The Hollow Wall Mystery - a Mystery Story for Girls

This was the final book I needed to complete my set of Mildred Wirt's Mystery Stories for Girls series, and I was beginning to think I'd never find a copy in dust jacket reasonably priced so I could buy it.  Well, this past December, on my way home from Kentucky, I chanced upon an antique mall in Chattanooga, Tennessee with a booth filed with children's series books.  As I was browsing through, seeing quite a few books I already had in my collection, I came across the spine for this book.  My heart soared, but I kept myself in check, figuring the book would be out of my price range - so imagine my surprise when I discovered the book, with a beautiful, barely chipped dust jacket, was only $20!  Needless to say, I snatched it up and bought it as quickly as I could!  And now, I at last had the chance to sit down and read it, and I must say, I had a sense of deja vu reading the story.

The Hollow Wall Mystery is set in Mexico and stars Sally Lansing and Victoria Rand, along with Victoria's younger brother, Roger.  Victoria's Aunt Margaret had invited the girls to come visit (and Roger ends up hitchhiking his way down from Texas), and the girls become intrigued with the house next door, which has a wall built all the way around it.  At the front gate sits a peon (the term used to describe the poor Mexican men in this book), who keeps an eye on anyone who attempts to enter the property.  The girls believe there is a mystery associated with the house, as its owner, Senor Mercedes, rarely admits visitors and is known to have a strong dislike for anyone American.  Their belief is only strengthened when they see a girl in an upstairs window, who is pulled away before she can communicate with them!  Is the girl being held captive in the house?  Who is she, and how can they find out?

Wirt sets up an ambiguous mystery from the start that eventually develops into a dangerous tale of bandits, stolen inheritances, secret passages, kidnappings, mistaken identities, and a shoot out!  The young girl, Dolores Mercedes, turns out to be living with her uncle, who keeps her isolated, particularly from Americans (and one young man in particular!).  She had thought her father died a wealthy man, but her uncle claims otherwise, indicating he had to bail out her father several times before his passing.  Dolores tells the girls that on his death bed, her father had said something about a hollow wall, but she was unsure the importance of those words, or if he was simply delirious.  Eventually, when Senior Mercedes moves his niece to a remote property, it is revealed the wall surrounding that property has a portion that is hollow, and in that wall, the girls discover a very important clue that could change everything for poor Dolores!

I do like all three of the main characters - Wirt fleshes them out nicely, so they each have their own distinct personalities that work great together.  They have a fun, natural banter when they are joking around, while they compliment one another's strengths when the going gets tough.  Roger has a natural boy's attitude that gets easily bored, while at the same time, is not afraid to take daring risks (such as climbing the tree to place a note in the secret box hidden in the crook of a tree on the neighbor's property - which scene also happens to be the front illustration).  Victoria and Sally are both ready to help poor Dolores, and their debates on course of action feel very natural when reading them.  It's a shame we did not get to see more of these characters in other books.

One scene I did want to make particular mention of involves a mean trick that Roger plays on his sisters (and a young, unwanted suitor of Dolores).  The girls come across Roger playing with two kittens.  When they hear the young sutior next door trying to sing to Dolores, Roger says he is going to put a stop to that singing.  "I'm going to tie these cats' tails together and hang them over a limb of that tree by the wall" (p. 68).  Just like the girls, I was horrified at the thought and could not believe Wirt would write this into one of her books!  When the girls start hearing "the wildest caterwauling imaginable" (p. 69), the girls rush to save the kittens - only to discover Roger was making the noises himself.  I was relieved to know Wirt would not actually have a character follow through with such a horrid threat; but the very idea of doing that to two kittens was enough to stir up my ire!

Another interesting tidbit is seen near the end, when the girls overhear Senor Mercedes making plans with his bandits.  He tells his henchman he will leave instructions "under the three-cornered stone at the end of the trail" (p. 181).  A "three-cornered" stone?   This is basically a triangular-shaped stone, but I find it interesting that Wirt specifically refers to it as a "three-cornered" stone, when just one year prior (1935), the Dana Girls solved "A Three-Cornered Mystery" (which, coincidentally enough, was the last Dana Girls book written by Leslie McFarlane before Wirt took over writing the series with the fifth book).

 

Getting back to that sense of deja vu that I felt reading this book, it probably comes from the fact that the story has a lot of similar elements as Helen Randolph's The Mystery of Carlitos (you can read my review of that book here: The Mystery of Carlitos).  Both stories are set in Mexico, both stories involve three youngsters trying to help a young child claim his/her rightful inheritance, both stories have criminals who are hiding out in a cave, both stories have the girls climbing up a steep trail to reach the cave, and both stories have a dying parent that provides a clue to something important to their nurse while on their deathbed.  Interestingly enough, both books show a copyright of 1936 - thus, if both were published the same year, there's really no way of knowing who got the idea from whom.  I guess like with every series book, we'll just chalk it up to coincidence!  (And there are certainly plenty of those in this story - when Victoria's purse is stolen, the man who catches the thief and returns her purse just happens to be the young American pursuing Dolores; when the three youngsters are invited to stay at a hacienda for a weekend, it just happens to be the very one Senor Mercedes has taken Dolores to keep her away from the Americans; when they visit a pawn shop that will be holding an auction, they just happen to visit the very one where Dolores' stolen pin was pawned; Roger just happening to be on hand to rescue the girls from being held captive in the cave; and so on....)

As in Randolph's book, the use of the word "peon" to describe poor Mexicans is used repeatedly throughout this story.  Other than that, though, there is not really much racist or xenophobic slurs in this story - a lot less than I've seen in some of Wirt's other mysteries.  Further, her descriptions of Mexico and the villages, people, buildings, etc. is not extremely detailed, leading me to wonder if she was writing the book based on research of Mexico rather than actually having visited there.  

Overall, I did enjoy the story, and the girls' plot to foil Senor Mercedes' plan was rather fun to see (or rather, read) them execute.  Definitely a story I would recommend, especially to fans of Wirt's writing.

RATING:  8 papier-mache animal masks painted in gaudy red, black and yellow out of 10 for providing a unique hiding place for an inheritance-saving clue!