Flash Evans and the Darkroom Mystery (Flash Evans #1)

This two-book series was one I honestly thought I would never own.  For whatever reason (limited print run, short series, scarcity of volumes), any time these books show up for sale, they are always very high prices, especially if you want them in dust jacket!  Recently, though, I lucked upon an eBay auction where a seller was selling both books in this series, no dust jackets, for only $15.99!  While I was hoping to one day own them with dust jacket, at this price, I could not pass it up.  After all, I can always upgrade to a dust jacket later, or even use a reproduction or photocopy dust jacket.  The important thing was, I now owned Mildred Wirt Benson's two book series about the hotshot newspaper photographer, Flash Evans!

 

Flash Evans and the Darkroom Mystery introduces readers to Jimmy Evans,  a "tall, slender lad with a thick shock of dark, curly hair and frank gray eyes" (p. 3) who is all of sixteen years of age (p. 4).  Having graduated Brandale High School, Jimmy has been trying to obtain a job with any one of the local newspapers as a staff photographer.  As this book opens, he is facing rejection again from Tom Riley, city editor of The Brandale Ledger.  His best friend, Jerry Hayes, tries to convince Jimmy to find another kind of work, but Jimmy is determined to follow in the footsteps of his father, who was "city editor on the Brandale Post ... years ago before the paper folded" (p. 6).  Now that is father was dead, and it was just he and his mother, Jimmy wanted to make a go in the newspaper field.  Fortune shines on Jimmy, however, for that very afternoon, while lunching with his friend at the local drugstore counter, they witness an accident outside, and Jimmy is able to snap some great pictures at the scene.  Not only are Jimmy's pictures important to the police, as the men who caused the accident are wanted criminals - but the photos prove to be Jimmy's way to get himself a job - at The Brandale Ledger!

 

Written by Mildred Wirt Benson, the two Flash Evans books were published in 1940 by Cupples & Leon, who also published her Penny Parker series, as well as her Mildred Wirt Mystery Stories for Girls series of books.  Benson had just completed her Mystery Stories for Girls, as well as her Penny Nichols series, both of which concluded in 1939, and her Trailer Stories series had finished the year prior.  Her Penny Parker series was only in its second year, with books 3 and 4 being published in 1940, and she had books published in the Nancy Drew, Dana Girls, and Kay Tracey series that year, as well.  She had not yet begun her work at the newspaper when these books were written, but her husband at the time (Asa Wirt) had been working for the Associated Press for some time (meaning Benson was no stranger to newspapers, as as evident with her Penny Parker series).  This book (and presumably the second, also) is heavy with the inner workings of a newspaper office, and for this series, particularly with photography, the technical aspects of developing photographs, and the urgency and importance of the right photos for a rushed, important headline story!

 

As far as this first story goes, it does have an overarching mystery involving various incidents that happen in the darkroom at the newspaper - Jimmy, who gains the nickname "Flash" (p. 13), faces embarrassment at every turn. First, some photographs he is developing are damages by a wrong mix of chemicals; then, some photographs he takes of a fire disappear from the editor's desk.  Then, while he is developing an extremely important photo of some criminals he caught in the act trying to burn down a warehouse, Jimmy a/k/a Flash is knocked unconscious and his photos are stolen, getting him in trouble with both the police and his editor. His immediate reaction is to suspect his boss, Fred Orris, who has made it clear from the beginning that he disliked young Flash.  But, as the story progresses, he learns it is wrong to make assumptions about people, and it turns out that a very unlikely person was hiding a secret grudge against Flash, which resulted in all these actions.

 

Alongside this mystery, Benson fills in this book with a number of vignetttes - saving a man from a burning building (which is depicted in the frontis piece), fighting a competing photographer for photos from an out-of-state airline crash, saving a man from an insurance scam racket, flying out to a sinking ocean liner for daring photographs, and several other adventures that allows Flash to prove his worth over and over.  A couple of these scenes appear on the cover art (the burning apartment building and the sinking ocean liner).  Benson knows how to write fast-paced, exciting stories that keep the reader engaged, turning page after page to see what is going to happen next.  Benson's self-created stories are, for the most part, a far cry better than those she wrote based on outlines from others.

 

One can only assume Benson used the "Frank Bell" pseudonym for this series so that a boys' series was written by a "male" author (similar to how male authors used female pseudonyms when they wrote girls' series books). This, of course, is only one of several pseudonyms that Benson used when writing her own stories - including Joan Clark (the Penny Nichols series), Don Palmer (the Boy Scout Explorer series), and Dorothy West (the Dot and Dash series).

 

While I am not normally a fan of boys series, this book is a great opening story for a series, and it's a shame the Flash Evans series only lasted two books.  I am curious to see how the second book compares with this one.

 

RATING:   9 shattered photo plates out of 10 for a fun new character and an action packed new series about a newspaper photographer in the 1940s!