Enola Holmes and the Elegant Escapade - the eighth Enola Holmes mystery

And here we are, going back into the world of Enola Holmes, the younger sister of that great detective, Sherlock Homes.  More than twelve years ago, I thoroughly enjoyed reading the first six books written by Nancy Springer.  Then they stopped.  I assumed that was the last I would see of her.  But then the Netflix film was announced, and suddenly, there was a seventh book.  And some graphic novel adaptations of her previous books.  And then an eighth book came out!  I picked it up, but I've had it sitting on the shelf for a bit and have only just now gotten around to reading it (two Netflix films later....)  And I have to admit, as much as I enjoy the films, I do enjoy delving back into the book series, since there are some major differences between the books and the films - differences that I like better in the books.

Enola Holmes and the Elegant Escapade brings back some of the characters from Enola's second case, the one about the "left-handed lady," most particularly that left-handed lady herself, Lady Cecily Alastair.  It seems Lady Cecily's father is none too pleased with the fact that his daughter was kidnapped and is not longer "unspoiled" for purposes of marrying her off to someone of a higher station.  His attempt to marry her off to a cousin failed, so he now has her (and her mother) under lock and key in their home, to the point where Lady Cecily has no clothing, no art supplies, nor anything else in her room that she could potentially use to escape or contact anyone for help.  But when has that ever stopped Enola Holmes?

Springer's story is not exactly one of mystery in this novel, but more one of adventure, as Enola discovers her friend's plight and determines to do whatever it takes to free Lady Cecily from her mother's control.  Springer reminds readers of Enola's growth as a character - a young girl who was on the run from her brothers and the patriarchal system that would keep her under their control has now evolved into a young woman who is no longer fearful of being discovered, who no longer has to pretend to be Dr. Ragostin's wife in order to walk freely on the streets of London, and who no longer has to be ashamed of her chosen profession as a "Scientific Perditorian" (a finder of things lost).  Over the course of the last seven books, Enola has not only aged physically, but she has matured emotionally and has gained the experience needed to make her own way in this man's world.

But poor Lady Cecily is not quite so lucky...

The story is filled with the usual Enola Holmes adventures - disguises, daring escapes, chases through the streets of London, decoding of secret messages, unexpected trips down laundry chutes, and the ever-so-wonderful confrontations with dastardly men who think they have the power over everyone!  Springer does introduce a fun new supporting cast member in this book in the form of Lady Vienna Steadwell - a tall, elderly woman who resides at the Professional Women's Club (funny how the last book I read also featured a Women's Club!) with Enola and a number of other modern women of all ages.  But Lady Steadwell isn't any ordinary woman - she was friends with Enola's mother, and she has a wealth of knowledge about the upper class members of London's high society (as well as some of those who only WISH they were part of that upper class).  She also has that same daring spirit as Enola, and it is ultimately with her help that Enola is able to help free Lady Cecily and her mother from the grasp of the very controlling Sir Eustace Alastair (and, seeing that name Eustace, I can't help think of that annoying little cousin of the Pevensie children from the Chronicles of Narnia).

The book does address one other element concerning Lady Cecily, and that is her fracturing personality.  Born left-handed, her father has been doing everything he can to force her to use her right hand, and what with the kidnapping, the nearly forced marriage, and the isolation in her room added to it, the poor young lady has formed a split-personality - the adventurous, resilient left-handed lady and the meek, submissive right-handed girl.  This changing personality adds a difficulty to Enola's plans that makes it nigh impossible to be sure things will work out as she intends.  I think Springer does a fairly nice job of addressing this situation and the manner in which "left-handedness" was viewed in the late 19th century.

Even despite the lack of a formal "mystery," I really enjoyed the read, and I already have the ninth book on my to-be-read stack, so I am looking forward to what it has in store!

RATING:  10 purple channel marker like hats out of 10 for a truly elegant escapade worth reading!

Velda Gets Knotty - a Velda, Girl Detective mystery novel

Velda Bellinghausen is a very unique character - or maybe not so unique, depending on your point of view.  She's a former follies' girl turned private detective - she's a snarky woman trying to make it in a man's world - she's a noir private eye with the sensibilities of a modern woman - she's a tall, lean, not overly endowed beauty who seems to fall into situations that leave her with little to no clothing - and she's got a great sense of humor!  Velda, Girl Detective is a parody of the noir murder mystery fiction that long ago captured the eyes of many a young male, with their covers showcasing scantily clad women - only in this instance, Velda is the detective, and she's the one solving the crimes (often sans clothing!).

Velda Gets Knotty (and yes, the pun IS intended) is the first prose novel I've read of this character.  I have all three of her graphic novels, which were a real hoot, since they were modeled after the comics of those days long gone, even going so far as to throw in faux ad pages, featuring non-existent items that made fun of all those ads we used to see in comics back then.  They had some really fun stories in them, but the stories were very short and fast paced (after all, telling three or four, or even five, stories in one graphic novel, one must keep it short, sweet, and to the point).  With this novel, author Ron Miller has the opportunity to really flesh out (yes, that pun is intended, too!) the character, the supporting cast, and lead the reader on a few red herrings before finally revealing the killer.

I give Miller credit for crafting a murder mystery that is not easily solved.  A woman turns up badly beaten in an alley, her clothes ripped off, the letter "I" carved into her body, and her hand grasping a string with three knots tied into it.  Despite being taken to the hospital, the woman dies a few days later.  Velda wonders if the person who beat her up came back to finish the job, when another body turns up - with the same letter carved into her body and holding another string with the knots in it (hence, the title to the book).  The only connection Velda can find is a Women's Club.  But could the case be over when the police find the women's purses in the flower box of Velda's downstairs neighbor?  If you said "no," then you'd be right!  In fact, the mystery is far from over.

Miller gives the readers some interesting suspects, any of whom could have committed the murders.  First, there is Harry Tweedy, Velda's downstairs neighbor.  Sure, he claims to be innocent. Sure, he hires Velda to prove he's not guilty.  But what if he is guilty, and his hiring of Velda is nothing more than a ploy to throw everyone off the track?  Second, there is Tryphena Thistlethwayte (yeah, you gotta love those names!), the elderly woman who was rejected membership in the Women's Club.  She may appear elderly and weak, but looks can always be deceiving.  Third, there is Delilah Spoonbill, who was one of the victims - yet, she survived by some miracle.  But was it really a miracle?  Or was it purposefully planned to keep everyone from suspecting her?  Fourth, there's Doctor Patella.  This Boris Karloff knock-off just so happens to fit the description an eyewitness gave to a man who was seen running out of the alley where the first victim was found.  And wasn't it odd that the first victim died not long after he visited her at the hospital (where he insisted he must see her alone)?  

All of the clues keep leading back to the Women's Club, and Velda is certain that the serial killer is somehow connected to the rejection of Thistlethwayte for membership - she just can't seem to find the final piece to complete the puzzle.  And just what does that letter "I" mean and how do the knotted strings fit into it?  These are some really great questions, and when Velda does put everything together, it makes for quite an exciting conclusion (one where Velda, needless to say, finds herself very scantily clad!).  Even though this is a parody of sorts, the mystery is actually very well plotted and wonderfully written.

After reading this one, I definitely want to track down and get the other books Miller has written - if they are anything like this, they will be a blast to read!

RATING:  9 cold cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer out of 10 for a faux look back at the noir crime fiction of yester-year as told today!

Whitman Mystery Stories - Polly the Powers Model: The Puzzle of the Haunted Camera

This latest Whitman Authorized Edition that I read is a bit off-beat.  Of course, it is written by Kathryn Heisenfelt, and based on the previous Whitman books I've read written by her (Bonita Granville and Betty Grable), I suppose I should not have expected anything different.  Both of those stories were odd, to say the least, and this one follows their lead.  This book came out in 1942, the same year as the Bonita Granville mystery, while the Betty Grable story did not get published until the following year.  If I were to base all Whitman mysteries on these three books, I would likely stop buying and reading them; however, since I have read a number of them that do have enjoyable stories, I will simply chalk these up as exceptions to the rule.

Polly the Powers Model: The Puzzle of the Haunted Camera does not feature an actual model from the John Robert Powers modeling agency.  Instead, while nodding to the actual modeling agency in New York, Heisenfelt creates a fictional character to be the "Powers Model" of the story.  Polly Hartigan is the model, who is returning home after "making it big" in Ne York City.  She is met by her younger sister, Susan, who is not only eager to follow in her sister's footsteps, but seems to be hiding some secret about the family.  Soon enough, Polly finds that a mystery awaits her at home, as everyone is a bit "off."  Her father, Peter Hartigan, is more than just depressed about his failing hardware store.  Her Aunt Floss, who lives with them, seems more worried about things than ever before.  And her Aunt Vide, to whom Polly ad been sending part of her paychecks to help with family expenses, appears to have not told anyone about the money, leaving Polly to wonder what she has done with it.  A general sense of gloom hangs over the entire household, and no one will tell Polly exactly what is going on.

And this is the primary focus of the first half of the book, as Polly is constantly wondering what is wrong; yet, she never comes right out and asks anyone, other than Susan, who refuses to tell her and just keeps asking Polly to take her back to New York with her as soon as possible.  The constant conundrum of "what's wrong with my family?' gets weary real fast, and I had to force myself to trudge trough the story to hopefully reach a point where the story moved forward in any meaningful way.  It's not until Polly inadvertently takes a photo of her sister than has a sinister man in the background does the mystery start to unravel.  Aunt Vide sees the photo and collapses, leading Polly to finally start to figure out that her aunt is involved in something shady.  

 

After the halfway point of the book, Heisenfelt finally gets things moving, and Polly starts taking some affirmative steps to solve the mystery.  She questions the attorney who lives nearby, she pushes Susan to reveal what has her so anxious to leave home, and she engages the help of her father's assistant at the hardware store to keep watch on the house in case that mystery man makes an appearance.  The climactic face-off between Polly and the stranger is really the only exciting moment in the story, and it is here that Heisenfelt provides readers with something worth reading.  Polly's ingenuity and bluff leads the stranger to make a mistake that leads to his defeat and capture, and the whole truth finally comes out.  It's just a shame that it took so many pages in the book to reach a truly readable point.

 

I'm not familiar with the artist for this book, Hedwig Jo Meixner.  The only other book I've read where I've seen Meixner's illustrations was Nancy Craig and the Mystery of the Fire Opal, and the illustrations in that one were actually better than this one.  The line drawings in this book were not bad, per se, but I didn't find them as nice to look at as those done by Henry E. Vallely (who seems to have illustrated quite a number of the Whitman books I've read).

Something I noticed in this book (and other Whitman mysteries may be the same, but I hadn't really noticed before now) is that the chapters are exceptionally long for a children's mystery.  The story is 246 pages in length, yet it only has 13 chapters.  The chapters run anywhere from 14 to 23 pages in length, which is somewhat longer than the chapters in children's mystery series from Cupples & Leon, Grosset & Dunlap, and and other publishers.  I don't think that had any effect on the story, but I did find it interesting to note.

This is a Whitman mystery that I would probably not recommend.  Now that I've seen a semi-theme with the Kathryn Heisenfelt books (that theme being "odd and not that great to read"), I'll likely be a bit choosier when picking up the Whitman mysteries - if I see one that is authored by her, I will probably put it back on the shelf!

RATING:  4 games of find the hidden clothespins out of 10 for at least giving readers a mystery that is a bit out of the ordinary and not just standard fare.

Courageous Wings - a New Prize Guild Library mystery

This book is the second of two flying stories that Mildred Wirt (Benson) wrote under The New Prize Guild Library banner of books.  The first was The Sky Racers (you can read my review here: The Sky Racers), indicated as book 10 of the collection on the back of the dust jacket for this book, while this book is listed as book 13 of the collection.  There are quite a number of classic books on this list, including some by Louisa May Alcott, Robert Luis Stevenson, Charlotte Bronte, Arthur Conan Doyle, Jane Austen, Lewis Carroll, Charles Dickens, and others.  Thus, Wirt must have felt some level of honor to have her books placed in the same category as such great writers.  It's just a shame these two books about young aviators were not on par with those other stories.

Courageous Wings is very similar in subject matter and plot to The Sky Racers, a fact I did not realize until I went back and looked at my review of that first book (which was nearly four years ago).  Both books deal with a young girl who is learning how to fly.  Both stories center around a competitor who is trying to sabotage the new invention of the girl's father.  Both books also feature a plane crash in the mountains.  The main differences are in the actual protagonists (in the first book, Jane Grant is eager to fly her father's plane, while in this story, Cleo Bowman, wants to fly, but at the last moment, becomes fearful until she is put in a position where she must fly a plane in order to save her father's life!) and the details surrounding the flights (Jane's father has entered a race, while Cleo's father is trying to rebuild a failed business by doing stunt flying with traveling circuses).

Oddly enough, the book opens not with the main character, but rather with Jim Sherman and Shorty Dawes, an airplane pilot and his mechanic.  While they do play a large part in the story as the supporting cast to Cleo and her father, Martin Bowman, they are just that - supporting characters.  So, I found it strange Wirt would begin the story with these two men, telling the story from Sherman's point of view.  Even when Cleo does make her appearance (p. 8) in the first chapter, the POV remains with Sherman through the first and second chapters. It it not until the third chapter, when Sherman, Dawes, and Cleo come face-to-face with Marcus Reman, a man claiming to be a friend of her father (but who turns out to be a thief who tries to break into the Bowmans' home safe) that the point-of-view begins to change to Cleo, and she takes more prominence in the story.

As with Jane Grant in The Sky Racers, Cleo Bowman in this book is not a very interesting character.  She is nowhere near as determined as Jane from the first book, and her indecisiveness regarding whether she will dare to fly a plane on her own quickly becomes tiresome.  Her doubt and constant questioning of herself is not something most people want to read in a story - they want their protagonists to be strong-willed, determined, and daring.  Perhaps Wirt was simply playing Cleo in this manner, so that when she does take to the sky, in a plane with which she is completely unfamiliar to boot!, her ability to overcome her own fears is meant to be all that more impactful.  Unfortunately, for me, it did not have any impact at all; rather, it was sort of like reaching a point of "Finally!"  

I will give Wirt some credit for creativity, however, as Cleo ultimately unravels the mystery of what really happened between her father and his former business partner that caused the split between them and pitted them as bitter rivals against one another.  This reveal does not provide a bit of a twist, as the person you think is truly behind everything turns out to be just another victim of a criminal determined to get revenge on a perceived slight years prior.  

One interesting thing I must point out is the use of Ardmore City in this book.  Ardmore City is where Jim Sherman and Shorty Dawes run a private airplane company, and it is where Cleo first meets the aviator and his mechanic.  I raise this point because Wirt also used "Ardmore" as the name of the college that Ruth Fielding attended in her series, and it was also the name of the college the girls in Ghost Gables were attending.  Makes one wonder what importance "Ardmore" had to Wirt, that she would use it again and again in various books.

Overall, it's not one of Wirt's better books.  Despite her later love of flying, it seems to me that Wirt's early books that dealt with aviation just did not have the same quality of stories and characters that her mystery stories did, as neither The Sky Racers nor Courageous Wings were good reads in my opinion.  Having never read the Ruth Darrow series, which I know is one of Wirt's earliest series, I cannot comment on those.

RATING:  4 long-endurance engines out of 10 for giving us an Oriental servant (Lee Sin) that, while definitely a stereotype, offered some humorous (and in some instances ingenious!) moments in the story.

Mary Perkins, On Stage - Volume Six

It's always a pleasure to come back to the next volume of Leonard Starr's famous newspaper strip.  I'm still in awe of the fact that Classic Comics Press has been able to gather ALL of the strips from the publications lengthy run and collect them into 15 volumes for fans to re-read after all these years.  The fact that so many of the strips (and original art!) survived all of these years is a feat in and of itself.  And so, after five volumes and just as many years worth of strips, picking up volume six is like starting the next season of a television show - getting ready to sit back and once again follow the lives of Mary Perkins, her husband, her manager, and all of the other supporting cast members who fill this fictional world of life in the theater!

Mary Perkins, On Stage volume six features the newspaper strips from March 10, 1963 through October 11, 1964.  As this volume opens with Mary and her husband, Pete, arriving home to New York, where they are met by Mary's manager, Nat Blessing, and his nephew, Webster Ivie.  Like the saying goes, there is no rest for the weary, and Nat already has Mary signed up for her next big project - a movie being filmed in France!  The subject of the movie is the "big European races," and the star is Joe Kulak, a famous actor that has even Mary weak in the knees.  But, as Nat so aptly informs his nephew, "The more magnificent the actor, the more magnificent the nut!"  And thus begins the latest adventure in the dramatic life of actress Mary Perkins.  She and Ivie fly to France, where they discover trouble is already brewing. Kulak is a self-indulgent, self-absorbed ladies man who has the irrational fear that the automobile made specifically for him for the film hates him!  What's worse, the mysterious Madame Bauer has also arrived in France, and she seems to enjoy taunting the actor.  Mary, on the other hand, becomes quite enamored with the sports car - which ultimately leads to disaster when Madame Bauer sabotages the car, thinking Kulak will be driving it!  This, of course, leads directly into the second story...

 

Before we look at the second story, though, I must make mention of the sports car, which becomes a very important character in the supporting cast of this story.  I know what you are thinking - a car is an inanimate object, so how could it be a character?  It's not like the car is alive (like a Transformer) or sentient (like Herbie, the Love Bug) - yet, Leonard Starr manages to give the car its own character, and all in a very natural way.  Readers only get glimpses of the car in the first few strips of this story, but in the March 21, 1963 strip, astute readers will notice something unique - while we can only see a small portion of the left front side, it is the headlight, cracked from the accident that occurred while Kulak was driving, that gives the appearance of an angry eye looking back at the ego maniacal driver.  From that moment forward, Starr manages to show how the car "feels" in such nuanced ways ... such as the car's front grill appearing to smile as Mary drives the car in the March 29th strip ... or the car growling when Kulak tries to start her in the March 31st strip (yet starting right up when Mary turns the key in the same Sunday strip).  Using shadows, angles, and other neat little artistic tricks, Starr manages to bring the car to life without actually giving it any unnatural elements - all of which add a humorous element to a strip that is so often steeped in drama.

And speaking of drama, plenty of that unfolds as Mary's story continues following her car accident.  Mary's face is disfigured, and the mysterious Dr. Bauer (does that name look familiar?  it should!) is the surgeon called in to repair the damage.  Only, the doctor has a morose view of beauty and love, based on his own relationship at home, and he fails to restore Mary's beauty in order to determine if her true nature is only skin deep.  "...if one is ugly, people often fail to look for the decent, sometimes beautiful person underneath! ... in the same way a beautiful face can blind us to the ugliness behind it!!"  A very poignant statement about human nature - which proves only too true when Pete arrives and make the startling revelation about Madame Bauer's true identity - for she is none other than Anya Kapek!  (Those with good memories might remember that Anya once tried to convince Mary she was actually Pete's wife....)  Dr. Bauer realizes his mistake and performs another surgery to restore Mary's beauty - and then takes his wife on a final journey to return her to her homeland ...

Meanwhile, Pete becomes involved in an entirely new story when he is trying to follow the Bauers.  When he stops to ask for directions, he stumbles across a mystery involving a gruff old man who seems to be hiding something ... or someone! ... from the world.  Before he leaves, though, an old photograph is thrown from an upstairs window - a photograph that Pete recognizes as the one photograph that set him off on his career as a photographer!  Kristin Kara was a famous actress, but a recluse who never allowed herself to be photograph - but she allowed Pete that one photo.  For that photo to show up so unexpectedly must mean something, and Pete is determined to learn what.  Their questions are soon answered when Kristin Kara shows up with the old man, Torwald Yavel, in tow.  Kara is ready to come out of retirement - but the twist is that it is really her daughter who is going to take to the stage, not Kara herself!  The mystery deepens, as there is something off about Kara's daughter, and Pete is determined to learn the truth.  Mary pretty much takes the backstage (no pun intended!) in this story, as Pete plays detective in order to help Kara and her daughter from what he believes to be the iron grip of Yavel. But, as Starr has proven time and again with his writing, everything is not always what is seems.

From here, Mary once again steps into the limelight, as she is offered the chance the chance of a lifetime to star as Ophelia in a production of Hamlet for live television.  Chapman Dane is involved, and everyone is excited at the prospect - especially Earl Falter, who is set to play Hamlet.  The oddball out is Adam Budd, who is cast as Laertes - until Dane, on his death bed, calls for Adam Budd, intending to give him the secret to becoming the greatest actor that ever lived!  Overnight, Budd becomes a sensation, and the whole world demands to know the secret that Dane passed on - but Budd won't say.  This only drives the public crazier, resulting in Budd taking Falter's place as Hamlet, which enrages Falter.  As it always seems to be, there is more drama going on backstage than on the actual stage!

The resolution of that tale leads right into the return of the infamous Johnny Q, who arrives in town at the same time a gangster by the name of Mr. Grinch is discovering he must do something quick to solve some tax problems he is having - and his lawyer suggests he invest in a God-awful play in order to lose money!  With Nat Blessing out of town, his nephew Ivie is in charge, and he suddenly finds himself in charge of a new play being completely financed by ... yup, you guessed it!  Obviously, things are not going to go well here.  Mary, of course, is cast, and even she can't make sense of this new play, "Below the Beneath."  But this is only a part of the story - for the theater where the play is rehearsing holds some sinister secrets, and when Mary stumbles across them, she finds herself the prisoner of a madman hiding beneath the theater itself!  It's up to Johnny Q to not only stop Mr. Grinch, but he must save Mary from the clutches of a theatrical maniac.

The final two stories in this volume are not quite as life-threatening, although they are life-changing for some of the characters.  The first gives us some insight into Mary's past, as she returns home to Holmesfield at the request of her childhood friend, Christy Chalmers.  It turns out Christy has become somewhat bitter as she has aged, having gained some weight and discovering she is no longer the "right type" to play the starlet in her local hometown plays.  Mary brings her some much needed encouragement, and before you know it, Christy starts exercising, dieting, and turning herself back into the beauty she once was - and Mary is able to get her friend a chance to act in New York!  Christy jumps at the chance, ready to leave her husband behind and begin a new life (one that includes the director!).  With a bit of prodding, however, Christy realizes that her husband has followed her all the way to New York just to be with her, and the two are reunited; while, unbeknownst to Mary, her agent is setting up her next acting gig with Maynard King, a producer with a rotten reputation.  In fact, he has a brutish bodyguard who sometimes uses force to rid King of any unpleasant visitors - including a man whose sister tried to kill herself after King promised to make her a star, then tossed her to the side for another actress.  Mary takes on the job despite King, and she soon becomes friends with a young woman named Holly.  But everything becomes tangled when Mary witnesses Kagle (the bodyguard) beat up someone, and as she prepares to give her statement to the police, Holly shows up and reveals she is Kagle's daughter!  This becomes another story that is less focused on Mary and more on Holly and her budding romance with King (who gives her a false name in order to stay safe from Kagle).  Holly and King ultimately run away to get married, but upon their return, and through a horrible mistake, Kagle knocks out his own daughter, thinking he is attacking her new husband!  King reveals his true feelings for Holly, and father and daughter are reunited, welcoming King into the family as Mary and Pete watch on...

The final panel of the October 11, 1964 strip teases readers with what is to come with the next story, as Morgana D'Alexius is seen waiting at the airport for the arrival of one Major Volkov - who will obviously be playing an important part in the next chapter of Mary Perkins' life!

As always, Starr's art in this volume is absolutely gorgeous.  His panels vary in detail, shading, and angle, setting the mood for each scene and drawing the reader's eyes to what is truly important in each panel.  His attention to even the most minute details, such as a basket of bread on the dinner table, or the curtains hanging in over a background window, is astounding, and his ability to keep each scene consistent with those that came before is awe-inspiring.  One thing I did notice in this volume is Starr's use of a bit of caricature with some of the villains - such as Yavel's almost Lurch-like appearance in the story about Kristin Kara, and Mr. Grinch's cartoon-gangster appearance (resembling some of the gangsters you might see from a Bugs Bunny cartoon, with the short stature, high forehead, and oversized lips).  I also noticed that with the storytelling, several of the stories moved Mary and Pete to the background, as other characters took center stage, with some strips not even featuring Mary or Pete at all!  While I realize that having only three panels in each daily strip leaves little room for advancing the story, it's odd to see three or more daily strips that do not feature the title character (such as the strips from December 16, 1963 through December 18, 1963, where Mary only appears very briefly in only two of the nine panels!).  But the stories are still quite engaging, and Starr manages to keep them fresh and unique (from car racing to jealous actors to gangster hi-jinks to monsters under the stage to a broken marriage).  Mary Perkins, On Stage is truly a fast-moving soap opera that definitely has me hooked for the long-run!

RATING:  10 booming blasts from a construction site out of 10 for taking the story of Mary Perkins to new heights, even going so far as to mar the beauty of the lead character for the sake of the story!

The Secret on Set - The Hayley Mysteries, Book 3

Well, I've reached the third final book in The Hayley Mysteries series.  This has been an enjoyable little series, and while aimed at early readers, it has still presented some fairly well-plotted mysteries that, I have no doubt, will make its intended audience really think to figure out.  The main character and her supporting cast are fleshed out nicely, and by the end of this book, you definitely have a feel for them (and find yourself wishing more stories were to be told!).  And the author, Hayley LeBlanc, is a social media star, and at only fourteen years old, she has already garnered a small level of "fame."  Whether she fully wrote these stories or simply developed the characters and plots, while others ghost-wrote the mysteries, we will likely never know - but it doesn't change the fact that the books are fun to read.

The Secret on Set has Hayley and her best friends (and co-stars in the show, Sadie Solves It) are preparing to film the Halloween episode of their series.  The producers have snagged a special guest star for the episode - Alex Vangoth, who is a widely celebrated actor, known mostly for the television show in which he plays a vampire.  Hayley is certain he will be playing a vampire in this episode, but neither she nor her friends are able to know for sure, since Alex manages to constantly avoid them, remaining aloof when he is forced to interact with them.  To make matters more stressful, a well-dressed man that Hayley is certain is a television exec begins appearing on the set, and she wonders if he has heard about the trouble they have previously had (in the last two books) and is considering cancelling the show.

And that's when things start happening.  Items of clothing disappear from the wardrobe department.  Food goes missing from the craft services table.  Props are moved around on set just prior to filming.  Schedule changes are misplaced and not given out, causing actors to miss their call times.  And the newest production assistant, Kara, seems to be in the middle of everything, as she has been spotted in several places where the incidents have occurred.  She insists she is innocent, but after one too many mishaps, she is fired from the show.  Hayley, Cody, and Aubrey believe Kara, and they begin to look for clues that will lead them to the real culprit.  Is is Alex Vangoth, who is unhappy about having to do this show?  Is it the TV exec that Hayley has seen, wanting to see the show fail?  Could it have anything to do with the super-secret movie that is being filmed in complete secrecy just a few sound stages away?  Or is there someone else prowling around in the sound stage?

 

Oh, and what about the disappearing dead bodies?!   Yes, you heard that right.  Hayley pretty much stumbles across a body in an empty sound stage, but when she brings back security, the body is gone.  Then a second body is discovered and disappears.  And a third.   There is definitely something strange going on, and Hayley and her friends are dead-set on finding out what it is!

 

I have to wonder what further adventures Hayley, Cody, and Aubrey could have had if this series had continued.  The idea of a teen sleuth who is also a television star is somewhat different (we've had nurse sleuths, stewardess sleuths, theatre sleuths, sister sleuths, brother sleuths, reporter sleuths, and so on, but I can't think off-hand of a sleuth who was also a television star, unless you count the Whitman authorized editions from back in the day), and having mysteries set in and around a movie studio could have had countless opportunities for mysteries to pop-up!  But, alas, we shall never know, as The Hayley Mysteries seems to have been retired after this third entry.  What a shame...

 

RATING:  9 empty coffins out of 10 for a great case of mistaken identity, disappearing bodies, and sabotage all rolled into one!

The Cases of Susan Dare

It's not often that I pick up and read a vintage "adult" novel - most of the "grown-up" mysteries or sci-fi/fantasy books that I read are recent publication.  But once in a great while, an older book will catch my fancy, so I'll pick it up and give it a shot.  Such is the case with this one.  I can't tell you where I first came across this book, character, or title, but I knew that I wanted it - and I searched quite a while before I found a decent copy in dust jacket in fairly good condition.  A female detective is sure to spark my interest, and the name alone - "Susan Dare" - was enough to pique my curiosity.  So, I bought it and finally sat down to read it.

The Cases of Susan Dare is a collection of six short tales written by Mignon C. Eberhart.  This is Eberhart's only short-story collection, but this author, dubbed "America's Agatha Christie," was quite prolific - she wrote mystery novels published from 1929 all the way to 1988 - that's some career!  From what I found online, her mysteries mostly featured female protagonists (yay!), and it appears she only wrote one series, the Sarah Keate mysteries (consisting of seven books, the first five of which were made into films!).  Thus, it looks like I picked an author whose books I will definitely be hunting down!  Especially the Sarah Keate mysteries, if they are anywhere near as well written as the Susan Dare stories (plus I need to see if any of those movies have ever made it to DVD...).

Susan Dare is a mystery writer who somehow finds herself at the scene of a murder time and time again, and it falls upon her to figure out these seemingly unsolvable cases.  Unlike so many female sleuths of today, who are fearless, determined, and seek out mysteries to solve, Susan Dare is a reluctant sleuth.  She is hesitant to become involved and is usually coerced into it; she becomes weak-kneed  and fearful when she realizes who the killer is, afraid she may be the next victim; and she tries so hard to stay away from situations that could potentially become dangerous (and yet, there she is again and again put into those very situations!).  Despite these drawbacks, Susan Dare is a very likable character with realistic flaws that would be present in a real person (let's face it - how many mystery authors would REALLY want to find themselves faced with a dead body and the task of figuring out who the killer is?!).

The six short stories were originally published in 1934 in The Delineator, which was an American women's magazine published in the late 1800s and early 1900s.  From what I could find, it appears the stories were first collected into book form in 1935, although the book I has a publication date of October 1942, so it is clearly a later edition.  Each story is 47-53 pages in length, but they are each complete mysteries, although admittedly, in most of them, the reader does not actually get to see the killer brought to justice - we simply see Susan solving the crime and revealing the identity to the police for them to apprehend.  That does not make them any less interesting, nor any less satisfying, though.  In fact, the brevity of the tales and the lack of final "resolution," so to speak, actually adds to the mystique of the stories.  Oh, and I should probably mention that Susan does have a cohort of sorts, a young reporter by the name of Jim Byrne, who she turns to often to help rescue her from the dangerous situations in which she finds herself.

"Introducing Susan Dare" is the first story, in which readers meet Susan Dare, who is visiting with a dear friend, Christabel.  When Christabel's former love interest turns up dead in the estate's library, Susan finds herself questioning which of Christabel's family who live on the estate could have killed the man in cold blood.  "Spider" tells the tale of a young woman who is overcome by fear in her own home.  When the woman's adopted sister is killed, it appears the young woman is the only possible suspect, Susan must uncover the truth before the wrong person goes to jail.  In the "Easter Devil," a wicked-looking carved idol is believed to be the source of all the trouble happening in the Denistry home - but the one who killed the family's butler is not finished, and Susan tries a desperate ploy to trap the killer before he or she strikes again.  "The Claret Stick" is one of my favorite stories, being set in the theater, where Susan must figure out how the leading man was killed on an empty stage, with no one present.  (This story kind of reminded me of the Nancy Drew TV episode from the '70s show, "A Haunting We Will Go")  "The Man Who Was Missing" takes Susan to a boarding house, where a woman's fiance has disappeared, and although everyone else believes he simply got cold feet, Susan begins to suspect foul play may be involved and must find a way to prove it.  And the final story, "The Calico Dog," features a case of two men both claiming to be the son and heir to an older widow, who wants nothing more than to be reunited with her real son who disappeared some 20 years prior - but one of them is a fraud, and when the woman's trusted family friend turns up murdered, Susan must figure out if one of the men claiming to be the son is a murderer!

Reading these stories, I could easily envision them being weekly episodes of a television show.  I'm actually surprised no one has ever picked up on that idea, as the name and character truly lend themselves to an ongoing serial drama about a female writer who solves murders (hmmm ... maybe someone did happen across that idea and simply turned it into a show starring Angela Lansbury ...).  In any event, the stories were well-written, engaging, and filled with plenty of suspense and surprises - and I'll readily admit that despite my years of reading mysteries, several of these stories had me stumped!  Definitely a recommended read for mystery lovers!

RATING:  10 ropes and pulleys holding the flys and drops out of 10 for superbly written murder mysteries with a fantastic "new" lady detective.