Penny Parker Mystery Stories No. 14 - Signal in the Dark

As we draw closer and closer to the conclusion of the Penny Parker series, I am finding that the mysteries are becoming more and more adult in nature.  From German spies in Voice from the Cave, to brass thieves in Guilt of the Brass Thieves, to a man claiming to have invented a device that will destroy enemy mines in this books, the mysteries have definitely steered into more adult/war territory and away from the standard haunted house, missing relative, lost inheritance, etc. that was the standard fare of children's series books in the 1940s.  Mildred Wirt (Benson) could easily have been writing these mysteries for adults rather than children, and with just a few tweaks, could have marketed these stories to an older audience.  It certainly leaves me wondering what I have in store for me over the last three books in the series...

Signal in the Dark is the fourteenth Penny Parker mystery, published in 1946.  This was the year after the end of World War II, the second great war having officially ended on September 2, 1945.  The memory of the years spent fighting enemy forces was still fresh in the minds of the American people, so it would only be natural that Wirt, who had been working as a reporter for the Toledo Times since the latter part of 1944, also still had the war in the back of her mind.  Thus, it makes sense that she would write stories that would have some sort of military involvement in them.  In this case, the story starts off focused on an explosion at the Conway Steel Plant and the possible saboteur who set off the explosion; however, Penny soon finds herself involved with a professor who claims to have created a laser (of sorts) that can use light beams to destroy mines some distance away!  And interestingly enough, although there are two mysteries, their only connection is one slimy, underhanded flunky who turns out to be helping two different criminals with two different crimes!

Salt Sommers actually takes center-stage with Penny in this mystery, even moreso than he did back in Danger at the Drawbridge.  The first mystery actually begins as a result of Penny talking her father into hiring her at the newspaper, where he is extremely shorthanded.  She is not happy about being paid $25.00 per week (p. 5), and I can imagine, since that equates to only $421.35 per week in today's dollars - that's not a lot!  In any event, before you know it, she gets the chance to actually cover a story when DeWitt asks her to accompany Salt to the Conway Steel Plant, where there has just been reported a massive explosion (pp. 15-17).  Salt unwittingly takes some damning photographs, and through a crazy set of circumstances, Penny is forced to throw his camera, with the film, into the backseat of a passing car in order to keep them from being damaged (p. 24)!  Luckily, she is smart enough to get the license plate (and it is this detail that actually leads Penny to become involved in the second mystery...)

I find it amusing that when Penny informs Salt of what she did, his response is, "Let's call the license bureau and get the owner's name..." (p. 26).  Because, sure, the license bureau is just going to give out that kind of information to anyone who calls them.  Although, who knows, maybe back in the mid-40s, information such as that was not necessarily as privileged as it is considered today.  Goodness knows, Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys obtained information about people from government bureaus like this all the time!  In any event, Penny happens across the car with that license plate when she and Louise are picnicking near Blue Hole Lake (p. 86).  It belongs to a Professor and Mrs. Bettenridge - he is an inventor and says he has developed a "light ray machine which explodes mines ... expects to sell it to the Army or Navy" (p. 85).  Penny becomes suspicious when she sees a man named Webb (p. 96), who happens to be the same man she saw earlier that week down on the pier being thrown into the water (yes, that's a whole 'nother story - I guess you could say that is a THIRD mystery in this book involving the pier, a mysterious boat named the Snark, and exactly what kind of unsavory activity is going on with that boat - and how does it affect the disgraced reporter, Ben Bartell?).

As you may have figured out by now, there is a LOT going on in this book.  Not only does Penny want to figure out who caused the explosions at the Conway Steel Plant, but she wants to help the disgraced Bartell clear his reputation and get a job; she wants to figure out where Salt's camera and his photos are; she wants to uncover the truth about Professor Bettenridge's supposed light ray; and she wants to determine who is breaking into the newspaper's photo morgue and why!  And, oh yes, that's another odd thing about this story.  The photo morgue is apparently located on the top floor of the building in which the Riverview Star is located, because the room has a skylight (which is an odd thing to have over a room where you are keeping photographs that you don  Ver't want to fade or be damaged by light in any way) through which an intruder keeps entering.  That wouldn't be odd in and of itself, but the shack where good ol' Webb is doing his dirty work for the professor also happens to have a skylight that allows Penny and Louise, and later Penny and Salt to look down into and watch the unscrupulous activities!  Don't know that I've ever seen a shack on the edge of a lake have a skylight.  I guess it makes for a great plot device, but it is rather funny that Wirt utilized two skylights like this in the same story!

For those wondering about that "laser" that the professor uses, Wirt is not very detailed about its creation and how it works.  She does describe it as "a complicated mechanism of convex and concave mirrors which rotated on their bases" and "in the center was a small crystal ball" (p. 90).  When the professor is showing them the machine, he does not explain how it works, telling them, "a technical explanation would be too involved for you to understand (p. 91).  Which also means that Wirt herself likely was unsure exactly how a contraption like this would actually work were it real.  Now, in reading the story, one can easily see the device is sort of an early form of what we consider to be "lasers" today - "a device that emits light through a process of optical amplification based on the stimulated emission of electromagnetic radiation" (Laser - Wikipedia).  Wirt's light ray in the story is more stimulated through the use of vibration and a tuning fork, but her descriptions of how it supposedly uses light to strike out at an object in the distance very much has the idea of a laser.

Perhaps Wirt was aware of the principles surrounding lasers, the groundwork for which was actually laid back at the turn of the 20th century with Max Planck's theory that "energy is emitted and absorbed in discrete chunks called 'quanta,' upon which Einstein further built, predicting that "photon emission could be stimulated by the passage of other photons" (History of the Laser).  The actual first laser was not built until after the mid-20th century, when Theodore Maiman began studying infared "optical masers" based on theoretical work by Charles H. Townes and Arthur Leonard Schawlow (Laser - Wikipedia).  And the actual term, LASER (which was an acronym for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation), was not actually used until 1959 by Gordon Gould.  Thus, one could certainly say (as Geoffrey S. Lapin would agree!) that Wirt put forth a very early example, if not one of the earliest, of a form of laser (even if the one in the book is fictional and actually turned out to be a fraud - the concept behind the mechanism is still the idea that would one day develop into the actual laser!).  Very forward thinking of Wirt, indeed!

But, enough of the mechanics and science of things.  Another aspect (besides that) that gives this book the feeling of a more adult story is the descriptions of violence in the story.  Ben Bartell, the disgraced reporter, is at one point found bound and gagged in the bottom of a boat, and upon being rescued, Wirt describes his face as being "bruised, his hair matted with blood, and one eye was swollen almost shut" (p. 195).  Salt and Webb get into a physical fight on board of a moving train, and when one is pushed and the other jumps from the train, Wirt writes that "Webb's face was a sorry sight" and that his nose was crimson, both of his eyes were blackened, and his lips were bleeding (p. 185).  Even worse, when Penny is at the steel plant asking questions about the explosion, she learns that two men were killed, and three or four more were injured (p. 20).  Unlike the Nancy Drew series, which rarely, if ever, actually refers to a death, unless it is something that has already happened in a non-violent way - such as Josiah Crowley's passing in The Secret of the Old Clock - Wirt has no problems including deaths and bloody beatings into her stories!

And with all of these things going on, we must not forget that one little subplot that has absolutely nothing to do with any of these mysteries, but which is probably one of the most fun parts of this book - and that is the venomous villainy of Elda Hunt - the reporter wanna-be at the Riverview Star who is upset at Penny being hired, sure that because she is the boss's daughter, she will be paid more, get all the best assignments, and will be promoted before anyone else!  Described as "blond, with heavily-rouged cheeks with rigid rolls of hair" (p. 6), Elda reminds me very much of Lettie Briggs from the Dana Girls Mystery Stories.  Elda does her best to sabotage Penny's work at the paper, but her own attempts backfire, and ultimately Mr. Parker sees through her and by the end of the book fires her (p. 209).  Which, in a way, is a shame, because Elda would have made a good nemesis to foil Penny's work at the paper now and again, and she certainly would add a nice humorous element to the series!

Before signing off, I should mention that we do get a quick mention of Jerry Livingston, who fans will recall went off into the Army Air Force to serve his country.  Not only does Penny see his empty desk and feel sad about his not being there (p. 11), but she gets a letter from him that reveals he is expected to fly a big bomber to Hawaii (p. 75) - which is interesting, since by this point, the war was already over, so why hadn't Jerry come home yet?  I'm anxious to see if he returns in the next book.

Overall, this was a pretty good read - not one of the best in the series, but it definitely rates up there as one of the good ones.

RATING:  8 cracked plates of bacon and fried potatoes out of 10 for an interesting mystery of science, sabotage, and secrets!