#36 The Castle Mystery by Gertrude Chandler Warner, 1993.
Mr. Alden takes his children to Drummond Castle because an old friend of his is helping to clean and organize the place before it becomes a museum. The Drummond family used to live there, and they had the castle built to look like a castle in Germany. However, the last of the Drummond family has died, so turning the mansion into a museum will give the place new life. When the Aldens first arrive, they think the castle looks more like something from a scary story than a fairy tale, but Mr. Alden’s friend, Carrie, shows them some of the more whimsical elements of the place.
However, Carrie’s assistants aren’t happy about the Aldens helping. None of them really seem like team players, even with each other, and they’re not sure how much help the Alden children can be. There are a lot of things that the assistants won’t let the Aldens do when they try to help. They also seem a little suspicious of each other because a valuable Stradivarius violin that once belonged to the Drummond family has disappeared. Carrie insists that they don’t know that the violin has been stolen. The last of the Drummonds may have just hidden it somewhere, and they will find it when they’ve finished cleaning and organizing the place.
Then, the Alden children begin to notice strange things happening in the castle. They see lights in parts of the castle where no one is supposed to be and hear violin music coming from somewhere. Sometimes, the furniture covered in dust sheets gives them the feeling that someone is hiding under the sheets. When it seems like the kids are poking around the castle too much, the assistants all suddenly find tasks for them to do.
The kids catch one of the assistants, Mr. Tooner, looking for something under the floorboards in their grandfather’s room. He claims that he was fixing the floor, but Mr. Alden says that nothing was wrong with the floor. Sandy, another assistant, seems to know her way around the castle better than the others, but she’s oddly defensive about why she knows the place so well. She also makes an odd comment about how it would be nice to hear the Stradivarius “again”, but she dodges questions about when she heard it the first time. Tom is the antiques expert, and he insists that his work is highly specialized and that he wants to work alone.
The Aldens explore the spooky castle, the girls get trapped in the cave under the castle, and they find a secret, hidden room that brings them closer to the solution of the mystery. Each of these assistants has a previous connection to Drummond Castle that they don’t want to discuss, but only one of them is a thief.
My Reaction
I remember liking this book as a kid, although I’d forgotten what the solution of the mystery was until I reread it. It holds up pretty well, and I enjoyed how everyone associated with the castle has their own secrets and past connections to the place. It makes them all really great suspects and also gives readers some subplots to figure out along with deciding who the violin thief is!
The castle setting is also great! Technically, I suppose that it’s really more of a castle-like mansion, but it has all the trappings of a castle, some fanciful, some whimsical, and some spooky. There is also a cave under the castle, which features in a part of the story where Jessie and Violet get locked inside the cave because there is a gate that closes it off. One of the best parts of the book is the discovery of a hidden room because what castle would be complete without one!
#25 The Amusement Park Mystery by Gertrude Chandler Warner, 1992.
The four Alden children go to visit their cousin Joe and his wife Alice. They work at a museum, but one of the best parts of visiting them is the amusement park nearby. The amusement park has a charming, antique carousel with hand-carved horses. The horses are valuable antiques, and Alice says that they are wonderful examples of Americana (American folk art).
The Aldens, especially Benny, think the carousel is wonderful, but not everyone feels the same away about it. When they talk to the owner of the amusement park, Joshua, they learn that he loves the antique carousel but his daughter, Karen, who works with him, thinks that they should get rid of old rides like that and add newer, more modern ones. What she really wants to do is add a roller coaster to the park, something that would appeal to older kids and adults rather than young children. The Aldens don’t see how she can add a roller coaster because the park isn’t very big, and a roller coaster would take up about half the park. They hear Karen later talking about it again with her boyfriend, who is a golfer. They notice the boyfriend doing some sketches of horses that he doesn’t seem to want to let them see.
The first time the Aldens ride the carousel, they have a great time, and Benny chooses a dappled gray horse as his favorite. However, when they return to ride the carousel again later, it seems like something is wrong with the horse. It used to bob up and down during the ride, but now, it doesn’t move. When they return again, a couple of days later, the dappled gray horse moves but now has a long scratch on its side that wasn’t there before. The Aldens also begin to notice problems with other horses. Another gray horse has stopped moving, and a chocolate brown one oddly has an unpainted stomach when they were sure it was painted before.
They talk to Joshua about the horses, and he becomes concerned. He has an expert examine them, and the expert assures him that these are the authentic antique horses that were always there, but the Aldens are sure that something suspicious is going on.
If someone has been taking the original horses and substituting fakes, why did the so-called expert say that they were the original horses? Who could be behind it? Is Karen trying to sabotage the carousel to get the roller coaster she wants? Her boyfriend seems to need money, so he could be selling off the horses. What about the cotton candy seller and his disagreeable wife or the man who actually runs the carousel ride?
My Reaction
I thought the book did a good job of providing readers with multiple suspects to consider. We know Karen isn’t fond of the carousel and wants more exciting, modern rides, so she could be selling off antique carousel horses to fund her ideas. Her golfer friend also needs money, and his sketches of horses might be for planning how to create counterfeits of the originals. Then again, the cotton candy seller and his grumpy wife are always around and acting suspiciously, and the man who runs the carousel ride has obvious access to the horses. I like mysteries where there are multiple suspects to consider!
The concept of the antique carousel reminded me of the Nancy Drew computer game The Haunted Carousel, but that computer game was based off of a Nancy Drew book, not this one. It’s interesting to notice some themes that appear in different children’s series. Not every kids’ mystery series features an antique carousel, making it a charming and uncommon theme. However, amusement parks are common themes in children’s books, and a mysterious, antique ride offers that element of both quaint nostalgia and spookiness together.
Meg Mackintosh and The Case of the Curious Whale Watch by Lucinda Landon, 1987.
Meg and her brother, Peter, are going on a whale watch trip with their grandfather. As they board the boat, their grandfather tells them that the captain is well-known as a treasure hunter, looking for pirate treasure.
On board the Albatross, they are greeted by Captain Caleb and meet his mate Jasper, and the other whale watch guests. The guests are Mrs. Clarissa Maxwell and her nephew Anthony, who seems to like gambling; a man named Oliver Morley, who likes stamps; a college student called Carlos de Christopher; and a marine biologist, Dr. Susan Peck.
Meg asks Captain Caleb about his treasure hunting, and he shows everyone an old map that’s been in his family for many years. The sailor who gave it to them also gave them a whale’s tooth with a scrimshaw carving of a whale on it. It’s supposed to help explain where the treasure is hidden. Some of the members of the expedition debate about how much money the treasure of the map would be worth, but Dr. Peck is completely opposed to treasure hunting because it’s disruptive to the environment.
The group enjoys watching the whales, although Meg’s grandfather has to go lie down for a while because he’s seasick, and lazy Jasper spends his time reading comic books in the lifeboat. When they encounter a storm, and everyone goes into the cabin to get out of the rain, they discover that the map is missing!
Who could have taken it? Various members of the whale watch have talked about their need for money, and Dr. Peck said that she thought the map should be destroyed to prevent damage to the environment. Meg goes over the pictures she’s take to find the thief!
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).
My Reaction
I like the Meg Mackintosh books because it’s fun to solve the mystery along with the heroine. Like other books in the series, readers are supposed to use the story and the clues in the pictures to solve the mystery. At various points in the story, the story pauses for readers to figure out something about what’s happening, and these are good points for readers to check that they’re on track and to review the information they know so far. The story isn’t very long, but there are multiple points for readers to figure out something about what’s going on.
I did figure out the answer to this one very quickly. It’s partly because I’m an adult and this is aimed at children, but more importantly, I’ve seen the movie Charade with Audrey Hepburn, which used a similar plot device. The story did a good job of making all the suspects look like they had a motive, but when you figure out what the thief’s real goal was, there’s only one person who qualifies. Kids in early elementary school would probably find the mystery more challenging.
#15 The Mystery of the Goldfish Pond by Elspeth Campbell Murphy, 1997.
Timothy’s father wants him to sing at his boss’s retirement dinner. The boss’s wife heard Timothy sing once with his choir, and she wants him to sing a special song for her husband at the start of the dinner. His cousins are invited to come along so he won’t be the only kid there. Timothy doesn’t really want to do the singing, but his parents convince him to do it anyway because the boss’s wife is so fond of him and his singing.
Timothy’s father hopes that the dinner will go well because the boss has been worried about the possibilities of competitors getting their hands on information about their new product. Earlier, the boss temporarily misplaced an important memo about it, and he was worried that someone else got their hands on it.
Timothy’s song goes well, and after the dinner, the kids are allowed to walk outside in the garden while the adults listen to a series of speeches. The gardens outside the banquet hall are beautiful, and the kids start to enjoy themselves. Then, they accidentally overhear a couple of adults talking. They can’t quite catch everything they say, but something strange is going on, and something secret is hidden somewhere in the garden.
The theme of this story is Proverbs 11:13, “No one who gossips can be trusted with a secret, but you can put confidence in someone who is trustworthy.”
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.
My Reaction and Spoilers
The crime that the adults were plotting involves the theft of information. The kids have to figure out the parts of the conversation they couldn’t hear clearly to figure out where the information is hidden. I thought that the clue the children try to figure out was fairly easy. Part of the conversation the kids try to figure out sounds like “-ake -urtle”, and there aren’t many words that sound like “-urtle.”
The boss’s wife seemed eager for the children to go outside, into the garden, and tell her about it later. The kids wondered why she seemed so eager for them to go outside and what she was hoping that they would tell her afterward. It sets the stage for the kids to expect that something unusual or mysterious might happen, which proves to be the case when they overhear the important conversation. The boss’s wife says later that she suspected something might happen because she knew her husband was worried about people stealing company information, and she realized that this dinner would be a convenient place to hand it off to someone.
We never learn exactly what kind of information or new company products the adults were concerned about. We also don’t know exactly who was trying to steal the information or what happens to that person later. The part that the children care about is that they were able to stop the hand-off of the information.
#9 The Mystery of the Eagle Feather by Elspeth Campbell Murphy, 1995.
Timothy is excited because he has a chance to meet his pen pal, Anthony Two Trees, for the first time. Anthony is a Native American, and he will be dancing at a powwow. Timothy’s cousins get to come along on the trip, too.
Soon after they arrive, though, they learn that someone has been taking pieces of the dancers’ costumes, like fans or headdresses made of eagle feathers. Who could be taking the costume pieces and why?
The costume pieces and the eagle feathers they contain are very expensive, and the kids realize that the thief might be thinking of selling them. It is illegal to deal in eagle feathers because eagles are an endangered species. Even the Native American dancers have to write to the government in order to get eagle feathers for their costumes from eagles that died in zoos. Therefore, the costumes are expensive and require a lot of effort to put together, and losing them is a real blow. The rarity and cost of the feathers might prove to be a temptation to a thief.
The theme of the story is self-control.
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.
My Reaction
I wasn’t sure if I was going to like this story. I understand the fascination kids have with Native Americans and their costumes and dances. I felt like that when I was a kid, too, but there’s also an element of cringe to it. The cringiness comes from kids (and even adults) who get wrapped up in the fascination of the appearance of other people’s traditions and treat them more like playing dress-up than traditions with deeper, underlying meaning and significance or depicting Native Americans as being stereotypes from old movies and books rather than real, living people.
Fortunately, I was pleased at how this story shows that Timothy’s friend, Anthony, is a regular boy who shares his interest in baseball. They emphasize that Native Americans don’t live in tepees any more, and they don’t treat the Native American characters like stereotypes. I enjoyed some of the facts the story provided about Native American dances and costumes, like the regulations regarding the use of eagle feathers.
#10 The Mystery of the Silly Goose by Elspeth Campbell Murphy, 1996.
As soon as they arrive home from their trip to the powwow in the previous book, the cousins are approached by Timothy’s neighbor, the snobby 13-year-old Lyddie, with another mystery. While they were out of town, someone went around the neighborhood, stealing lawn ornaments. Lyddie is concerned because her grandmother has come to live with her and her parents, and her lawn geese were stolen. One of the geese was the mother goose with a silly-looking bonnet on her head, and the others were her goslings. Lyddie’s grandmother is rather attached to the geese because they were a present from someone.
The three cousins don’t really like Lyddie because she and her friends are usually unfriendly and too concerned with being “cool” all the time. However, they feel sorry for her grandmother and agree to take the case. To their surprise, most of the lawn ornaments are actually pretty easy to find. They were hidden in some obvious places around the neighborhood. The only ones that are difficult to find are the geese. Who hid the lawn ornaments and why?
The theme of this story is Proverbs 24:3-4, “It takes wisdom to have a good family. It takes understanding to make it strong. It takes knowledge to fill a home with rare and beautiful treasures.”
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).
My Reaction
Part of the mystery has to do with image, but it also has to do with sentimental attachment. Lyddie is very obsessed with image because she and her friends try so hard to maintain their cool image. Although she calls in the cousins to find the missing lawn ornaments, she only does it because her grandmother takes the loss of the mother goose so hard. Lyddie doesn’t see why the goose is so important, although she knows that her grandmother is attached to it because it was a present from someone.
The situation changes when Lyddie’s grandmother reveals the full story behind the lawn geese and her own understanding of the situation. Lyddie cares for her grandmother, and she comes to see the geese in a new light once she understands why they matter to her grandmother. It’s not the value of the geese, and it’s not about how the geese look. It’s all about the person her grandmother associates with them. Fortunately, Lyddie’s grandmother is a very understanding woman, and when the lawn ornament thief explains the issue, they work things out to everyone’s satisfaction.
#26 The Mystery of the Runaway Scarecrow by Elspeth Campbell Murphy, 1999.
Sarah-Jane astonishes her cousins when she tells them that Buster, the scarecrow her mother made, which has been sitting outside of a local restaurant, has gone “on vacation. Scarecrows don’t just get up and go on vacation, and when they say that, Sarah-Jane says that Buster left a note saying that he had gone on vacation. The boys don’t believe scarecrows can write notes any more than they can go on vacation. Sarah-Jane admits that scarecrows don’t write notes, but someone else wrote a note on Buster’s behalf and left it behind when Buster disappeared. The note says that Buster is going on vacation and will be back when someone figures out where he’s gone. That’s weird enough, but Sarah-Jane says that Mr. Wesley, who owns the restaurant where Buster was, has been receiving pictures of Buster on his trip in the mail since he disappeared.
It seems like someone is playing a bizarre prank or maybe setting up some kind of treasure hunt involving the scarecrow. The town mayor says that Buster’s “vacation” has created more publicity for the town’s upcoming Fall Festival, so it could even be a publicity stunt. However, it’s been a few days since the last pictures of Buster arrived, and Mr. Wesley is inviting Sarah-Jane and her cousins to investigate Buster’s disappearance and find him because he knows that they like to solve mysteries.
The kids study the pictures for clues to Buster’s whereabouts, but the pictures are pretty generic. They show him outside a motel, at a gift shop, and at a gas station, but the locations aren’t very distinctive and could be found in any number of cities. The postmarks on the envelopes that pictures came in are all still in the area, so it seems like Buster didn’t go very far. They need to hurry if they’re going to find Buster in time for the town’s parade because the parade is tomorrow!
Then, Sarah-Jane reveals that something else mysterious has happened in the area recently. Someone stole a rare coin from Mr. Clark. This is also an intriguing mystery, but they don’t have many clues to start. Mr. Clark isn’t exactly sure when the coin disappeared because he doesn’t get out his coin collection very often.
For some strange reason, an older boy in Sarah-Jane’s neighborhood, Billy, seems very concerned about whether Sarah-Jane and her cousins have made any progress in finding Buster. Could Buster’s disappearance also have something to do with the missing coin?
Theme of the Story:
“The land has produced its harvest; God, our God, has blessed us.”
Psalm 67:6
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.
My Reaction and Spoilers
I liked the way the person who took the scarecrow used the pictures to provide clues to their treasure hunt. Readers won’t be able to figure it out right away without explanation from the characters because the book doesn’t show all the pictures, but I liked the concept for how the culprit worked a series of clues into the pictures. There’s also a fun backstory behind the scheme. The prankster doesn’t have a sinister motive. The scarecrow caper is meant as a kind of prank/game/harmless publicity stunt.
I guessed pretty quickly who had taken the scarecrow, based on motive, but I liked the addition of Billy and the coin because it complicated the story and provided a second mystery on top of the first. There is a genuine crime in the story, but it’s not the one that the kids start out investigating.
The story takes place during October, but it’s not on Halloween. The town’s Fall Festival just seems to kick off the fall season in general.
#5 The Mystery of the Vanishing Treasure by Robert Arthur, 1966.
The Three Investigators don’t have a case at the moment, so Jupiter entertains himself and his friends with an intellectual exercise – figuring out how someone could steal the Rainbow Jewels from an exhibit at the Petersen Museum, an exhibit that has been promoted in the local papers. Pete and Bob object that they solve thefts, not commit them, but Jupiter says that figuring out how a theft could occur would be useful in helping them understand thefts that actually occur. The boys go to the museum to see the exhibit and study it for security weaknesses.
While they are at the museum, a theft actually occurs, but not in any of the ways that Jupiter predicted that a theft could occur. It happens in broad daylight, with a room full of people and security, and the object that was take, a golden belt, was actually the heaviest and least portable object in the exhibit. Jupiter and his friends witness the start of the crime when Jupiter runs into an old acquaintance from his childhood acting days. This actor gleefully tells Jupiter to watch the stunt that he’s going to pull. He pretends to feel faint and then drops a fake jewel that looks like one of the real ones. This is a distraction for the guards, who are all focused on him when the real theft happens. The actor is in trouble for providing the thieves with a distraction, but he tells the police that he was hired to do it both to prove himself for a role in a movie and as kind of a publicity stunt. Of course, the movie wasn’t real, and he was just duped into helping the thieves.
Jupiter is intrigued by the theft and offers the Three Investigators’ services to the man in charge of the exhibit, but he turns them away because they’re kids. However, they soon have another mystery to consider. An elderly children’s author thinks that she is being stalked by gnomes. She lives in the same old house where she grew up, and she is known for writing books about gnomes, inspired by stories that her old Bavarian nanny told her. Years ago, she used to invite neighborhood children to her house for parties, playfully calling them her “gnomes”, and she would read to them from her books. However, the old families have grown up and moved away, and many of the old houses around her have been torn down and replaced with shops and businesses. The author doesn’t want to sell her house, even though she’s been pressured to sell by a developer, but lately, strange things have been happening at the house. She keeps seeing little men dressed like gnomes, and they play mean tricks on her. She swears that she’s not dreaming or crazy, which is what her nephew seems to think. She does genuinely believe in gnomes, but what’s been happening could also be someone playing a trick on her.
The Three Investigators might think that she was imagining things, except that Bob sees one of these gnomes out the window while they’re talking to the author. The boys try to chase after it, but it disappears before Jupiter and Pete can even get a look at it. They consider the idea that Bob could have imagined the gnome, based on his reading about them and the author’s stories, but he swears he didn’t. They decide to approach the situation from the assumption that someone is playing tricks on the author, and Jupiter and Pete decide to spend the night at the author’s house to see what happens.
While the boys are exploring the area, they decide to check out the defunct movie studio next to the author’s house. There, they overhear the developer who wants to buy the author’s house talking to the security guard at the old studio. What they say makes Jupiter wonder if they could have something to do with the theft of the gold belt, but when they discover the boys listening, they insist that Jupiter misheard them.
The son of the man in charge of the exhibit at the museum comes to consult the Three Investigators about theft of the belt, having overheard them offering their services to his father. Jupiter gives him a suggestion to check on while the Three Investigators look into the matter of the gnomes. Jupiter’s first guess about the theft of the belt isn’t quite right, but it turns out that there is a connection between the gnomes and the theft. The gnome incidents could be part of an effort to pressure the author into selling her house to the developer, but the digging sounds that accompany the gnomes make Jupiter realize that the gnomes have other motives.
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).
My Reaction and Some Spoilers
Many of the Three Investigators mysteries are a little like Scooby-Doo mysteries, with ghosts, monsters, or other supernatural phenomena that have logical or human explanations. I like this mystery because gnomes are an unusual mythological creature to find in that kind of story. There are plenty of mystery stories with faked ghosts but few with staged gnome appearances. It’s a little bit of a spoiler to say that the gnomes are fake, but not much of one because that is really the assumption from the beginning. The children’s author believes in gnomes, but nobody else does, and even the author isn’t convinced enough to stop her from hiring the investigators to look into the situation.
The introduction of the theft of the golden belt from the museum at the beginning of the story introduces the idea that the theft is somehow related to the gnome appearances, and that is the case. What complicates the situation is that there are different people involved with both the gnome appearances and the thefts, and not everyone who’s involved in one plot is necessarily involved in the other. One of the complications of the story is figuring out who is involved in what and who is the ultimate mastermind behind the main mystery.
The gnome appearances also put this mystery into the category of mysteries that I call Mysterious Happenings – where something strange is happening with no obvious explanation, and much of the mystery involves figuring out the motive behind the mysterious happenings, which is usually related to an actual crime that is initially unknown to the investigators. A classic example of a Mysterious Happenings mystery is the Sherlock Holmes story, The Red-Headed League, which involves a man who is invited to join a club that requires him to do some meaningless busy work for money but which he suddenly discovers is fake. In that case, the mystery is figuring out the purpose of the club and why someone would play such an elaborate prank on this particular man. This Three Investigators story has a similar premise to the Sherlock Holmes story in the sense that someone is playing an elaborate prank on the author with the gnome appearances, and the question is why anyone would do that. Part of the reason that I mention the Sherlock Holmes story is that the motive behind the prank in the Sherlock Holmes story is the same as the motive for playing the prank with the gnomes, making me think that the author was inspired by The Red-Headed League.
As for who/what the gnomes are, the presence of the old movie studio and the use of a hired actor to create a distraction in the museum are clues. It’s also important to the story that it was children’s day at the museum, so there were a lot of kids on the scene when the theft happened. I suspected who was playing the part of the gnomes from the beginning, but I didn’t guess the full motive for the crime, even though The Red-Headed League is one of my favorite Sherlock Holmes stories. There’s a dramatic scene at the end of the book where the “gnomes” storm the kids’ headquarters at the salvage yard to retrieve the golden belt from Jupiter after Jupiter figures out where they hid it.
#4 The Mystery of the Green Ghost by Robert Arthur, 1965.
Bob and Pete are looking at an old, abandoned house that’s in the process of being torn down when they hear an unearthly scream from the house! There are stories that the old house is haunted, and the boys run away, only to be stopped by a group of local men, who ask them what’s going on. When the boys explain, the men talk about calling the police or going inside the house to investigate. The men decide to just go in and have a look around themselves, in case someone’s hurt and needs help right away. They tell the boys that they can leave because they will handle the situation, but the boys decide that they can’t leave without having a look themselves.
As they take a look around inside, they see the remains of the ornate wall paper and impressive features of the once-rich house, and the men talk about Mathias Green, who used to live in the house. At first, the searchers can’t find anything, but then, they spot a greenish figure on the stairs. Thinking that there’s some prankster in the house, the searchers go upstairs to confront the person, but they can’t find whoever it was. The boys suggest that they have a look at the dust on the floor and try to follow the person’s footprints, but the only footprints the searchers can find are their own. Could they have seen a ghost?
The searchers do notify the police about what they’ve seen in the house, but the police don’t take it too seriously … at first. However, they soon begin receiving other reports from various people around the city who claim to have seen a greenish, ghostly figure. Even then, the police might not have take the reports too seriously, except that a couple of officers on patrol witness a greenish, ghostly figure in the cemetery … at the burial site of Mathias Green, who died falling down the stairs in his house, 50 years before.
While Bob and Pete were at the house, Bob had his tape recorder with him, and he plays the recording of the scream they heard for their friend and fellow investigator, Jupiter. Jupiter is willing to believe it could be the scream of Mathias Green’s ghost, and the boys review the information they know about Mathias Green. Mathias Green was once the skipper of the ship, and he sailed to China. For reasons that nobody fully understands, he had to leave China suddenly, and the rumors were that Mathias’s wife was a Chinese princess and that Chinese nobles had a grudge against Mathias. Mathias brought his wife back to the United States with him, and they built their house in Rocky Beach after Mathias had a fight with his sister-in-law, and they moved away from San Francisco. They had some Chinese servants, but when Mathias was later found dead, apparently from an accidental fall down the stairs, the servants and his wife disappeared. People assumed that they left for fear that they would be blamed for Mathias’s death, and Mathias’s sister-in-law inherited the house. Recently, Mathias’s niece decided to sell the house to a developer, who is planning to tear it down and build more modern houses.
Local newspapers have picked up the stories about the green ghost and its apparent connection to the old Green mansion, and some of them have implied that the ghost is looking for a new place to haunt now that its house is being torn down. The Three Investigators have access to more information than most people because Bob’s father is one of the reporters covering the ghost incidents. The police chief tells them, off the record, that he witnessed the ghost himself, in the cemetery, and it looked like it disappeared by sinking down into Mathias’s grave. Then, the police chief learns that the workmen tearing down the house have discovered a hidden room. Bob’s father and the boys are allowed to come with him to see what the room contains.
The discovery is a shock. The hidden room contains an ornate coffin, holding the skeleton of Mathias’s Chinese bride, dressed in elaborate robes and with an unusual necklace of gray pearls, called ghost pearls. The story is that the reason why Mathias and his bride had to suddenly flee China was that Mathias reportedly stole the pearl necklace to give to his bride. When she died in Rocky Beach, he couldn’t bear to be parted from her, so he “buried” her secretly in his house, along with the necklace.
The discovery of Mathias’s wife’s hidden burial chamber doesn’t lay the ghost to rest, though. Bob and Pete get a phone call from Mathias’s niece, Lydia, asking them to visit her at the vineyard where she lives, to talk about what they witnessed at the house. She says that the ghost has actually appeared at her vineyard! Jupiter is not invited to the vineyard because he didn’t witness the appearance of the ghost with the others, but he couldn’t go anyway because he’s temporarily in charge of his uncle’s salvage yard while his uncle is out of town. He tells Bob and Pete to go ahead and meet with Lydia and let him know what they learn.
At the vineyard, Bob and Pete meet Lydia’s distant cousin, Harold, and Lydia’s great-nephew, Charles, who is actually the great-grandson of Mathias Green and the real heir to Mathias’s estate. Charles, who is called Chang, grew up in China, and they explain that he is descended from Mathias’s first wife, who died of an illness in China. After the death of his first wife, Mathias put his young son into an American missionary school in China and left him there as a boarding student. When he married his second wife and had to flee China, he left his son behind. His descendants remained in China since then, until it became unsafe for Americans or people of American descent in China. Then, Charles, who is an orphan and part Chinese (hence his nickname of Chang), was sent to live with Lydia in the United States. Until that point, he knew very little about his ancestors and his relatives in America. Technically, Mathias’s estate should have come to Chang’s side of the family when Mathias died, but they were living in China at that time and were not in touch with the rest of the family. Lydia says that Chang should even technically own the vineyard that she and Harold have built with the family’s money, but Chang doesn’t want to take it from them, so Lydia says that she is leaving it to Chang in her will. Chang is satisfied with this arrangement, but the family has debts, and if they don’t resolve them, they might lose the vineyard entirely.
Lydia believes that the green ghost is Mathias’s ghost, and he is haunting them because he’s angry with her for selling his old house to be torn down. The ghost has been scaring away workers at the vineyard, and if they can’t get the harvest processed, they won’t be able to keep the vineyard. However, Chang doesn’t believe that his great-grandfather would want to hurt his own family. Chang might be willing to believe that the ghost is an evil spirit, masquerading as his great-grandfather. That’s not the only possibility, though. There could be a human being with a motive for wanting to ruin the vineyard. Then again, there is the question of who really owns the ghost pearl necklace. If Mathias’s family owns the necklace, they could sell it to cover their debts, but it might really belong to the family of Mathias’s Chinese wife. Her family is more difficult to trace, but one person has stepped forward, claiming to be her heir. Then, someone attacks Harold and steals the necklace from him. Was the necklace always the ghost’s target, from the beginning? Meanwhile, back in Rocky Beach, Jupiter has a revelation. There was a dog present when Bob and Pete were searching the Green mansion with the men, and the dog … didn’t do anything. That might be the most important clue of all!
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies, including some in other languages).
My Reaction and Some Spoilers
I enjoyed the mystery and the reference to Sherlock Holmes about the dog that did nothing in the nighttime. In this story, Jupiter takes the dog’s non-reaction as a sign that there was no supernatural presence in the house because animals are supposed to react to the presence of ghosts. There is definitely a human behind all the spooky happenings, and I was partly right about who it was. However, the author threw in a complication by inserting another mysterious villain who kind of usurped the original plotter’s plot for his own purposes and partly distracts the characters from the original villain for part of the story.
This added villain is a mysterious old man from China who claims that he’s 107 years old and that he wants the pearls because drinking dissolved ghost pearls is the key to immortality. This mysterious old man is wealthy, and he has bought up the family’s debts, meaning that he will get control of the vineyard, if they can’t pay their debts. However, he’s not really interested in the vineyard for its own sake. He just wants those pearls. Although he does some criminal things in the story, nothing much seems to happen to him at the end, and he works out a deal with Lydia, so she can keep the vineyard. It’s left open whether or not he truly ended up with the pearls or whether the pearls actually have properties for preserving someone’s life, but it seems that he truly believes it, and he has no other motivations for his part in the story.
This almost Fu Manchu style character, who uses hypnosis to control people, adds an element of exoticism to the story that I thought wasn’t really necessary. I liked the ghost mystery well enough with its original villain and without him, and I felt like the introduction of the extra villain sent the plot a little off the rails, but he does allow the story to end on a somewhat creepy and ambiguous note. We don’t entirely know who he is, and we never really find out what happens to him. We don’t know if he’s really as old as he says he is or if he continues much further in his quest to live forever. He just disappears after getting what he can of the pearls, presumably to go hunting for more elsewhere.
As far as I’ve been able to determine, the ghost pearls aren’t real, and the legend about them prolonging people’s lives isn’t real. However, there are legends and superstitions from around the world about pearls being associated with wisdom and longevity and having healing powers. Pearls can be dissolved in an acidic liquid and drunk by a human, as in the famous story about Cleopatra drinking a pearl in vinegar, which was supposed to be an aphrodisiac.
Getting back to the mystery, though, I did like the Scooby-Doo-like mystery, and I was satisfied by the original plot, and the villain’s methods and motives. I was looking at that character with suspicion for a number of reasons. Perhaps, if the part about the pearl necklace, the ancient man who drinks pearls, and Mathias’s bizarre room with his dead wife weren’t in the story, the solution would be too obvious, but overall, I enjoyed it. I also appreciated how Jupiter worked out some of the details of the first haunting by visiting the house and studying the scene while his friends were at the vineyard. He comes to some conclusions about how that first haunting occurred that Bob and Pete didn’t think about, and his solution also provides a reasonable answer to the question of why that group of men happened to show up outside the house on the evening the haunting happened, to witness it.
The Case of the Crazy Collections by Laura Lee Hope (Stratemeyer Syndicate), 1991.
Before I begin, I’d like to acknowledge Sean Hagins, for supplying me with photos of this book! Usually, I take pictures of books myself, but I just couldn’t find a physical copy of this one. Sean is a big fan of the Bobbsey Twins, particularly the New Bobbsey Twins mysteries, and you can see some of his video reviews as well as videos about his photography work on his YouTube channel, SJHFoto. Thanks, Sean!
The Bobbsey twins’ neighborhood is having their annual block party, and the Bobbsey twins and their parents are helping to set up for it. As part of the party, the neighborhood has rented a tent, where kids from the neighborhood are displaying their collections. The neighborhood kids collect all kinds of things, like baseball cards, comic books, soda cans, autographs, and coins. One boy, Kevin, has an autographed baseball that his grandfather gave to him. The neighbors are charging people money to see the exhibit of collections, and the money will be used for a pizza party later.
Later, Kevin’s autographed baseball disappears. Could the baseball thief be Mr. Sher, a visitor staying with their neighbor, Mr. Andersen? Mr. Sher tried to buy the baseball from Kevin earlier, but Kevin turned him down. Then again, Kevin’s cousin, Steve, was jealous that Kevin has the baseball. Steve turned down the offer of some of his grandfather’s old collectible items in favor of a savings bond, which he has already cashed in and spend on video games. Steve tried to borrow more money from Kevin earlier, but Kevin turned him down because Steve hasn’t yet repaid him for money Kevin loaned to him before. Danny, the neighborhood bully, was also mad at Kevin earlier. He’s a friend of Steve’s and didn’t want to have to pay to see the collections. Then again, another local girl, Jennifer, collects autographs, and they see her at a collectors’ shop. Would she know the value of an autographed baseball, and was she trying to sell it? With so many people coming and going from the tent where the collections were on display, it’s hard to say who might have taken something. The thief may have even been the Bobbseys’ own dog, Chief, who has developed a habit of collecting and hoarding baseballs.
Then, another boy realizes that his prized hologram sticker is missing. Could the thief have taken that, too? Their clues are an unexplained slit in the back of the tent, some footprints, and a pin with Greek letters on it. Can the Bobbsey Twins find the valuable baseball and return it to Kevin?
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.
My Reaction
Something I thought was interesting about this story was that it brings up the concept of collecting things for fun or sentimental value vs. collecting things because of their monetary value. Most of the kids in the neighborhood collect things just for fun. At first, Kevin doesn’t seem to fully realize the value of the autographed baseball. His attachment to the baseball is because he got it from his grandfather. When he had the offer to sell it to Mr. Sher, he refused because the baseball reminds him of his grandfather.
I had a strong suspicion about the identity of the baseball thief early in the story, and my guess turned out to be right, but I liked it that there were plenty of other suspects to consider. There are child suspects, adult suspects, and even the Bobbseys’ own dog. Any of these could be plausible. When they realize that the hologram sticker is missing, it raises the question of whether the person who took the baseball also took the sticker, if the sticker was taken by someone else, or if the missing sticker is just a red herring. Overall, I enjoyed the mystery, and I liked the abundance of suspects.
Jestress's Forgotten Books and Stories 