny money.

Meanwhile, it’s the weekend, and the boys and their friends plan an outing in the countryside on Saturday, since they have the day off from studying for their finals at the end of the year.  While out picnicking, they stumble across an old mill out in the woods.  Long ago abandoned, the mill is now running again, and three men, as well as a boy of about fifteen (slightly younger than the Hardys) are running it.  When the boy falls in the water and gets carried towards deadly rapids downstream, Frank and Joe just barely manage to save him at much peril to themselves.  The boy’s uncle thanks them, but the men at the mill seem mostly annoyed at the visitors—not inviting them in to rest even though Joe is soaking wet from diving in after the boy.  Their friend Chet Morton inquires about the mill’s prices for milling and is astonished when the prices listed prove to be way higher than any of the nearby mills.  This causes the Hardys and their friends to wonder, just what is the secret of the old mill?

I could say more about the plot, but I’ll reserve this last paragraph to mention one of the things that makes this book such a delightful read.  One consequence of the shorter length of the revised titles is that the stories had to be more focused on the plot, since there was less space to get the necessary details in.  With 212 pages to work with, Leslie McFarlane, the man behind the first 19 books in the Hardy Boys series, had more room to play around with.  He had a habit of going beyond the outline and adding in humorous moments not necessarily related to the plot but fun to read about just the same—little episodes that greatly add to the enjoyment of his stories.  This book has a few of those, mostly relating to the capers of Chet Morton, the most mischievous of the Hardy Boys’ pals.  Particularly hilarious is Chapter XIV, when Chet asks police officer Con Riley to guard a package for him—and here, McFarlane’s skill as a writer is evident, as statements you just gloss over when you first read them come back with a hilarious double meaning later.

Well now, if you’re only familiar with the newer title, or if you’ve never read either of them, you may be wondering, which one’s better?  Good question, but I don’t feel like I can answer it.  Since the stories are so different, they can’t rightly be considered the same book, and I think they’re both good.  If you’ve read one of them, you won’t feel like it’s given away what’s coming next when you read the other one.  The 1927 edition is funnier than the current edition, but the current edition had some thrills and suspense that this story didn’t have.  Well, if you have time, hopefully you can get around to both of them!  Your lesson, though, is this: if you see The Secret of the Old Mill for sale at a used bookstore, and it has 212 pages, then it IS NOT the newer version you’ve read.  Snap it up if you come across it!

Dugout Jinx: Clair Bee Strikes Out

I love old books, and I love baseball, so you’d think I’d love this book!  Don’t worry, I was fooled too!  The idea behind it is great, and the baseball action is really cool—the book does a neat job capturing the excitement behind a pennant race in the final weeks of a baseball season.  However, it completely falls apart at the end, owing to a hero who’s an idiot and an absurd moral principle not found anywhere in the Bible—

But, I’m getting ahead of things here.  This is the eighth book in the Chip Hilton Sports Series, tales of a young athlete whose a star at baseball and football apparently.  In this story, Hilton is at a baseball tournament in the town of Parkville, hosted by Eddie Duer, manager of the Parkville Bears, a fictional team in the fictional Midwestern League (which seems to be about the AAA level).  While in Parkville, he meets Scissors Kildane, the flamethrowing lefty sensation who’s expected to be the greatest pitcher since Bob Feller (still active in 1952, the year this book came out).  Scissors invites Chip and some of his friends to appear on a TV program, much to Chip’s delight.  Kildane’s a nice guy, and the two become friends.  Hilton’s team wins the tournament, and Chip is named MVP.  In return for this, Eddie Duer offers him the prize of getting to spend the rest of the season following the Parkville Bears around, practicing with the team and watching them from the dugout.  Naturally, Chip accepts.

However, Hilton also catches the eye of Gabby Breen, an egotistical, unscrupulous scout for the rival Hedgetown Mules who’s only looking out for himself.  Breen is friends with Corky Squill, the second baseman for Parkville, and asks Squill to introduce Hilton to him so Breen can make a play on signing Chip out of high school.  Breen promises Squill a bonus if Chip signs.  Hilton had actually already drawn interest from another scout, Stu Gardner, but when Gardner heard that Chip wanted to go to college and get an education, he backed off from pursuing him, promising not to offer him a contract again until after Hilton graduated.  After all, an education will stick around long after a career comes to an end.

Gabby Breen has no such scruples, though—and so, after getting introduced to Chip, he gives the youngster a ride home, then tries to sign him to a contract.  This is not merely an unprincipled move by Breen—Gabby resorts to dishonesty, telling Chip that even if he accepts money, he can still pitch for an amateur college team (a two-faced lie).  Chip nearly takes him up on the offer but winds up turning him down, determined not to let anything get in the way of his dreams for an education.  This, of course, means Squill won’t get his bonus, and Squill becomes furious at Chip.  He starts being rude to Chip at every Parkville practice and refers to him in the presence of everybody as a “dugout jinx”—meaning that having people who are not members of the team in the dugout will bring the Bears bad luck.

Breen, meanwhile, has other schemes up his sleeve.  The Mules have been in a losing streak lately, and Breen is considered a prime candidate for the manager position.  After the Mules drop yet another game to the Panthers, Breen is hired to take over for Boots Rines as Hedgetown’s manager.  He tells Squill that Hoot Kearns, the owner, is interested in acquiring the second baseman next season.  All Squill needs to do is change his style of play a bit, start yelling a lot and moving around nervously on the diamond, as Kearns is looking for a holler guy.  Squill, mad at Chip Hilton and annoyed at his manager for letting the kid stick around, decides to do just that—

And things go terribly wrong for the Parkville Bears.  They play Hedgetown in Breen’s first series as manager, and they lose every game—pretty horribly.  Each Hedgetown hitter seems to know somehow what pitch is coming—they have no trouble with any of Parkville’s pitchers, even Scissors Kildane, the ace of the staff.  With nothing they try suddenly working against Hedgetown, the Bears begin to wonder if someone for the other team is stealing their signs.

This is where what has been an excellent story up until this point goes down the drain.  Chip Hilton is sure that there must be a reason for Parkville’s sudden struggles, and he studies the team closely.  If nothing else, he’s observant, and he figures out what’s causing the problem.  He informs the team he knows the answer, but refuses to tell them what (or who) is responsible, saying simply, “I don’t play ball that way.”

Why won’t Chip Hilton reveal the secret?  Is it because he’s afraid he’ll get somebody in trouble?  If so, who is it?  Well, you’ll just have to read this book to find out the answer…but I can tell you this much.  If Clair Bee was trying to teach people that you shouldn’t tell anybody when one of your teammates is doing something that’s causing the team to lose, he couldn’t have done it in a worse possible way.  After you sit there, yelling angrily at the book (either aloud or in your head, depending on who’s watching) “Come on, Chip—there’s no reason to keep silent about this!” you then realize the actual message this book manages to convey, and that is this.  When someone has a problem, and you fail to alert them (or others) to it, the consequences can be disastrous.  Indeed, they are disastrous for Parkville—just how disastrous, you’ll have to read to find out—and it’s all because of some strange moral principle that certainly isn’t found anywhere in the Bible—

That said, I’d probably read another Chip Hilton Sports Story if I ever found a copy—but I can tell you this!  The series won’t be my first choice at a booksale, and my expectations will be lowered should one turn up.  Great idea, lousy author—where’s Matt Christopher when you need him?

Mystery at Long Barrow House: What’s a Long Barrow?

Don’t worry—you’ll know soon enough.  Nancy Faukner (unclear whether she’s related to William Faulkner or not) answers that almost right away, on page 12—and the meaning’s important because the book’s about a search for a long barrow!

          This story follows the adventures of three children—particularly Becky Webster, our thirteen-year-old heroine.  She and her siblings—cousin Pat of the same age who was adopted after his parents died in a plane crash, and younger brother (by two years) Tim—are spending a few months in England at Long Barrow House while their father, a university professor, takes sabbatical to finish writing a book.  As our story opens, Becky is upset because the children are about to get a tutor, and she thinks he’ll be a boring old man who will keep them too busy to figure out the secret of the old mansion.  What’s the mansion’s secret?  Becky doesn’t have a clue; she just surmises that the mansion has one.

          As a matter of fact, she’s wrong and right—wrong about the tutor, Derek, a smart young Oxford graduate with a wonderful sense of humor and an interest in archaeology.  He hits it off with the kids and tells them the secret of the mansion—or not of the mansion specifically, rather of the property it sits on.  It seems, about a thousand years ago, England was inhabited by little dark men who were later overrun by big blond men that drove the little dark men away.  Both these groups held superstitious beliefs that when someone died, they went on a journey—sort of like the ancient Egyptians—and so, like the Egyptian pharaohs, they were buried with all their treasures.  Only, these people didn’t know how to build pyramids, so they made their resting places in long barrows instead—long and narrow mounds.  Legend has it that one of them sits on Long Barrow House’s massive property, and the former owner, Mr. Crowley, spent years looking for it.  He was a recluse who’d never allow anyone on the land, until one day, when he decided to throw a big party, at which he’d supposedly divulge the location of the barrow—unfortunately, he died unexpectedly before the date of the party, and no one ever found out where it was.  Derek the tutor really wants to find it so they can excavate it and learn more about the peoples that once inhabited England.

          Now that they know the secret, the kids want to find it—so they set off towards the woods to go looking for it.  After trekking through them, they come upon a clearing with a little stone house set in the edge of a hill.  Going up to it, they’re about to go in and search when they’re surprised by the appearance of a man who looks like he could have been one of the little dark folk Derek was telling them about.  The short fellow waves a club over his head, calls the kids “children of darkness,” and orders them “Away, before you anger the Ancient Ones of Britain!”

          He succeeds in scaring the kids off—they run home and tell Derek the tutor of their adventure.  He laughs it off and tells the kids that they’ve just met “Georgie the Ox,” a former farmhand for Derek’s grandfather who’s been a bit “balmy” ever since falling off a hay wain the summer before.  Derek assures the children he’s quite harmless, but nothing Georgie does throughout the rest of the book does anything to support this assertion.  The kids go back to the hut to search it—this time, they don’t run into Georgie, but a snowstorm comes up, and they get locked in the hut—

          And all this happens in just the first fifty pages of a 188-page adventure!  I don’t want to spoil the rest of the story for you, but let’s just say there’ll be a lot more thrills and chills before this book is over—plus a Christmas celebration and a neat festival involving the death of the Fool, which is supposed to be all fun and games.  Supposed to be.  My only complaint is that the main characters are a little unfocused—nervous about visiting the hut after their first trip there, they wait half the day their next opportunity to visit, intent on first building a snow fort and then having a snowball fight.  However, once they actually get down to business, they are pretty effective.  I was going to complain that they were a little too timid too—at least, I was until I reached page 176, but—that’s for later.  I’d never heard of Nancy Faulkner or this story until I found it at The Dusty Bookshelf in Lawrence, Kansas, and I must say, one of the main incentives for buying it was that it was only $2.95.  However, after reading it, I’d be sure to snap up any book by Faulkner I run across in the future.  For the best book ever written about long barrows, be sure to check out this story!

Tom Swift and His Jetmarine: No, That’s Not an Octopus…

          “Oh, come on!” you say.  “What else is big and red, lives underwater, and has eight tentacles it can use to go after submarines?”  How about a squid?  I don’t want to give too many spoilers, but…let’s just say the cover photo is not misleading.

          But, first, let’s find out a bit about Tom Swift.  This series, another one from the Stratmeyer Syndicate, actually went through a few iterations.  Other Stratmeyer Books, such as the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew series, were revised and rewritten in the late 1950s—those are the versions commonly read today.  This Swift Book, first published in 1954, is from about the same time period, and it is a part of a new series—as “The New Tom Swift Jr. Adventures” would certainly seem to indicate.  Unlike the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew series, though, in which the central characters stayed the same, this book follows a different character: Tom Jr., son of the star of the first books.  I’ve never read any of the original Swift stories (older and likely harder to come by), but fact that these are all new stories means you don’t have to worry about comparing the second version of the story to the first!

          As you might have guessed, Tom Swift, Jr., is the son of Tom Swift, Sr., the legendary inventor who now runs Swift Enterprises, a company as large as Google is today, but a company which deals with the latest scientific inventions, instead of tech devices.  Not that computers aren’t tech-y, but Swift’s devices are a little cooler to read about—oh, and in this series, Tom Jr. does most of the inventing.  In this book, the third in the series, he’s just putting the finishing touches on his latest scientific triumph, a jet-powered submarine.

          There’s an immediate need for the submarine’s services, though.  A devious gang of pirates is robbing ships all over the world’s oceans.  By some mysterious means, they’re causing everyone on the ships to suddenly lose consciousness—by the time the passengers and crew come to, supplies and stuff have been stolen, and the pirates have vanished without a trace.  This has been going on for some time at the start of the book, but things get even worse, as Ned Newton, good friend of the Swifts and father of Tom’s girlfriend, Phyllis (barely mentioned at all in this story) is taken prisoner by the pirates.  Tom theorizes that the pirates are using a pulsator from an airplane to knock everyone on the ships unconscious, and that a submarine then surfaces to pick up the loot from their captured ships.  He hopes to use his jet-powered submarine to track the pirates to their headquarters, wherever that may be, and bust up their gang.

          Meanwhile, a suspect emerges early on.  Sidney Dansitt, an erratic young pilot, nearly crashes into Tom’s sister when she’s flying a plane, then nearly runs over Tom when he lands.  The insolent youth is unapologetic when confronted by Tom, but seems interested in a Cuban peso with a dog’s head stamped over it that Tom finds on the runway.  Later that night, someone breaks into the Swift residence and steals the peso, as well as plans for Tom’s jetmarine.  Fortunately, Tom had left the plans incomplete, but he begins to wonder if Dansitt might be the pilot of the blackout ray plane.

          You’ll have to read the book for yourself, but let me promise you, the story is full of thrills.  It’s basically a Hardy-Boys type adventure, with more cool gadgets thrown in.  Tom doesn’t finish the submarine until about the middle of the book, but he’ll have many adventures in it throughout the second half—including the one with the squid.  If you run across this anywhere, be sure to snap it up!  You won’t be disappointed!

Cherry Ames: Country Doctor’s Nurse—Too Many Boyfriends!

          Those of you who have read The Great Topeka Adventure, Part 1 or The Great Topeka Adventure, Part 2, might remember that Madison Weatherby, the girl who was really an undercover secret agent, addressed all her letters to the CIA to a Ms. Cherry Ames—so that, if they were ever intercepted, a rival spy might think she was just writing a friend from Wisconsin.  That name was stolen from this series, and even though it’s more of a girl’s series, I thought I’d check it out for the benefit of you female readers out there.  Much to my disappointment (though maybe girls will appreciate it), the book does get rather girly sometimes—much more so than the Nancy Drew series.  However, it’s actually a pretty good story, well-written, with some neat intrigue built in.

          First, though, the boyfriends!  Well, there’s Wade Cooper, the dashing young pilot for Federal Airlines, whose one of Cherry’s steady dates—along with Dr. Lex Upham, the young physician who dates Cherry when Wade’s not around—or even when he is, as will so awkwardly be the case in Chapter 2—and then of course, there’s Harry Jenner, the handsome young candidate for mayor, but he doesn’t really factor into the story until later, so let’s forget him for now—I really must interject a public service announcement here, and encourage you young ladies that if you’re ever thinking of going out with a guy, go with one at a time, and don’t have a rotation in place.  Cherry Ames might get away with it, but this doesn't go so well in real life!

          Anyway, the plot.  Cherry, having just wrapped up a week off which she gets to spend at her apartment in Greenwich Village along with several of the other nurses she went to nursing school with, takes a position as Dr. Clem Brown’s assistant in Sleepyside, New York.  No, not Sleepy Hollow—though she will go see that on one of her dates (with Lex, if you were wondering who)—same day they go see Hyde Park (where Franklin Delano Roosevelt once lived), Harmon “where trains going north from New York change from electric engines to steam” (this book was written in 1955, but Harmon is still the end of electricity on its route), the Can Cortlandt Manor.  At another point in the book, Cherry and Lex will visit Sing Sing, the famous prison—but just as tourists—anyway, that gives you a pretty good idea of where the fictional town of Sleepyside is supposed to be located.

          But back to Dr. Brown—he needs an assistant because his regular nurse, Lola, is going on vacation for a week—Lola has worked for Dr. Brown for years, and all the patients in the small town have grown used to her—which will give Cherry some trouble as the unfamiliar nurse tries to win their confidence.  Upon arriving in Sleepyside, Cherry is taken to The Manor, a massive old house that now serves as the town’s boarding house, run by the bitter old Marcia Charlton, descendant of one of the town’s oldest families, who has strict rules which must be followed at all times at the house.  A sampling?  No keys are permitted.   The house closes at eleven o’clock PM for the night, and no one will be allowed in after that time.  Meals are never to be served inside the mansion.  Sounds quite inviting, doesn’t it?  The place gives Cherry the creeps the first night she stays there, though after she has a little argument with Miss Charlton about the food rule (which has no exceptions, even if someone falls seriously ill), she hears sobbing coming from a room below and wonders if Miss Charlton’s bitterness is an act?  There’s also some kind of feud between Miss Charlton and Dr. Brown—even though they’re probably the best-respected persons in the town, they never speak to each other—not even if they’re in the same room!

          On the way up to Sleepyside, though, Lex explains to Cherry that trouble is brewing in the town—as a result of the election coming up.  Cy Hillman, who’s been mayor for over 20 years, is the favorite to win, but he faces stiff competition from young Harry Jenner, a young lawyer who’s determined to get the town to build a new school and also redo the tenements, which he claims have fallen into a sad state of disrepair—Hillman argues that the tenements are in perfectly fine condition, and Jenner simply wants to rebuild them because he’s got a secret deal with a big, influential contractor worked out.  Of course, Cherry isn’t sure right away who to believe—but once she meets Hillman, she gets the sense that his cheerful, positive demeanor masks a man with a violent temper—a side most people don’t seem to know about.

          Her first day on the job, though, she meets Jenner—a man who agrees that Mayor Hillman’s not as pure as the townspeople believe him to be, though his grief is a little more personal—he nearly got run over by the mayor’s “reckless” driving.  There are no witnesses, but Hillman does have a very real scratch on his head that Cherry treats—the two become friends, and Cherry learns from Jenner that the tenements are in really bad shape, though Jenner can’t seem to get anybody to go visit and take a look for themselves.  The reason for this, he believes, is that Hillman controls the finances for the tenements, and he’s been directing the money from them into some mysterious endeavor—though nobody knows what, as Hillman doesn’t lead a lavish lifestyle or seem to have that much of a fortune.

          Of course, Cherry knows you can’t just take a politician’s word for something, but the next twenty-four hours bring her over to Harry’s side.  First, Mayor Hillman comes in for a routine checkup that evening—he impatiently interrupts one of Dr. Brown’s appointments by calling him on the Intercom—then lets Cherry take the blame for breaking the rules.  This doesn’t serve to put him on Cherry’s good side, and when Tommy Regan, one of the local paper boys, comes in with a scratched up knee and complains he got run off the road by Hillman, Cherry’s loyalties swing completely over to Jenner—that, and something else Tommy has to say later that evening.  Harry and Cherry are convinced that there’s some secret in the mayor’s past which explains the diverted funds from the tenements, and they go to a local warehouse which houses the town’s old newspapers to see if they can find out anything helpful—they get an exciting lead, but before they can follow it up, Hillman pays a visit to the warehouse—and though they can’t prove it, Harry and Cherry expect that he’s destroyed any information that might compromise his secret past.  Somehow, they must find out what his secret is before Election Day, or it could be too late for Harry!

          That’s all you need to know about the story right now, but if you read a lot, even if this is your first Cherry Ames book, you might recognize the name Julie Tatham.  She’s perhaps best known for having written the first six books of the Trixie Belden Series, and she also wrote books in other series—the Ginny Gordon Series and the Vicki Barr Series.  Some of these were published under the name Julie Campbell, but both these were her real names—she was born Julie Campbell but married Charles Tatham, Jr., in 1933.  So, unlike a lot of the Grosset and Dunlap books, this title was indeed written by Julie Tatham!  Interestingly enough, Tatham split the series with Helen Wells, but not in the way that you’d think.  You see, Wells wrote the first seven books of the series, and Tatham took over on Book 8, writing all the way through Book 16 (this would be her last Ames book).  After this one, though, Wells returned to writing the series and contributed eleven more titles.  All were published under the actual name of the author, and having only read this one thus far, I can’t say who was better—you’ll have to read some more yourself to find out!

The Bobbsey Twins at Mystery Mansion: Big Adventure at a Big House!

          This’ll be the first of many Bobbsey Twins books reviewed on this blog, for the simple reason that there are many Bobbsey Twins books in existence.  Only the first fourteen or so are still in print, but in its heyday, back in the ‘60s and ‘70s, the series went up to a staggering 72 titles!  Thus, there’ll be plenty of titles to examine here.

          There are actually four Bobbsey Twins—for the simple fact that there’s a twelve-year-old set and a six-year-old set.  (At least, some of the books give the ages, though I don’t believe this one did.)  None of them are identical, sadly—they’re both boy-girl pairs.  Bert and Nan are the older, and Freddie and Flossie are the younger.  They live in the imaginary town of Lakeport, where their father owns a successful lumber mill.  Some of the stories take place in Lakeport, but often, the twins find themselves going to such strange and wonderful places as London, Egypt, Mexico, or other faraway destinations.

          This time, though, they’re at home in Lakeport, but the setting’s still exotic.  Sing Foo, an elderly Chinese gentleman who lives in a mansion outside of town, invites the twins to stay at his house, Mystery Mansion, while he goes to San Francisco for a few days in response to a telephone call.  The twins’ guardian at the mansion is Aunt Sallie Pry, a kind, old lady who is very deaf—this deafness will be a source of running gags throughout the story, as she’ll constantly not quite hear what is said.  Examples?  “You mean the flowers?” becomes “Oh, I hope it won’t shower”; “We saw a light last night” turns into “You saw a kite at night! Why would anyone fly a kite at night?” and “To get you all out of here” turns into “I never bet and I have no auto here”—still, everybody knows she means well.

          As for the mansion, it’s one of those massive houses you read about in books that you just wished you owned, the type with so many rooms in it, you keep discovering new ones that you haven’t explored—and they’re filled with incredible things, from a talking statue to a trick stage to a merry-go-round.  Sing Foo knows the children are detectives, and so he tantalizes them before leaving by suggesting that they search for the Golden Key, which is supposed to unlock something special.

          However, Sing Foo isn’t the only one who has secrets at mystery mansion.  Cars keep coming by in the night, and there are signs of mysterious prowlers.  Unknown strangers phone the residence and tell everyone to get out, for Sing Foo has sold the place.  I must confess, I’ve made fun of this series in the past for its lack of danger and excitement when compared with the Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew series, Grosset and Dunlap’s more famous offerings.  However, everyone, from Bert and Nan to Freddie and even poor Flossie will be in danger before this book is over.

          It’s a delightful adventure that will keep you in suspense.  If you pay attention, you may be able to guess some things that are coming, but you have to be on your toes.  Also, the book has a number of little subplots that are the icing on the cake of a finely crafted story.  I knew it looked good when I saw it at the bookstore, and I must say, it exceeded my expectations.  If you like stories involving mysterious mansions, then this is definitely one for you!

Donna Parker: Special Agent: Not a Special Agent, but Definitely Donna Parker

         Well, sort of.  I mean…oh, how do I put this?  Donna Parker’s not a special agent in the sense that—she’s no junior CIA agent or that sort of thing, but she is a special agent in the sense that—ah, but we wouldn’t want to get too ahead of ourselves, do we?  You’ll just have to wait until page 257 (of 282) to find that out.

          Meanwhile, read about Donna Parker, our heroine, who as the story opens is just beginning her senior year of junior high school in the fictional city of Summerfield.  Of Summerfield, we know that it’s a small town with a massive junior high school (the characters go up to the fourth floor of the building at one point).  Donna finds herself in a quandary as the story begins—her best friend, Fredericka (who goes by Ricky) really wants to do drama club.  Donna wants to do whatever club her friend does, but she also really wants to be a newspaper reporter—and ultimately, she joins the school newspaper instead.  Ricky might have considered joining the school newspaper to, were it not for the tyrannical Joyce Davenport, daughter of the editor of Summerfield’s newspaper, who’s considered bossy and stuck-up by all who know her.  In fact, Donna’s friends all want Donna to be elected editor of the paper, but Donna’s never edited a newspaper before, so she convinces them to vote for Joyce instead.  As it turns out, Joyce is in a very bad accident shortly into the book, and Donna will wind up taking over as editor—much to the humbler girl’s chagrin, but she immediately gets to work organizing the Summerfield Sum-It-Up’s new project—a mock election for the school, designed to get kids interested in voting.

          But meanwhile, let’s meet some of the other characters.  In addition to Ricky, we are also introduced to Tommy Sheridan, son of the man who owns the local helicopter factory.  A humble kid by nature, Tommy has to be forced to tell his friends that he designed some clever new helicopter plans which are to be used in the plant.  So impressive are his accomplishments that Tommy fears spies might be going after them, in order to sell them to a foreign power for use against the U.S.

          And speaking of spies, let’s not forget about Roger Norcross.  One day, when Donna gets home from school, she finds her mother speaking with a strange man who introduces himself as her uncle Roger, Mrs. Parker’s younger brother who ran away from home over ten years ago and hasn’t been seen for quite sometime.  His business in Summerfield—well, it’s all rather mysterious.  In fact, he says his job has something to do with movies, but he never says much about it.  He also seems to be an expert on photography.  Despite his charming manners, Donna realizes that her mother and father didn’t really recognize him when he showed up, causing the observant girl to suspect that this man might not even be her uncle—but if he isn’t, then why does he say he is, and why has he come to Summerfield in the first place?

          This isn’t the first book in the Donna Parker series—it’s the first one I’ve read, but apparently it’s the fourth.  If you have run across this series before, and you recall reading one mentioning a French count, then that one will tie in before this book’s through (though you don’t need to read that one first to still enjoy this).  Certainly a mystery, the book’s not quite the same type as the Nancy Drew series.  If this were a Nancy Drew book, you’d have a pretty good idea of what the mystery was early on, and the book would be about Nancy solving the case.  This book’s a little different—it’s more about Donna Parker’s life, and what the case is about doesn’t become clear until around page 200—rather late in the book.  However, the whole thing’s fun to read, and those first 200 pages do set up the exciting climax later on.  My only complaint with the book is that it emphasizes the importance of voting, but doesn’t do a good job pointing out the need for voters to be familiar with their candidates, suggesting it’s a good idea to vote even if you know nothing about who you are voting for—something which anyone with a brain can see could have terrible consequences—but, like I said, that’s my only complaint.  The pace is fast on this story, Donna Parker’s a wonderfully nice individual who’s always putting others ahead of herself, and the book does a good job keeping you guessing.  If Nancy Drew or the Hardy Boys aren’t quite long enough for you, give this thing a try if your lucky enough to stumble across it!

Sea Gold: One of the Greatest Stories Ever Written!

          I first stumbled across this delightful little gem at a church library.  Not having the same resources as most public libraries, this branch had to rely on donations, and somewhere along the way, somebody donated the practically unheard-of Sea Gold by John Blaine from 1947.  What a gift—even though it’s out of print, this has to be one of the greatest books ever written!  Why, it’s even more exciting than most Hardy Boys books—with no disrespect for the more famous series, but how many of those can you name that involved an explosion, a diving escape from thugs on a boat, more explosions (these involving grenades), a plane chasing a car, a pursuit on foot through a subway, and, of course, the cover scene where our two stars are trapped in a concrete vault that’s filling up with water—and those aren’t even all the action scenes!  Add in some surprising twists along the way, and you’re in for 214 pages that will make you laugh, gasp, and say “What!”—but more importantly, keep you on the edge of your seat the whole way through!

          But before I tell you what this book is about, you might need to know something about the main characters, especially if this is your first encounter with the series.  Rick Brant is a college-aged (the book’s not specific about how old) genius, son of the famous scientist Hartson W. Brant, who lives with his family on the fictional Spindrift Island off the coast of New Jersey.  He’s accompanied in all the stories by his best friend Scotty, an orphaned former Marine very close to Rick in age, who’s always there with him for the fight.

          In this story, the boys are looking for a job over their summer vacation from college.  Their options are (1) help stack newspapers in the distribution department of the Whiteside, NJ paper, or (2) work at a sea mine.  They instantly pick the second.  And just what is a sea mine?  You aren’t the only one asking; many of the book characters are puzzled about this at first, as well.  As Scotty jokes, “[I] worked in a sea mine once.  I’ll never forget it.  You should’ve seen us drill the shafts.  Straight down a hundred fathoms.  The fish used to watch us go by, and their jaws’d be hanging open. Some of ‘em worked for us.  We hired sculpins to pull the bags up with gold.”

          No, it didn’t quite work like that—this is where the sci-fi twist comes in.  Two friendly entrepreneurs, Doug Chambers and Tom Blakely, have come up with a scheme (quite legitimate) to get metal out of water.  How?  Well, it seems to have something to do with “using the electronic characteristics of the various molecules of the compounds in the solution” to separate dissolved minerals from seawater—a process that could be done with multiple types of metal, gold being the most desirable—don’t worry if that explanation confuses you, it confused Rick himself when he heard it—though his father thought it was an amazing idea indeed.

          Amazing idea or not, though, Chambers and Blakely have been having a lot of trouble at the plant.  For one thing, they can’t get any of the local workmen in the town of Crayville (somewhere near Bridgeport in Connecticut) to work for them because of a rumor that the partners’ process will poison fish (thus killing Crayville’s major industry).  On top of that, someone has been sabotaging the partners’ equipment—Rick and Scotty witness this firsthand when one of the brother’s pressure domes blows up—threatening to doom the partner’s experiment, until a practical joke by Rick and Scotty gives them the answer they need to fix the domes—but as it turns out, this is just the beginning of the trouble Rick and Scotty will face as they help the entrepreneurial scientists out.  The key to the mystery seems to involve a mysterious man named Fred Lewis—a beady-eyed character with an unnaturally white face who always shies away whenever Rick and Scotty shows up—but is he involved in the plot to sabotage the plant?  Who is, and why—and will Rick and Scotty be able to stop them before its too late?

          You’ll have to read the book yourself to find that out, but the 214 pages will fly by in your hands—just be careful with them—my copy’s so old and brittle, the pages are literally falling apart each time I read through it.  One suggestion—if you can get a hold of The Rocket’s Shadow, Book 1 in the series, then read that one first.  The books aren’t all connected to each other, but Book 1 ties in very importantly to this story.  If you can’t find The Rocket’s Shadow, though, don’t worry about it too much—I couldn’t find it either, and I still loved this book the first time I read it.  Ten out of ten stars—a wonderful adventure well worth the read!



Best lines (in my opinion): p. 62, when Rick borrows a plane from his friend Steve Hollis:

“Of course you’ll have to leave a ten-thousand dollar deposit,” [Steve] added.

“What luck,” Rick replied.  “I just happen to have that much in my piggy bank.  You don’t mind pennies, do you?”

“Certainly not. With that many pennies I can repave the runway with solid copper.”

The Wounded Bookshop: Classic Kids’ Mystery and Adventure Series

          Howdy, folks!  Welcome to the Wounded Bookshop!  Have you ever been at a library booksale, an antique store, a thrift shop, a yard sale, or somewhere else and stumbled across an old book that you’d never heard of?  One that you thought might be interesting, but you weren’t sure, because you didn’t know anything about it?  If so, then you’ve come to the right place.  Drawing off my extensive collection of classic children’s literature, many of which books are out of print, I’ll give you a summary of the titles I own, so if you ever run across the book somewhere, you'll have a better idea of whether it’s something you want to buy or not.  This blog will cover everything from the Hardy Boys to the Bobbsey Twins, from the Mercer Boys to Nancy Drew, from Tom Swift to Rick Brant—and more!  My main job will be to summarize the plot, but I’ll also tell you what the series is about (especially for the more obscure series), provide information on the author (whose name often differs from the one on the book’s cover), and maybe provide the story of how I ran across it—which sometimes can be almost as interesting as the story itself!

          Usually, I tend to like books from this era, so most of the titles I review I recommend.  Of course, you occasionally find ones that aren’t as good, and I may review those as well, if only to point out why you might not want to waste your three bucks.  Those children’s novels from the first part of the 20^th Century are some of my favorite books ever written—they’re exciting, they capture the imagination, and they keep the reader entertained for a good two hundred pages or so.

          Obviously, there will be one important limitation on what books can be reviewed here—and that is whether I can get a hold of them or not.  After all, many of the series I plan on reviewing are long out of print, and I only own a few titles from them that I happened to stumble across somewhere.  Thus, no matter how much I like a series, I might not be able to review every book in it—but the one positive about these books’ elusiveness is that it makes finding them all the more rewarding.  There’s no feeling in the world like discovering a book you’ve never heard of, reading it, loving it, and later finding another one in the series and going, “Oh, my goodness!  I love that series!”

          As for how often I post…well, that depends on how often I can get these things read and write a review…so…we’ll find out!

          I hope you enjoy this blog!

          P.S.—A note on the title.  The Wounded Bookshop in Fredericksburg, Virginia, was one of my favorite used bookstores growing up.  My parents didn’t get me many books from it—in fact, I think the only one we did get was Trixie Belden and the Mystery of the Missing Heiress—but it was a terrific read, and the other books they had looked equally fascinating.  It’s out of business now, but its legacy is not forgotten.