V is for Victorine

When I finished reading Daring Darleen, Queen of the Screen (Daring Darleen), it was my hope that the "cliffhanger" ending was a sign that another book would be forthcoming.  But each month that went by, and then each year that went by, and I saw no advertisements or solicits for another Darleen Darling book, my chances of getting a sequel seemed less and less likely.  Flash forward several years, and as I was scrolling through Amazon (I seem to do that quite a bit, don't I?), I happened across a book by Anne Nesbet with cover art that seemed awfully familiar.  Well, lo and behold, it turned out the cover seemed familiar, as that girl on it was none other than Daring Darleen, along with that young heiress, Victorine Berryman! Finally, after all this time, I got my long-awaited sequel to Daring Darleen, Queen of the Screen!

 

V is for Victorine picks up some time after the conclusion of Anne Nesbet's previous book.  After saving Victorine ("Vee" as Darleen calls her) from unscrupulous people posing as her family in order to steal her inheritance, the Darlings have taken Vee into their home and allowed her to take part in their many films as an extra.  But Vee is not really interested in acting.  With her Grandmother gone and her inheritance still years away, she must rely on a monthly stipend from her granny's estate and the kindness of the Darling family until she can determine exactly what it is she does want.  One thing she knows for sure - she does not like lying, and she is tired of hiding under the assumed name "Bella Mae Goodwin."  She does not even know who she really is any more - is she losing her real identity?  Is Victorine Berryman slowly disappearing?  Well, thank goodness for the silent film serials - for when Darlene and Vee a/k/a Bella Mae go to the local theater to watch the 13th episode of The Vanishing of Victorine (a very fictional account of her life since she disappeared),  a title card appears after the film which provides viewers the opportunity to write the final chapter to the serial and explain just how Victorine's story ends!  Who better to write that story than the missing girl herself!

 

Nesbet offers up another thrilling adventure in the world of the early 1900s (1915 to be exact!), when silent films and serials with their exciting cliffhangers were all the rage.  And while this book does offer up some behind the scenes filming of various movies, Nesbet focuses more on Victorine's efforts to stay under the radar, particularly now that the whole world is looking for her.  In the last book, readers learned all about Darleen and got to experience the world through her adventurous, daring eyes; in this book, we get the opportunity to see the world through the eyes of a debutante who is thrust into a normal (well, okay, somewhat normal as can be expected in the world of films) world where every penny is pinched and no one has hired help to answer to their every whim.  And I love the way Nesbet provides Victorine the chance to evolve, not only as a character, but also as a writer - from a shy girl who thinks she has no imagination and no ability to see the world as her best friend, Darlene does into a rather self-aware, strong young woman who realizes the real world around her offers her plenty of fodder for her imagination and her writing!  I think that is a lesson many of us would be well-advised to heed.

 

There is a slight mystery in the story involving a mix-up with a black bag carried by Darleen's uncle as he, Darleen, and Victorine head out to the new-fangled Hollywood (which was only just getting off the ground as a site for film studios in 1915) to see if the Darlings can find a place in this new film world.  Darleen and Victorine are both curious as to the secret "treasure" that Uncle Dan has hidden away in the satchel, and they must match wits with a rather dastardly thief who has his own black bag filled with stolen Egyptian treasures. This sub-plot is superbly resolved in true serial-cliffhanger style, with a surprise mastermind and a dangerous confrontation with a gun-wielding villain.

 

The book is chock-full of real Hollywood and film references - from Miss Mary Pickford (p. 71), a Canadian-American film actress and producer who worked in Hollywood for nearly half a century, to Lillian Gish (p. 128), an American actress who got her start in silent films in 1912 and continued to work in Hollywood all the way to 1987 and her sister, Dorothy Gish (p. 128), who was also an actress of the stage and screen.  The girls are also told about a party for Anna Pavlova, "[a] wonderful Russian ballerina" (p. 145), who also happens to be a real life ballerina who was a principal artist of the Imperial Russian Ballet and who is most well-known for her role of The Dying Swan.  There is also an interesting reference to The Conquest: The Story of a Negro Pioneer by Oscar Micheaux (p. 82), which book an African-American train porter asks the girls to give to his sister, Ruth Waller, at Universal studios in Hollywood, with the hopes it might get made into a film. Well, in the real world, the book was made into a film in 1919, the first feature-length film made by an African-American!

Finally, the author also makes mention of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition (p. 89), which was a world's fair, of sorts, held in San Francisco during most of 1915 (the year in which this book is set).  The girls talk about their desire to visit the exposition to see "a whole tower simply covered with jewels" (p. 89).  And, wouldn't you know it, there was a "Tower of Jewels" at the exposition, which rose to 435 feet and was covered with over 100,000 colored gems that sparkled in the light of the sun (Tower of Jewels).  It is all of these factual references from the real world that makes Nesbet's story all that more engaging, as it blurs those lines between reality and fiction, breathing some "real life" into the characters on the page.

 

Darleen Darling and Victorine Berryman have become two of my favorite little adventuresses, and I hope Nesbet has not put them on the shelf.  These two girls deserve many more stories and adventures, and I have no doubt there are plenty of fans out there like me who are anxious to read more!

 

RATING:  10 Egyptian cylinder seals out of 10 for making the 1915 silent film world come alive with mystery, adventure, cliffhangers, and all of the excitement one would expect from the movies of that era!

Daring Darleen, Queen of the Screen

This is a book that I debated about getting for several months before I finally took the plunge and bought it.  As I've said in other posts, I am a huge fan of series books, so I very rarely pick up a "one-off" book that is not a part of a new series.  This book, however, caught my eye for several reasons: (1) it featured a young female lead that is forced to solve a mystery; (2) it was set in 1914, well before cell phones, computers, and other technology that makes solving crimes that much easier; and (3) the main character is an actress in silent film serials of the early 20th century.  "Cliffhanger" style stories, whether in book form or on television or film, have always piqued my interest, so after haggling with myself for a number of weeks, I finally picked it up.

Daring Darleen, Queen of the Screen features young Darleen Darling, a perky little silent film star of a series of cliffhanger-style serials in the early 1900s when moving pictures were the newest big thing.  As a younger child, she was known as "Darling Darleen," but as she grows close to her teenage years, the format of the films changed, and "Darling" was changed to "Daring," as Darleen began to do a lot of stunts that left movie-goers gasping with each weekly installment of her adventures.  Her father helps develop and edit the film strips, and her mother ... well, her mother was a former circus star, dancing on tightropes, who gave up the high life to settle down once she had Darleen.  When her mother died, Darleen promised her father to always keep her feet on the ground, so she would not be taken away like her mother was ... except the life of a movie star, particularly one in cliffhanger serials, does not always lend itself to keeping one's feet on the ground.

Particularly when she is supposed to be kidnapped as a publicity stunt, but instead, she is mistaken for an orphaned heiress and kidnapped for real!

Author Anne Nesbet, a professor at the University of California (Berkley) who teaches film history, clearly has the knowledge of the world of silent films.  Her descriptions of the filming process, the sets, the production, the actors, the directors, and everything else so vividly brings to life the story and truly takes the reader into the world of Darleen Darling.  And she tells a whirlwind adventure of a twelve-year old actress who is thrust into a desperate situation where not only must she save herself, but she must help an orphaned girl her own age who is being taken advantage of by her supposed distant cousins who have been caring for her.  Both girls are kidnapped - Victorine Berryman on purpose (she's the heiress) and Darleen by accident - and the must make a (dare I say it?) daring escape if they hope to make their get-away from the kidnappers who intend on throwing them into the river!  Darleen suddenly becomes a star of her own cliffhanger story in "real life," and she must not only break her promise to her father by taking some very dangerous chances, but she must also figure out a way to rescue Victorine from her dastardly cousins and restore the young girl's fortune before the cousins steal it away from her!

The mystery is superbly plotted, and there are some definitely surprising twists when it comes to the kidnappers and the cousins (not the same people, by the way).  And while there are a few hair-raising moments when Darleen and Victorine must escape the apartment where they are being held captive and, later, when Darleen is trapped in a runaway hot air balloon - but honestly, I was hoping that with the book based upon the whole serial silent film gimmick, that each chapter (or at the very least, every other chapter) would end in some death-defying cliffhanger that would force the reader to keep reading to find out how our brave young hero would survive whatever challenge is thrown her way.  Instead, we get very few real cliffhangers, and many of the chapter endings are rather lackluster.  Now, don't get me wrong - the story is still very engaging, the characters extremely likable, and the mystery not overly easy to solve.  I still enjoyed the read and am hoping for more adventures of Daring Darleen in the future - but the lack of real "cliffhangers" kind of left me feeling like the book was missing a little something.

Nevertheless, Daring Darleen, Queen of the Screen is definitely a book I recommend, and I'll be keeping my eye on Anne Nesbet in the hopes she provides readers with more stories of this new sleuth in the future!

RATING:  9 matches, cigarettes, and cigars out of 10 for bringing merging the worlds of girl sleuths and silent film serials to create a fun new way to enjoy mysteries!