Kay Tracey Mystery Stories No. 2 - The Strange Echo

In 1934, the Stratemeyer Syndicate offered  up a new series for girls - the Kay Tracey Mystery Stories.  The first book in the series, The Secret of the Red Scarf, was not a particularly good read - it was felt like a jumbled hodge-podge of circumstances and events that were mashed together to create a mystery.  While this second book in the series was written by the same ghostwriter, Elizabeth M. Duffield Ward, I thought perhaps since it was based upon an outline from a different Stratemeyer sister (Harriet, instead of Edna), the story might be more straightforward and more coherent.  Unfortunately, that was not the case.

 

The premise for The Strange Echo is a bit unique, so I can at least give the Syndicate credit for trying to come up with something different.  The main mystery involves some unusual echoes that are heard when Kay Tracey is visiting her friends, Wilma and Betty Worth, at Lost Lake.  The echoes seem to form partial words, but they do not make sense, and Kay must figure out what the echoes mean before she can figure out what is really happening at Lost Lake.  And this is where the mystery starts to go off the deep end, so to speak. It seems in addition to "the strange echo" that is heard, the tourist community is also plagued by thunder and lightning storms that bring no rain; odd glowing lights coming from a nearby valley; ghostly apparitions seen in that valley; and other sundry incidents that have Mr. and Mrs. Worth concerned about the girls going out to investigate the echoes.  Of course, Kay is not afraid, as she does not believe in the supernatural, and she knows everything has a logical explanation.

 

What is not logical are the numerous other mysteries in this book that, eventually, all tie into the strange events taking place at Lost Lake.  First, there is the foreign woman Kay meets in a department store in town who she overhears talking on the phone about echoes in the valley and who appears to be hiding something in her purse.  Second, there is the local bookseller who is upset because an antique book written in a foreign language has had pages ripped out of it, ruining its value (can you see where this is going?).  Third, there is the elderly man Kay and Mr. Worth pick up on their way to Lost Lake who is also headed to the lake in an attempt to locate a fortune his parents supposedly buried many years before when the area was destroyed by a landslide, which, coincidentally, is what created the lake (more on that later).  Fourth, there is the mysterious cabin deep in the woods, in which Kay sees a young man, along with the foreign woman AND the elderly man she met on her way to Lost Lake! Fifth, there is the "Scientific Instrument Company," from which a "sound device" is stolen.  The story has so many threads, Kay and the Worth twins hop from one direction to the next, and one wonders how in the world all of these could possibly be tied together by the end?!?!

 

In addition to the strange echo being heard, a major emphasis is placed on Mr. Nelson and his search for his family's treasure in Faraway Valley (yes, that is the name given the valley just below Lost Lake).  He appears repeatedly in the story, and Kay eventually learns that his story about the town being buried beneath a landslide many years ago, ultimately forming Lost Lake in the area, is true.  What is interesting is that Lost Lake is, indeed, a real lake located in Oregon that, once a year, completely disappears down a big hole in the lake bed (which hydrologists believe fills during the winter when streams leading to the lake are high, and then during the summer when rainfall lessens, the lake slowly drains).

 

What is more interesting about Lost Lake, however, is that 28 years after this book came out, the Stratemeyer Syndicate published their 24th Dana Girls mystery, titled, aptly enough, The Secret of Lost Lake (1962).  And before you ask, yes, the mystery centers around a community buried under a landslide many years prior, which landslide created the "lost lake."  There are other elements from this Kay Tracey mystery that appear in the Dana Girls' book - an elderly individual (in this case, a woman), whose parents were killed in the landslide, searching for a treasure in the area; unscrupulous people trying to find the treasure first; and a clue to the mystery being heard in a mysterious echo bouncing around in the valley!  In addition, one of the characters in Lost Lake is named "Simpson," which is also the name of the department store in The Strange Echo where Kay overhears the foreign woman speaking.  I suppose Harriet was running short on ideas for stories in the early '60s and decided to simply recycle a plot from a series that was not in print at the time!

 

A few tidbits from the story that are worth noting - the first is when Mrs. Tracey and Kay's cousin Bill are discussing the young sleuth, Mrs. Tracey observes that "Kay is like her father ... Roger was a newspaperman by profession, but I always felt that he should have been a detective.  He had a passion for apparently unimportant little details that most people would have passed by.  He used to work out the solution of criminal cases just for fun, and he was usually correct" (pp. 17-18), to which Bill replies, "He would have made a good lawyer.  And his daughter is like him -  a regular chip off the old block" (p. 18).  This description almost reads like a mixed description of Anthony Parker and Carson Drew!  The second tidbit is the breakfast served by Mrs. Worth at their cottage near Lost Lake - ham, eggs, and "corn pone" (p. 37).  I had never heard of corn pone before, so I had to look it up.  It turns out corn pone is a dense, unleavened bread made from cornmeal, salt, and water and usually fried or based in a skillet (sometimes using bacon drippings for flavor).  One thing we can always count on series books doing is teaching us something new every time we read one!

 

The final observation I want to make regarding this story is the utter vagueness used with regard to all of the mechanical and technological devises used in the story.  The author is so nebulous about all of them that it leaves the reader in a state of disbelief about all of them.  From the ambiguous name of the scientific company - "Scientific Instrument Company - to the vague descriptions of the various devices, such as the sound distortion machine, the strong wind device, the mechanical gadgets used to create glowing eyes and growls, and the unexplained tool used to draw in Kay and her cousin Bill, causing her to see distorted images; none of the technology is ever fully explained, nor is there any description of how they work (nor even any technical name given to the devices).  The story reads almost like one written by an elementary school student who wants to use strange devices but has no scientific knowledge to describe the machines or explain how they actually work.  This is a great disappointment coming from a Syndicate that thrived for many years on including detailed, educational explanations in their series books that provided readers with true learning experiences.  (For that matter, the fact that the "foreign" woman Hilda Arno, as well as her sister, Mrs. Alice Crosby, are both referred to as having accents and referenced as foreign women on multiple occasions, the author never actually identifies from what "foreign" country the women hail, leaving the reader to guess as to the national heritage of these sisters!)

 

The art for the original edition of this book appears to have once again provided by E.A. Furman (1879-1965), featuring a cover painting that shows Kay searching for those missing pages of the book in the isolated cabin and an interior illustration that finds the girls following Mr. Nelson into the woods.  The later Books, Inc. reprint of the book has another painted cover by "ELAINE," that unidentified artist known only by the one name, always written in all caps. Still another edition of the book, reprinted in 1964 by Berkley Highland Books, gives readers a third cover art, which depicts a rather exciting moment when Kay, Wilma, and Betty are out on the lake with a quickly approaching storm.  This third cover art is beautifully rendered and, quite honestly, could easily have been used for a Nancy Drew cover, since the characters are a redhead, a blonde, and a brunette with expressions that accurately display the personalities of Nancy, Bess, and George from that series.  The artist is unidentified, but I personally find this cover to be the most dramatic of them all and the one I prefer the most.

 

I must admit, these first two books do not provide high hopes for the rest of the series.  After reading these two, our book club has decided to move on to other books, as these are simply too convoluted and not written well enough to hold our interest.  Perhaps one day, I might come back and give some other books in this series a chance (and who knows, since Mildred Wirt took over writing of the series with book three, perhaps it improved from there!); but, for now, I think I am giving the Kay Tracey Mystery Stories a rest.

 

RATING:  5 crumpled pages torn from an antique book out of 10 for at least giving readers a unique premise on which to base a mystery, even if it lacks a well-executed follow-through.