The Boxcar Children

#12 Houseboat Mystery by Gertrude Chandler Warner, 1967.

Mr. Alden takes his grandchildren on a houseboat trip. It’s a peaceful trip at first, but they keep having encounters with someone driving a black car recklessly. It seems like the car turns up every place they go.

Then, Mr. Alden takes the children to an auction because Violet and Benny have never seen an auction before. They think it’s really interesting, but the auction is cut short because a valuable vase has been stolen. The police say it’s just part of a string of thefts that have been going on in the area.

After that, they visit a place called April Center, which is owned by an old friend of Mr. Alden. It’s a sort of mock town/park/tourist center. Cars aren’t allowed inside, so people rent horse-drawn carriages to go around the place and see various attractions. However, Mr. Alden and the kids notice that the horse that draws their carriage looks unusually thin, like it hasn’t been fed well. Mr. Alden knows his old friend loves animals and wouldn’t allow a horse in April Center to starve. He and the children start asking the horse’s owner about it. The horse’s owner, Sam, says that his boss is a nice man who pays him well, but eventually, he admits that he is short of money because he’s being blackmailed. His brother is in some kind of trouble, and someone threatens to go to the police about it if he won’t keep paying him. When the Aldens talk to Sam’s brother, Jeff, they are surprised that he also has an underfed horse, and he tells them the same story of blackmail. Someone has been making each of the brothers think that the other is in trouble, and they’ve both been paying money to hush it up.

Then, someone breaks into the Aldens’ houseboat and steals a clock, which is odd, and the Aldens think that maybe the thief was actually after something else. Could there be a connection between the break-in, the thefts, the blackmail, and the other strange things they’ve been seeing on this trip?

My Reaction

This isn’t one of those mysteries where readers need to figure out which suspect is responsible for something. There aren’t exactly suspects in this story at all. It’s more the case that the Aldens witness a series of strange and suspicious events, and they need to figure out the connection between them. Actually, the story feels more like an adventure than a mystery story. When the culprit is finally caught, it’s nobody we really know, just a random suspicious character that they keep bumping into along the way. To be honest, I really prefer a more traditional mystery, where readers get to know the suspects and have a chance to figure out who is doing what along with the characters.

There is a funny running gag in the story that the Aldens are allowed to name the houseboat anything they want during the time they’re renting it, and they can change the lettering on the boat as often as they want. Every day, they rename the boat after a different member of the family or someone they know. When they give the boat its final name at the end of the story, it’s a joke on reason why someone broke into their boat, which is one of the most mysterious parts of the mystery.