The Mystery of the Brass Bound Box - a Rick and Ruddy book

And the search for connections to Brass-Bound Trunk continues with this blog post, as I take a look at yet another book that has an ever-so-slight connection to the 17th Nancy Drew Mystery Story, The Mystery of the Brass-Bound Trunk.  As with the Three Girl Chums at Laurel Hall, I had no idea this book even existed and came across it by pure happenstance while doing some research on Brass-Bound Trunk.  I discovered that Howard R. Garis, who is quite well-known as an author of many, many, MANY children's books from back in the day, wrote a book that was titled The Mystery of the Brass Bound Box!  Now, tell me that isn't a coincidence?  So, needless to say, I had to hunt down a copy, which I did manage to find on eBay with dust jacket still in tact and for a very reasonable price.  So, I bought it and couldn't wait to read it.

It turns out The Mystery of the Brass Bound Box is not the original title.  A bit of research online reveals that the five-book "Rick and Ruddy" series by Garis, which is about a young boy named Rick and his faithful companion dog, Ruddy, was originally published by Milton Bradley in the early 1920s, but the books were later re-published by McLouglin Bros., Inc. in the 1930s under different names.  The Mystery of the Brass Bound Box was published in 1937, but it was originally Rick and Ruddy Afloat: The Cruise of a Boy and His Dog (1922).  It is interesting to note that although the book was re-titled for publication by McLoughlin, the text itself still refers to the previous book as Rick and Ruddy in Camp (p. 14) and the next book as Rick and Ruddy Out West (p. 261), which were the original titles and renamed by McLoughlin as The Face in the Dismal Cavern and The Secret of Lost River, respectively.  I suppose it was cheaper just to reprint the text as is rather than creating new printing plates to show the new titles to the previous and next books.

 

In any event, this is most definitely a boys' series book, as it focuses more on the adventure and less on the mystery.  One would think that if the title says "mystery" and references a "brass bound box," then those two things would be the focus of the book - but in this case, that could not be farther from the truth.  There is a slight mystery surrounding the brass bound box that Rick's Uncle Tod carries with him, but it appears only a  few times in the story, and the mystery surrounding it comes into play very little.  The main focus on the story is Rick and Ruddy's adventure with Uncle Tod (or Captain Tod, as they often refer to him) as they take a rather lengthy journey on his motor boat down through the rivers along the Eastern seaboard to reach Tod's temporary home in Long River.  Rick's best friend, Chot, comes along for the ride, and the boys have quite a number of adventures along the way, including the search for animal oddities for one "Hokum" Driscoll, who is looking to collect oddities for an exhibition he wants to start up!  This whole side story really has nothing to do whatsoever with the "mystery" of the book, but it does provide some opportunity for adventures - including the boys helping to put out a fire (at which time they find a four-legged hen!), and Rick running into Driscoll while trying to find a doctor to save his uncle's life.  The boys have to fend off would-be thieves from their boat, find a way to capture two large porcupines for Driscoll's exhibition, and help stand guard at Uncle Tod's cabin from a possible Indian attack!

 

The bigger mystery that seems to be central to the entire story is whether Uncle Tod is crazy or not.  Most times, he seems perfectly sane; however, Rick and Chot notice some very odd behavior in the sea captain, from his repeating the phrase "Crazy is as crazy does" to buying a drum and destroying it to dancing wildly on the deck of his motor boat to insisting that local Indians are going to attack.  Rick and Chot go back and forth as to whether Tod may be not quite right - but, ultimately, it ties into the mystery of just who Nick Slither is and what is inside that brass bound box that Rick's uncle deems to be so important.  Garis provides quite a dangerous scenario for poor Rick near the end of the book, as he must fight the rapids of the river during a torrential thunder storm to row a canoe miles downstream to the nearest village to get a doctor for his uncle.  Garis builds up quite the suspense relating just how Rick and Ruddy fare during their escapade (and the art on the cover sort-of depicts this scene of the boy and his dog navigating the rapids), to crashing on a rocky isle in the middle of the wide river, to swimming across the freezing rapids to get to shore, to finding their way to the doctor (with Driscoll's surprise help).   

Now, how, you may ask, does this book in any way compare with Brass-Bound Trunk?  Well, aside from the title, there is the fact that the box (trunk) holds jewels (at least, so the boys believe); the boys are on a cruise for a good portion of the book (albeit on a motor boat instead of a cruise ship); and Rick bring along his pet on the cruise (he brings a dog, while Nancy brings her cat).  Now, this book was originally published in 1922, later republished in 1937, which was prior to the 1940 publication date of the Nancy Drew mystery.  So, this raises the question - did Harriet Stratemeyer Adams, who wrote the outline for Brass-Bound Trunk, get any of her ideas for this book from Garis' book? Could be....

And just for fun, I will warn that this book is definitely a product of its time, as its views of women and Indians are definitely not the same as they are today!  When the boys are waiting for the four-legged hen to lay an egg, and when they give up and put the other eggs in an incubator, she suddenly decides to lay another egg!  Captain Tod remarks, "If that isn't just like a woman? ... She never does a thing you want her to!" (p. 130).  Later in the story, when meeting the Indians, Garis (who breaks the fourth wall a number of times in the story to talk directly to the reader) makes an apology regarding the Indian's actions:

It was the poor pagan's one talent, and we must not blame him for putting it forward on every occasion.  I am not upholding him in it, nor excusing those who encouraged him, who were, perhaps, more to blame than Johnnie Green.  I am aware that it was not the nicest thing in the world to do, but who expects a half-civilized Indian to be perfectly proper?  Not I, for one!  (p. 173)

There are several other references such as this when he talks about the Indians in this book, and it surprises me, since I didn't realize this view of Indians still existed in the 1920s.

As I've made clear in the past, I am not a big fan of boys' series books, because they are more focused on adventure and less on mystery, and I am a big mystery fan, not adventure fan.  That being said, this book would not normally be my cup of tea, and had it not been for the Brass-Bound Trunk connection, I would have never read it, let alone bought it.  But, I'm glad I did, as it does open up the questions about the various similarities between this book and the Nancy Drew mystery and whether it is pure coincidence or a case of copied ideas ... but I suppose that's a mystery that will remain unsolved for now!

RATING:  6 owl-headed roosters out of 10 for filling a story of adventure with some fun scenes, some crazy characters, and a faithful dog!