The Sky Racers - a New Prize Guild Library mystery

As many already know, Mildred Wirt Benson was the ghostwriter for a number of the original Nancy Drew books. She also wrote some Dana Girls books, Ruth Fielding stories, and a lot of other books for the Stratemeyer Syndicate. However, it is not quite as well known that Ms. Wirt (Benson) also wrote a number of her own books outside of the Syndicate - the Penny Parker series, the Madge Sterling series, the Ruth Darrow series, etc. In addition to series, she wrote a number of single titles as well - several for the Mystery Stories for Girls series of individual mysteries, along with two books based on aviation for the New Prize Guild Library of books published by Books, Inc. One of those titles was The Sky Racers.

Mildred herself was a pilot and loved to fly. So, it is no surprise that she would write some mysteries that centered around aviation. I happened across this book in a used bookstore in 2019 while I was in Toronto for - you guessed it, a Nancy Drew Sleuths convention. Complete with dust jacket, the book was more than reasonably priced, so I picked it up. I figured, even if I didn't necessarily like the story, it was a Millie book, and therefore, it had a 'round-about connection to Nancy Drew (being written by the author who ghostwrote the Nancys). After nearly a year, I finally pulled it off my to-be-read shelf and gave it a read.

Not gonna lie here - the opening of the book is rather slow-moving and, while it has a couple of slightly "thrilling" cliffhangers (will the plane crash?), they are relatively tame compared with the usually intense chapter cliffhangers in the Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys type series. Additionally, the main character, Jane Grant, does absolutely nothing to endear herself to the reader. Sure, it is evident pretty early on that she is a quick-study, intelligent, determined young woman (similar to Nancy Drew), but she doesn't have the personality that Nancy or some of the other series' girls do that instantly creates a bond with the reader. Rather, Jane falls rather flat as a character, which, of course, made it difficult to really get into the story.  But, I bought the book and it was written by Millie, so I persevered.

The mystery becomes apparent when a plane that Jane's father is building to enter into a race in California keeps having problems. It appears someone is sabotaging his efforts to build a super-fast plane, and Jane suspects the competition, Fletcher Aircraft Corporation, may have something to do with it. Fletcher allows his daughter to fly their plane, which won the prior year's competition, and she is determined to win this one at any cost. Jane doesn't like her one bit, and she wishes she could fly her father's new plane so she could beat the other girl.  Is it the one of the new employees? Is it one of Mr. Grant's two trusted pilots, who both want to fly the new plane? Or is it one of Fletcher's men doing the job? Unlike Nancy Drew, while Jane wonders all these things, she does not take any steps to actually discover the truth.  The only thing she does do is when she sees what she thinks to be a Fletcher plane watching their test run, she takes off in her own plane to follow it back to the Fletcher airfield.

The biggest suspense in the story comes near the end, just as the sky race is about to occur. Mr. Grant's pick of pilots disappears a day before the race, and Jane has to search for him in the nearby mountains, where she thinks his plane may have gone down. Jane, who is a relatively new pilot at this point, has to handle some very delicate maneuvers as she tries to rescue her friend, all the while dealing with the one who put them all in this predicament to begin with!  The ending is definitely filled with more suspense than the rest of the book, and, as anyone could predict, Jane does get her opportunity to fly her father's plane in the race.

Overall, not a very exciting read - the story was alright, but the characters were not overly engaging, nor were they well developed. In reading the story, I did not get invested in any of them, so I didn't really care what happened to them.  So, it is no surprise that while the end of the book hints at more adventures for Jane Grant, no such stories were ever published.

RATING:  4 rows of punch presses out of 10 for at the very least showing that women can do the same things as men (such as flying a plane) with as much, if not more, style and finesse!