Harlequin Gothic Romance Series No. 32016 - Mirage on the Amazon

From an isolated island in the last Harlequin Gothic to a trip down the Amazon River in this book, it seems the series is expanding the locations that are typically found in Gothic novels far beyond the dark, brooding mansions one would expect to read about.  This book introduces a new author in the line - Mary Kistler.  She appears to be one of the few Gothic authors to use her real name.  It took some digging, but I found a hardcover edition of one of her books that has a short author bio on the back dust jacket flap, indicating she has authored a number of short stories, as well as several novels (most of which appear to be Gothic in nature).  Judging by this book alone, Kistler appears to have a grasp on the Gothic genre, and it's a shame she didn't write more than the few that she did.  This is her only contribution to the Harlequin Gothic line.

 

Mirage on the Amazon takes its title from the fact that when traveling down the Amazon River, one might actually see mirages, such as islands or landforms in the distance that are not actually there, or boats seem to stack or be distorted, or even phantom coastlines that should not be where they are.  Science has shown that these illusions, or mirages, occur because of the high humidity in the Amazon mixes with varied temperatures to create layers of air with different densities, and when light travels through these varying densities, it distorts the image of objects in the distance.  However, the title is also a subtle hint to the reader that the characters in the book are not what they appear to be, and the truth surrounding each one might be distorted by the Amazon jungle in which they reside...

 

The story is set in 1912 and centers around Julia Scott, a native of England who travels down to South America with her old nurse, Laney, in order to see her sister, Claire.  It seems Claire, the rebellious half-sister from their father's first marriage, left England to become an actress and ultimately married a very wealthy landowner who owned a plantation along the Amazon River.  However, years passed without any word, and suddenly Julia receives a letter from her sister, who has fallen ill and believes the illness is not natural - she believes someone is trying to poison her, and she needs Julia's help!  Of course, this being 1912, it takes Julia and Laney some time to cross the ocean and make their way down the Amazon River to the plantation home of Patrick Courtney (Claire's husband).  And it is one this boat trip, before Julia ever reaches her sister, that things begin to happen.

 

Julia is convinced that her sister is in dire jeopardy.  She has a sense of foreboding that she may already be too late.  The more she learns about Patrick Courtney from the boat's captain and first mate, the more she questions her sister's decision to marry the man.  Then, at a stop along the river to restock the boat, Julia is nearly pushed into the piranha-infested waters!  Was the push intentional or an accident?  Why would someone push her, unless they wanted to stop her from reaching her sister.  Then, upon reaching the village of Iquitos (which, by the way, is a real city in Peru!), Julia is not only shocked to see the same man who she thinks pushed her towards the river, but she also finds the captain of her boat talking to Dalma, the regal-looking housekeeper at the Courtney residence!  But he said he barely knew the Courtneys, so why would he be having such an intense conversation with the household help?  More surprising than this, however, is Julia and Laney's introduction to a young girl by the name of Dominique Courtney - Patrick and Claire's daughter - a daughter Julia's sister had failed to mention even existed!

 

Kistler creates even further tension and intensifies Julia's fears when they arrived at the Courtney plantation to discovery Patrick and Claire are not in residence - Patrick has taken his wife to a hospital far up the river, claiming the doctors there can better care for Claire's continued fever.  Yet, the hospital is not named, nor is the doctor, and Patrick provides no means by which Julia can communicate with her sister.  Now, more than ever, Julia is convinced something is very wrong, and the truth is being carefully hidden from her.  When a man in a dark robe breaks into Julia's room in the middle of night, clearly intending to kill her (fortunately, she is saved by a conveniently timed vase falling from an upper floor!), Julia knows for sure dark forces are at work, and someone is determined to keep her from finding out what has really happened to her sister.

 

The author keeps the reader in suspense, barely hinting at the real truth behind everything going on.  There are plenty of misdirects that the reader does not even realize are nothing more than red herrings until much later in the story, when Julia comes face to face with the real threat behind everything going on - and all of her ideas, as well as those of the reader, are suddenly turned upside down, as it turns out nothing at all is what it seems in the isolated mansion deep in the Amazon jungle!  I readily admit, I was thrown for a loop, as I did not see this twist coming at all - which made it all that more juicy to read!  Bravo to Kistler for keeping the truth hidden right beneath the surface of everything going on in the story, providing for a great shock there at the end!

 

The cover art is provided by Len Goldberg, who has provided the cover art for a number of titles in this series (Castle at Jade Cove, The Blue House, Shadows Over Briarcliff, The Devereaux Legacy, and this one).  As always, Goldberg manages to capture an expression of fear on his damsels in distress.  I love how he captures the reflection of the moonlight in Julia's hair on the cover, giving her an almost "angelic" look with the mist-shrouded jungle behind her giving off a sense of evil just waiting to destroy her.  I would give anything to find the original art for these covers - I can only imagine how much more beautiful they appeared on canvas!

 

As with the first 15 books in the series, this one is another winner as far as I'm concerned.  

 

RATING:  10 well-read copies of The Wind in the Willows out of 10 for proving the Gothic tropes can be placed in pretty much any setting and still tell a suspenseful story full of mystery, intrigue, deception, and terror!

Kidnapped in the Jungle - A Hal Keen Mystery Story (No. 2)

While I do not normally collect boys' series books (with a few notable exceptions, such as Ted Wilford, Tom Swift, Ken Holt, and a few Hardy Boys here and there), the Hal Keen series is one where I have picked up books only when I have come across them in dust jackets at a very reasonable price.  Up until now, I've only had three of the ten book series - The Hermit of Gordon's Creek (book 1), The Copperhead Trail Mystery (book 3), and The Mysterious Arab (book 5).  Despite not having the whole series, I did go ahead and read those (well before I started this blog), and I found them to be halfway decent reads.  So, when I came across this book on Amazon with a dust jacket at a cheap price, I went ahead and snagged it.  Having now read it, I must admit - either my memory is faulty, and the other three books were not nearly as good as I remember, or this book just does not hold up as well as the others!

Kidnapped in the Jungle is the second book in the series.  The story finds Hal Keen traveling by ship to the Panama region to join his uncle, Denis Keen, who has been in that region searching for a missing young boy by the name of Alan Brody who disappeared in the jungles six month prior.  The elder Keen had no success, so Hal was going to meet up with his uncle to accompany him on his trip home.  Unexpectedly (to him, but not to us as the readers), Hal finds himself knee-deep in mysteries as his former school friend, Colin Walters, has stowed away on the boat!  He is believed to have killed one Mr. Wainwright in order to steal a treasure map that would lead him to a hidden family treasure -- where else?  You guessed it!  In the jungles near Panama!  Coly. as he is known, claims to have followed one of the men he knows who actually stole the map onto the boat, and now he asks for Hal's help.  Of course, Hal readily agrees, not knowing that mystery will also intertwine with the search for young Alan Brody.

 

While the story makes some attempt at being suspenseful - stinging scorpions just inches away, deadly tarantulas crawling up Hal's arm, and stories that two of the three criminal died horribly in the treacherous swamps in the jungle - the sluggish manner in which it proceeds only makes the story seem to drag.  It's fairly evident from the get-go that Hal and Mr. Brody's guide through the jungle has evil intentions, and when he turns out to be working alongside the only surviving criminal who is searching for the Wainwright treasure, it comes as no surprise.  Even the revelation regarding Mr. Brody's son towards the end of the story does not truly surprise the reader, as it is hinted at several times as they traipse through the jungle.  There's very little time actually spent "searching" for the treasure (they know where it is based on the map, and it takes them less than a chapter to dig it up, never even opening it after they find the box), and there's actually no time spent "looking" for Mr. Brody's son.  The majority of the story is spent with the walk through the jungle and the turn of events when their guide shows his true colors, leaving Hal tied to a tree (as depicted on the cover) and taking Mr. Brody with him to do God-only-knows-what.  (And Hal is tied to the tree for more than 24 hours, leaving me to wonder - what did he do when he needed to go to the bathroom?) 

 

There are a couple of things that caught my attention while reading.  On page 2, when Hal is talking with the purser aboard the ship, the purser describes Hal's uncle as "a miniature Woolworth Building..."  You don't often see references to actual departments stores in children's series books; normally, the author will use fictional store names.  Another thing worth mentioning is found on page 115, when Hal is speaking with Mr. Brody about their diminutive native guide - Hal laughs at the small stature of the guide, telling Mr. Brody that "[w]hat puzzles me is whether he's the only nigger in the woodpile?"  Now, remembering this book was published in 1931, such a turn of phrase would not have been as shocking as it would be to today's readers.  The phrase originally referred to some unknown factor that would ultimately cause things to turn out differently than one had anticipated - basically, something suspicious or not quite right.  As the term "nigger" became more of an ethnic slur, the phrase was used less and less.  Of course, the story also has other ethnic slurs, as they consistently refer to their guide as a "half-breed," and more than once, references are made to the superiority of "white man" over the jungle natives.  Again, when reading these things, one must remember the context and time period when the story was written in order to understand that such ways of thinking, while appalling today, would have been fairly standard in the late 1920s and early 1930s.

One final thing I found odd is the fact that Hal smokes a pipe in this book.  I don't recall any of the other three books I've read having Hal smoke at all, yet in this story, Hal is said to have "leaned over toward the night table [in his state room aboard the ship], and secured his pipe and tobacco.  After he had taken a puff or two..." (p. 11).  Later in the story, while in the jungle with Mr. Brody, he pulls out his pipe again and smokes.  While Hal's age is never stated in this book, I seem to recall from reading the other books that Hal was a teenager.  If such is the case, why in the world would he be smoking a pipe?!

The series is written by Percy Keese Fitzhugh under the pseudonym Hugh Lloyd.  Fitzhugh wrote nearly one hundred books for children, including several boy scout-type series featuring Tom Slade, Pee-Wee Harris, Roy Blakeley, and others.  Apparently, from what I could gather online, when Fitzhugh's series about scouts began to falter, he wrote the Hal Keen series for Grosset & Dunlap, as well as the lesser known Skippy Dare series (which only had three titles).  Neither series lasted as long as his scouting series did.  In fact, one of his characters, Pee-Wee Harris, still appears in a comic strip in the Boys' Life magazine.

A far as I know, only this book and the first were republished by Whitman under different cover art.  Whitman was known for offering up previously published books from series without actually publishing all the books in that particular series (such as Tom Swift, the Rover Boys, Garry Grayson, the Outdoor Girls, and others).  The cover art, as seen here, is usually of a lesser quality than that of the original stories, and usually not as detailed either.  Bert Salg provided the art for the original Grosset & Dunlap version of this book, and his visuals are, as far as I'm concerned, a far cry better than the unsigned art that graced the cover of the Whitman edition.

 

The internal illustrations are done by the same artist who did the cover art (Berg Salg), yet they do not have the same quality as that on the cover.  In addition, the publisher did not insert the illustrations at the correct places for the scenes depicted.  For example, the first internal is inserted between pages 66 and 67; however, the scene shown in the illustration does not appear until page 108! The second internal is inserted between pages 130 and 131, yet the scene occurs on page 142.  The final internal is the closest, as it appears between pages 194 and 195, while the scene actually takes place on 193.  It would be interesting to know the reason for the misplaced illustrations.

Although this book did not meet my expectations, based on the previous three I read, I will likely still pick up the series as I find the books and hope that they hold up better than this one!

RATING:  5 ragged shirts with duck trousers out of 10 for at least attempting to take the main character and put him in an uncomfortable and unfamiliar locale and situation.

Green Mansions - a Classics Illustrated comic adaptation

Years ago, watching Saturday morning cartoons, my favorite show was always Super Friends, a cartoon about the major characters from DC Comics.  Watching that show was my first introduction to a character by the name of Rima, the Jungle Girl.  It was not until many years later, as an adult, that I learned DC Comics had actually published a seven-issue comic book series about this character back in the mid-70s.  Of course, I hunted down those seven issues so I could read the stories about this character.  She later appeared briefly in DC's short-lived revival of their pulp characters in the First Wave series of titles back in 2009 (she only made guest appearances, she did not have her own title).  It was not until recently that I learned the character was not actually a DC owned character, but rather, a creation of author William Henry Hudson (a/k/a W.H. Hudson) from a novel that was originally published way back in 1904!

Green Mansions, subtitled "A Romance of the Tropical Forest," was originally published in the United Kingdom, but later saw printings here in the States as early as 1912.  Since then, it has gone through numerous printings and has been adapted not only into comic book form, but also into a 1959 film of the same name (which, from what I could find online, was NOT a box office success, despite having stars like Audrey Hepburn and Anthony Perkins in it!).  Since I loved the character of Rima, based on her appearances in Super Friends and the DC Comics' series, I wanted to have a complete comic book run of the character, which meant finding a copy of the 1951 comic book adaptation of the novel, issue 90 of the Classics Illustrated series.  At last, I managed to find a reasonably priced copy in great condition, so I bought it!

Not having read the novel, I can't say just how faithful the adaptation of the comic is to the book, but the story of Green Mansions in the Classics Illustrated comic is definitely a superb read.  The narrator and main character is Abel Gueves de Argensola, who is forced (for political reasons, he tells his readers) to flee Venezuela into the South American jungles.  He makes friends with an Indian tribe, who warn him that the forest is protected by a mysterious woman they call "the Daughter of the Didi."  Abel, of course, does not heed their warnings, and he ultimately meets this woman, who turns out to be Rima.  He is bitten by a poisonous snake when he tries to touch Rima, and he later awakens to find himself in a hut belonging to an older man named Nuflo, who claims to be Rima's grandfather.  It is here that Abel learns the strange origins of Rima and ultimately falls in love with the strange jungle girl.

I'm not sure who was in charge of doing the adapting here, as far as the writing goes, but I must say, I do rather like Alex Blum's art on the story.  His use of non-traditional panels (circles, photo frames, slanted panels, etc.) help keep the reader's attention and provide variation and emphasis on certain scenes that might otherwise be glanced over by the casual reader.  Blum also manages to draw some beautiful "action" scenes that truly bring the characters to life - when Abel is chasing after Rima in the woods, when the Indians go on the hunt, when Rima is encouraging Abel to climb to the top of the mountain with her, and so on.  Just looking at the panel, you can almost "feel" the movement of the characters.  And having only known Rima through Super Friends and the DC Comics' series, I was not aware of Rima's fate until I read this comic.  Of course, no body was ever found (at least, in the comic - can't say for sure whether the book is any different), so perhaps Rima did survive after all, which would account for her appearances in the cartoon and comics in later years!

The prompt on the very last page of the story, "Don't Miss The Added Enjoyment of Reading the Original, Obtainable at Your School or Public Library," would have definitely driven me as a kid to seek out the book (although I'm not sure whether my school library would have carried this book).  Now, I'm more likely to find this book only on eBay or in a used bookstore, perhaps.  I definitely have this on my want list to hunt down some day, so I can compare the original work to this adapted version.

I like the fact that Classics Illustrated also offered a one-page bio on the author of the story, William Henry Hudson.  I knew literally nothing about this man until I read the bio, so it's nice to have some information about the author, which only adds to my appreciation of the story.

It's funny that a character who was killed off in a story written and published at the turn of the last century would still manage to stick around for so long in various forms.  Nearly half a century after Green Mansions was published, she appeared in this comic book form from Classics Illustration.  More than twenty years later, she appeared in comic book form again, but in a somewhat different form thanks to DC Comics and the series' writer, Robert Kanigher.  Even though that series only lasted seven issues, it clearly made an impact, because that version of the character appeared a few years later, albeit briefly, in three episodes of Hanna-Barbera's The All-New Super Friends Hour.  She has been in a movie adaption of Green Mansions, she has been mentioned in other comics and novels, and there is even a memorial in Hudson Memorial Bird Sanctuary in London's Hyde Park that has a "bas-relief" of Rima, sculpted by Jacob Epstein.  No other character from this story seems to have garnered such longevity, and it just leaves me to wonder where and when Rima will show up next!

I am so thankful that Classics Illustrated took the time and effort to adapt so many classic stories into comic book form.  While I grew up reading the "standard" classics, such as Treasure Island, Tom Sawyer, Black Beauty, Heidi, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, etc., there are so many classics, such as this, that I might never have heard of, let alone read, if it weren't for Classics Illustrated.

RATING:  9 dishes of roasted pumpkin and sweet potatoes out of 10 for keeping the classics alive through the art form of comic books!