Penny Parker Mystery Stories No. 11 - Hoofprints on the Turnpike

Okay, we have reached the 11th book in the Penny Parker series, and this one definitely takes a step to the side from all of the stories thus far.  I have been thoroughly enjoying the series, and most of the mysteries have been really good (a few off beat, and a few not great, but still good).  This one, however, strays into some strange territory, and I'm not sure if Mildred Wirt intended it that way, or she was just rushed when writing the story.  The theme of the story is definitely lifted straight out of Washington Irving's short story, with Wirt even referencing the story a number of times throughout this book.  The story also contains the most Gothic elements of any of her Penny Parker mysteries up until this point.  But the odd thing about the story is that the mystery seems to not be the main focus of the story - rather, it's the impending flood that could devastate the valley that is the major plot point!

Hoofbeats on the Turnpike is set in Hobostein County, in the Red River Valley.  Penny is lured to visit the area when an elderly man comes into the Riverview Star to place an ad, offering for sale an old spinning wheel, an ancient loom, and a set of wool carders (p. 5).  But it's his story to Penny about the $500 reward for any information that leads to the capture of a Headless Horseman that has been haunting his hometown that captures her attention.  Unable to look the other way when she is presented with a mystery, Penny drags Louise down to Red River Valley to find out what she can and hopefully earn that $500 (since she is "stony broke" and will not get her allowance for another ten days! [p. 1]).  Anyone who knows the story of the Headless Horseman can probably see where this is going...

Upon arriving in the Valley, Penny and Louise are surprised at what they learn about the folk who live there.  Silas Malcom, the old man who told Penny the story, is very cryptic about the Headless Horseman, and Penny quickly realizes he purposefully told her the story to get her there.  John Burmaster is a wealthy man who bought up nearly all of the local land, displacing many folks, and built himself a large estate to resemble Sleepy Hollow from the story - including a long bridge leading up to the house, just as it was described in Irving's story (p. 22).  Mrs. Lear is an old woman who Penny and Louise first mistake for a witch (for the first time they see her, she is standing over a cauldron outside, stirring something slowly), and although she welcomes the girls into her home to stay while they are visiting, it is obvious she is up to something.  Joe Quigley is the station agent in town, and while he's very nice, he also seems to be harboring some secret when it comes to the Headless Horseman tale.  Byron Schultz, the editor of the Hobostein Weekly, will not even discuss the Headless Horseman to the girls; rather, he is more focused on Burmaster's refusal to help the town fund repairs to the local dam, which he claims is about ready to burst - and if it does, the entire valley will be washed away!

While Wirt somewhat keeps the girls on the track of the "Galloping Hessian" (p. 37), there is just as much talk about the weaking dam and the possibility of a flood.  In fact, the horseman mystery is resolved by chapter twenty, and Wirt spends the last five chapters on the book focused solely on the devastation caused when the dam breaks.  The whole scenario reminds me a lot of the dam that breaks in the first Judy Bolton mystery, The Vanishing Shadow, published in 1932, which also destroyed a town (and that flood was based upon a real event that happened in Pennsylvania).  This Penny Parker book was published in 1944, and just one year prior (which may have been when Wirt was writing the story), there were two dams in Germany that were destroyed, causing considerable damage with flooding and destruction during the war (WW II), leaving one to wonder if those stories might have inspired Wirt's inclusion of the flood into this book.  I was surprised at how graphic Wirt became with her descriptions of the destruction done by the flood waters, and the references to lost lives (although some lives thought lost miraculously turn up alive before the story ends).  The lack of communication due to downed telephone and telegraph lines, the desperation of the town folk in finding food and shelter, the complete loss of homes and livelihoods - it is a somewhat depressing read, which I wonder wasn't too strong for young readers at the time.

An interesting part of this story is Penny's determination to get a story for her father at any cost, even pushing aside her own safety.  She continually uses the excuse of the possibility of a good story to keep returning to Red Valley, and when the flood hits, she not only acts quickly to save a mother and her children from the rushing flood waters (p. 163), but she swims across the swiftly moving water to get into the train station and send off a wire to her father, telling him what has happened (p. 173).  He asks her to giving a running report, but when all the lines go down, she feels she has failed him - yet, she continues to work for the story, and eventually convinces the manager of the local telephone company to let her be one of the first to get out her story to her father when the lines are restored (p. 197).  Wirt even goes into considerable detail about the use of a Lyle Gun to shoot the wire across an expanse of flood waters (p. 194), as well as the portable wire photo equipment she and Salt Sommers use to get photos Penny has taken to her father for print (p. 208).  Thankfully, Wirt does touch upon Penny's conflicted feelings about the loss all of these people have suffered versus the need to tell the story and get it out there for the world to see.  Wirt was good enough to show readers that Penny was not completely heartless - she had to get the story, yes, but her heart went out to the people who had lost so much.

A very good friend happens to have a copy of Wirt's outline for this book, and he let me read the outline - I was surprised to see that the old man who brought the ad into the Star originally held a clipping about the Headless Horseman from a newspaper called the Miami County News.  This took me aback, as Miami is right here in Florida, where I live.  Perhaps her thought had originally been to set the tale in Florida, as her use of "Huntley Lake" for the body of water being held back by the dam happens to coincide with Lake Huntley, a mid-size lake located in Lake Placid, Florida!  This was obviously changed at some point, as Wirt also used the town of Delta in her story, and Delta is a city just west of Toledo (where Wirt was living at the time this book was written and published).

Overall, it was a good read, but there are definitely some questionable elements to the story, such as how do Penny and Louise have the money for all of this traveling, when the book starts off by telling readers Penny is "stony broke"?  And don't these girls ever bathe?  No matter how dirty they get, there are only a couple of references to "rinsing off" in basins of water, never actually taking a bath or showering!  And when Penny buys a camera from one of the towns folk in order to take pictures for her father, she tells him she has no money, but her father will send him the money later - and he says, "you look honest - I'll take a chance" (p. 201).  Seriously, who does that with a total stranger, particularly in a situation like this!  I suppose when reading fiction like this, there has to be a level of suspension of disbelief, so I did not let any of these things take away from my enjoyment of the mystery!

 

There's a lot more that could be said about this book, but it's probably best not to spoil the fun.  And with only six books left in the series to read ... can't wait to see what Wirt has in store next!

RATING:  9 stolen deeds out of 10 for keeping each mystery different, not just in title, but in concept and content.