Penny Parker Mystery Stories No. 13 - Guilt of the Brass Thieves

People always say that the number 13 is an unlucky number; however, for Mildred Wirt, number 13 is actually a pretty lucky number, as her thirteenth Penny Parker mystery actually got this series back on track after the oddity that was book 12 (Voice From the Cave).  With this book, readers get the Penny Parker and Anthony Parker that they loved so much in books 1 through 11.  Penny is perky, snarky, and downright plucky as she sets about to find the identity of the thieves who are stealing brass from an airplane factory owned by her father's friend, Mr. Gandiss!

Guilt of the Brass Thieves actually takes Penny and her father on yet another vacation (if you recall, they went on a vacation to a nearby beach in the last book!).  I'm guessing Penny must still be on summer break from school, since there is no mention of classes at all in this mystery.  Thus, I supposed it would not be entirely unrealistic for Mr. Parker to take his daughter on another vacation; although, it does beg the question - who is minding the Riverview Star while its owner and editor is away so much?  In any event, this story, like the several before it, features a war-related mystery as someone is stealing brass and copper from the Gandiss airplane factory, which is producing materials necessary for America's war effort.  In fact, Mr. Gandiss indicates that, at the rate the thieves are going, he could stand to lose upwards of $60,000 within one year (p. 29), which, if you stop and consider that this book was published in 1945, would equate to more than $1 million in revenue loss by today's standards!  That's quite a bit of money!  The blatant war references are not abundant, but there are subtle references, such as the fact Mr. Gandiss' factory is made up almost entirely of working girls (p. 30, p. 48), who would have stepped in to fill positions normally held by men when they were called away to fight in the war.

The story opens with Penny and her father waiting for Mr. Gandiss to pick them up in his boat to ferry them across to Shadow Island (p. 2), where he and his wife and son reside.  As it turns out, there is a real Shadow Island in the Gulf of St. Lawrence in Canada, where it is also known as Prince Edward Island.  (This also happens to be the setting for the children's classic, Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery.)  Instead of Mr. Gandiss, however, the Parkers are picked up by his son, Jack, who they quickly learn is irresponsible and rather headstrong when the boat he is using to ferry the Parkers runs out of gas, and he has no anchor and no oars in it either (p. 7)!  As luck would have it (because what would any series book be without its protagonist always having good fortune?), a large riverboat, the River Queen, comes along and provides them passage.  It is here that Penny meets young Sally Barker, a dark-haired girl the same age as Penny (p. 9), whose father owns the ferry.  One must take note here that there was a real steamer called the River Queen that was used as a ferry back in the late 1800s and early 1900s, but which met its ultimate demise when a single lantern on the boat exploded, catching the boat on fire that ultimately engulfed the entire thing (and pay attention to those details, as they actually mirror some events that take place in this mystery...)

While on the steamer, Penny admires a brass lantern that she quickly learns was won by Sally the previous year in a sailboat race, in which she defeated Jack Gandiss (p. 16), for which he is bitter and determined to win it back in this year's race.  "Provided the lantern isn't stolen first," he warns Sally (p. 16), which, to any astute reader, is a clear case of foreshadowing.  When the Parkers finally make it to the Gandiss' home, they finally learn the real reason for their invitation.  "How are you two at solving mysteries?" Mr. Gandiss inquires of them (p. 27).  He proceeds to tell them of the thefts from his factory, and introduces them to two detectives - Jason Fellow and Stanley Williams (p. 28) - who are trying to find the thieves, but have been unsuccessful to date.  Penny and her father agree to help, and Mr. Parker even brings in a prominent detective from Riverview (pp. 72-73), who opens up a faux pawn shop in the hopes of drawing out the thieves who want to sell the brass and copper.  Penny, in the meantime, stumbles upon some clues of her own when she overhears a maintenance man and security guard talking about how "it worked slick as a whistle" (p. 65) after getting Sally fired from a position at the airplane factory where she was trying to earn money for college (p. 66).  This, of course, makes Penny more determined than ever to not only find the culprits, but to clear Sally's name.

There is quite a bit going on in this story.  Not only do we have the thefts at the factory, but there are also the midnight excursions of Jack Gandiss to a rather disreputable establishment owned by Ma Harper and her husband, Claude (p. 104), which Sally describes as the "meeting place of scum of the city" (p. 104).  The brass lantern is then stolen from the River Queen, and Sally feels responsible (p. 111).  Then, thanks to a twist of fate, a taxi ride takes Penny to the Harper residence, where Penny learns Ma Harper is engaged in the selling of black market silk stockings (pp. 138-44).  Penny finds herself in quite the pinch when the Harpers realize she is a snoop, and she spends several chapters trying to escape and evade them so she an report to the police that not only are they selling the illegal silk, but that they also have all of the stolen brass in their basement (p. 147)!   Now, we must stop here and talk about this basement for a moment...

When readers are first introduced to the Harpers' house, it is described as a two-story building "that appeared to stand on stilts over the water" (p. 119), as it was built right on the river side.  Yet, when Penny is inside the Harpers' house after being taken there by the taxi driver, she decides when left alone for a moment, togo down into the basement to see if the brass lantern is down there with the other brass that was stolen (p. 147).  Now, I have to ask - if a house is built on stilts so that it is raised over the water, now in the world could the house possibly have a basement?  By the time she reached this point in writing the story, had Wirt forgotten she described the house as being built on stilts?  Unless, perhaps, a small portion of the front of the house was actually built on solid ground, with only the back on stilts over the water, but even that would be questionable, as the ground so near the riverbank would surely not be sturdy enough to support a basement being built into it.  I suppose this is merely a moment where we need to suspend out disbelief and just move on with the story.

Penny eventually gets rescued by Sally and the River Queen (p. 173), and it is here that Wirt adds a very dramatic, dangerous scene involving an excursion boat that catches fire when the oil tanks explode, causing it to catch fire, threatening not only the lives of the passengers, but also the freight sheds along the shore, which could easily catch fire if any sparks jump from the boat (p. 179).  Sally's father uses some ingenuity to first catch a tow-line to the other boat and drag it away from the shore (p. 181), and after the tow-line breaks, by ramming the other boat repeatedly with the River Queen to force it further away from inhabited shoreline (p. 183).  Sadly, one man, an engineer, does die from the explosion on the other boat (p. 197), but Captain Barker, with Penny and Sally's help, manage to save the lives of everyone else.  

The Harpers and their cohorts are eventually all captured, and Sally does manage to recover the brass lantern, although at a very high cost to her own safety (pp. 194-97).  As a result, she asks Penny to man the sailboat for the upcoming race (p. 203), and not only does Penny win the race, but Captain Barker is awarded a gift of $1,000 for saving the lives of so many people from that excursion boat - a prize that, in today's money, would be approximately $17,000!  He informs Sally this would be the money to pay her way to college, to which she responds, "I only know I'm scheduled for the same place Penny selects! She's been my good luck star, and I'll set my future course by her!" (p. 210).  I believe this is the first time there is any mention of Penny attending college, and hints at the fact that she is at an age where she would be thinking of college, placing her possibly in her junior or senior year of high school.

Wirt uses a considerable number of sailing and nautical references throughout the book, once again affirming her love of the water and all sports related thereto.  In fact, Penny is even described in the story as an excellent swimmer and as someone who enjoys sailing and all water sports (p. 4).  Wirt makes reference to the centerboard of the sailboat (p. 45), the jib sail (p. 79), the tiller (p. 81), and the ultimate description of the sailboat race (p. 205), all of which are provided in detail with the assumption that the reader would be at least somewhat familiar with the terms (or, perhaps, that the reader would look them up and learn more about them as a result of reading the story - such as I did!).  Multiple times in the story, Wirt refers to the boats' inability to land near certain areas of the islands due to the existence of "shoals," which she does not specifically define.  Looking them up, I discovered that "shoals" are naturally formed ridges or bars that are just below the surface of the water and pose a danger to boats attempting to cross that particular area of water. 

One final thing I just have to make note of is the fact that the Gandiss' family has a made by the name of ... wait for it ... Effie!  One has to wonder if this is Wirt's way of poking fun at the Syndicate, since Effie was the substitute housekeeper for the Drews in Nancy Drew's Password to Larkspur Lane (1933, Walter Karig), but more recently in Nancy Drew's The Secret in the Old Attic (1944, Mildred Wirt).  Perhaps since Wirt had just used the character in a Nancy Drew book published one year prior, she used the name in this book as a quick jab at the Nancy Drew series she was writing for the Syndicate.

 

And before I sign off this post, I do want to mention the dedication at the beginning of the book.  On the page prior to the table of contents,  there is a short and simple dedication to Asa Wirt, who was Mildred Wirt's husband at the time this book was written.  At first, I wondered if the dedication was a result of Asa's passing, but upon a bit of research, I learned Asa Wirt did not pass away until 1947, two years after this book was published.  However, he did have a stroke in 1940, and suffered several more thereafter, until he was forced to leave his position with the Associated Press in 1943.  After this, Mildred Wirt took on a job at the Toledo Times in 1944, meaning she was working and taking care of a sick husband at the time this book was written.  This, perhaps is part of the reason why Wirt only had two books published in 1945 - this book and the Nancy Drew title, The Clue in the Crumbling Wall. 

Overall, this book was a far cry better than the previous one, and it definitely re-establishes the character of Penny Parker that Wirt had created and been writing for the previous six years.  I was glad to see her back on track, and it gives me high hopes for the remaining four books in the series.

 

RATING:  9 small couplings of brass out of 10 for another well-written, exciting mystery that proves just how great Penny Parker is as a series detective!