Robin Kane: The Monster of Wolf Point

    After an earthquake strikes while Robin Kane is at school her science teacher, Mr. Smith, tells the class how earthquakes can disrupt the depth of the ocean and cause elusive and mysterious sea creatures to appear. School is let out early and Robin, her brother Kevin, her best friend Mindy, and Mindy's brother Mike all head to the beach. There they run into an excited Mr. Smith who informs them he has just sighted a strange, Loch Ness type creature in the water. Mr. Smiths story spreads fast and although Robin and her friends believe him the rest of the town is skeptical, especially after a second appearance of the creature turns out to be a dummy constructed with items from Mr. Smiths office. 

    Robin is eager to prove Mr. Smith correct and takes up watching for the creature whenever she can. When Robin and Mindy's families arrange a joint outing to Rancho Lucia, a ranch owned by Mindy's father, Robin takes Mindy and her younger sister, Amy, on a horseback ride to a cliff overlooking the bay where they can look for the creature. Robin and Mindy leave Amy with the horses while they go take up a watch and are ecstatic when they both see the sea creature. 

    Soon after they hear Amy scream and as they run to her aid they fall through the ground into an underground cavern. They remain there for a worrisome hour until their fathers come to rescue them. Then they finally find out the reason for Amy's scream; two trouble maker boys, Frank and Art, stole two of the horses. This convinces everyone the Frank and Art were responsible for the dummy creature and stole the horses to make a quick getaway (even tho no one suspects them and there's no legal trouble they could get in for making the dummy). 

    Robin, Mindy, Kevin, and Michael sneak out in the night to hunt for Frank and Art and they find them in the same cave from the first Robin Kane book (the one Robin and Mindy hide from El Gato in). They barricade the boys in the cave and get the sheriff. 

    The next day the foursome head to the bay with a movie camera and raft and capture moving pictures of the creature thus proving Mr. Smith right.

- A big problem I have with Robin Kane books is how things are explained with dialogue. When being told some of Robin's experiences in the other books it's given as dialogue instead of a narrator telling the reader. This makes it super awkward because the people it's being explained to already know because they were apart of it.

- I like how the girls' father come to their rescue. I thought it was sweet.

- I really do not understand why Frank and Art try to skip town when they were not in any trouble. Stealing the horses is what gets them in trouble and they end up in juvie for it.

- Mr. Smith quiting his job to "bring sanity back to the town" makes no sense at all and just seems over-dramatic.

    Overall this book was alright. When I read the Robin Kane series the first time I recall this being my favorite book. 

Patty and Jo, Detectives

    Pat and Jo Faraday are 16 year old twin orphans. For the past 8 years they have lived at Miss Langdon's School for Young Ladies. As the arrival of Christmas comes close the twins receive a letter from their mysterious guardian, Welton Duer, who was their father's best friend and who they have yet to meet. He is writing to ask them to spend the holiday with him at Harker's Cove in Michigan. The girls excitedly accept and jump on a train to Harker's Cove.

    The train arrives in a desolate area of wilderness. After waiting in the cold and being scrutinized by the station master a car arrives to pick them up. It is driven by Yamoto, a Japanese man working for Mr. Duer. On the way to Duer's home Yamoto informs the girls that Mr. Duer has been called away and shan't return during their visit. The girls feel suspicious of this and their suspicion grows after meeting Miss Gruber, the nervous housekeeper. Yamoto and Gruber remain elusive over questions of Mr. Duer and when Pat sees Yamoto dragging a locked trunk from Mr. Duer's study, a room they've been forbidden to enter, she grows suspicious these servants have murder their guardian and his corpse has been hidden in the trunk.

    However we're not kept in suspense long as the story switches over to Yamoto who is bringing the trunk to a cabin in the woods where Welton Duer is staying. He hasn't been murdered nor has he been called out of town, he's simply a woman hater and the thought of sharing his house with two women was too much for him so he's exiled himself to the cabin out in the snowy woods. 

    When Welton's friend and neighbor, college age Dick Prentiss, visits Welton explains that he had begin to feel he wasn't doing enough for his wards and thus invited them but immediately regretted it. Dick is excited by the twins presence and makes their acquaintance at once. He invites them to go chop down a Christmas tree; Jo accepts but Pat begs off claiming to have a headache. Really she just wants a chance to sneak into the woods and find the mysterious trunk. 

    She journeys far into the woods but loses her way when it starts storming. Turning back she becomes even more lost and after trekking for an unknown but extensive amount of time she finds she has been walking in circles. Just as she collapses from exhaustion and cold someone grabs her, it's Welton Duer. He takes her back to the cabin where he warms her up with blankets and soup. At first she believes him to be an escaped convict she had heard about, a story which he goes along with to keep his identity hidden, but Pat quickly figures out who he really is. She decides to let him play pretend for the time being. 

    During this time Jo and Dick have been in a different part of the woods cutting down a Christmas tree. Jo becomes angry at Dick after he mocks Pat's theory that Duer could have been murdered. This leads Jo to refuse to move from where the tree is going to fall and Dick refuses to chop it in a different direction which results in the tree falling on Jo and her ankle becoming injured. Dick carries her to a cabin, a different cabin some miles from Duer's, and they're surprised to find a mysterious someone has been living in it, more surprised to find that mysterious someone has been peeping on them through the window.

 

    Several days later the twins are enjoying the holiday festivities at the Prentiss house. Among the other guests there is Mavis Martin, a 30 year old woman with the vivaciousness of a teenage girl, and Tommy, one of Dicks friends who takes a liking to Pat. While at the Prentiss Pat tells Jo about Welton Deurs presence in the cabin and decides that they must sneak out to the cabin during that evening and bring him back to the party. After a little comedic scene where Dick and Tommy mix up Pat and Jo while dancing the girls are able to sneak out the back door and into the darkness of the winter night, excited to confront their guardian. 

    Unfortunately at that moment their guardian is arriving at the front door dressed as Santa Claus, a little scheme that Dick put together so that Welton could interact with his wards without any pressure. While "Santa" is handing out presents he becomes startled to see one labeled for Mavis Martin. He asks to give her the present while alone so they go into the library and it's reveled that Mavis Martin is a woman from his past. They had had a falling out many year before which is what cause Welton to become a woman hater. However they immediately have a reconciliation, Welton informs her of his plan to adopt the twins, and Mavis proposes to him. They're just about to kiss when Dick burst into the library to say the twins are missing.

    The girls have made it to the cabin after trekking through the cold, dark forest and find a light burning inside but no Welton Duer. The place is a mess and a dirty old hat is laying around. The girls clean up while they wait and when Duer still has not returned they begin to feel uncomfortable in the gloomy dark silence. Pat then notices the mysterious trunk and decides this is their chance to finally investigate it. While the girls are stooped over the trunk they hear the creak of the door and embarrassed to be caught by Welton snooping through his things they hesitantly turn around. They come face to face with, not their guardian, but the muzzle of a gun being held by a disheveled, cross looking man. They quickly identify him as the escape convict. He has been enjoying the cabin and it's food with Welton gone for the evening. He orders Jo to approach for him to "get a look at" and when she doesn't he roughly drags her by the wrist. Pat tries to help her but he shoves her violently back. The two girls attack him together which makes him mad enough to decide to kill them. Just as he draws his gun Yamoto appears searching for the girls. He knocks the gun from the convicts hand and fights him skillfully with jujitsu however the convicts is able to reclaim his gun and just as it seems all is lost Duer, Dick, and Mavis appear. Duer shoots out the light with his gun and takes advantage of the dark to wrestles the convict down (even though a bright fire was burning in the fire place?). They then tie him up and get him to town with Yamoto receiving the reward money for his capture. 

    A few days later Welton, or Welty as everyone now calls him, Mavis, Dick, and the twins all go for a skate and picnic at the lake and Welton and Mavis inform the girls of their plans to marry and adopt them. Everyone is happy and the girls head back to school to finish the term.

    When everyone has returned from the winter holidays the Faraday girls host a tea in their dorm, served in the fine China Mrs. Prentiss gave them for Christmas, and share of their adventures. Their friend Liz suggest they write up their story and enter it into a short story competition currently being held. The girls do this and at the end of the school year find they have won first prize of $500. However Liz, who we're suddenly told needs money, has not won anything for her story so the girls and Mrs. Prentiss, who along with Dick and one of his school mates have all come to attend the girls' graduation ceremony, come up with a plan. 

    The $500 is given to Mrs. Prentiss and under her name she donates it to the school to be given as an award for the first honors student who, of course, is Liz. At the graduation ceremony a new award, the Service Award, is given to Pat and Jo along with $500 scholarship from an Anonymous donor. The girls get another surprise when they see Welty and Mavis who flew in from the west coast just to see the girls graduate. Everyone is happy, everyone is loved, they embrace, and we reach the end.

- For some reason Mavis Martin reminds me of Paulette Goddard.

- The convict remarks that Duer keeps the girls "in red up for him". I had never heard this phrase before and had to look it up, to "red up" means to clean up so he thinks Duer has them come clean the cabin.

- The first time I read this book I felt like the way the convict told Jo to come closer for him to "get a look" at her as well as him saying no one can hear her screams made it seem like he was going to sexually assault her, which would be an interesting bit of realism and really made the situation more fearful. However on this reading I'm not sure how to interpret it.

- The whole "Welton is a woman hater because of Mavis" is just so dumb. I know this book is old but that's just such an outdated concept for a book. I feel like fear of being a good parent would have made more sense.

- My copy of this book is from the 1940's and I thought that made it very interesting to have a Japanese character. Yamoto is, unfortunately, a Japanese stereotype but he also is a good character. He's kind, understanding, and brave and knows how to handle Welton Duer. At one point it's even stated that Welton loves Yamoto which I found cute, and he also plans to make sure he is taken care of in his old age. But when I looked it up I found this book was originally published in 1933 which makes more sense. 

- Pat jumps to the conclusion that Welton has been murdered very quickly and I feel like it's way too much of a leap. Jo thinks the theory makes sense only because she is very tired after their long trip to the cabin but in the morning finds the idea silly.

    Overall the book is ok. I think the setup with the convict was interesting. He's mentioned twice before the climax of the story but you don't think much about it until later, I like that as it keeps from giving the story away. I think the last chapter about the girls returning to school wasn't very pertinent but it wasn't too bad. Lastly I want to mention the cover art which was done by an unknown artist. It's simple but very lovely.

    There's another book in this series; Patty and Jo and the Case of the Toy Drummer. I plan on reading it sometime in the future and I'm very interested in seeing if it involves the girls traveling with Welton and Mavis as is discussed in this book.

Madge Sterling: The Missing Formula

    "Orphan Anne Fairaday faces a life of poverty upon the death of her father. The only thing that can prevent it is finding his latest experiment. She enlisted her new found friend, Madge Sterling, an outdoors girl who has a knack for finding missing things. But they must race against time as there are also several people who will stop at nothing to get it first" [x]

    The first time I read this book I was quickly thrown for a bit of a loop. Everything within the first few pages was so familiar and not in a vague way. I already knew the characters, the setting, and the whole story. I quickly realized that this book was the uncredited basis for a computer game I had played; Miss Clue Formula For Danger.

    The Miss Clue games are pretty much rip-offs of the Nancy Drew computer games so it's not surprising they're based off of other books by Mildred Wirt. The two other books in the Madge Sterling series also have games based off them. I'll add more info about the games at the bottom of this post because I actually really like them.

- The way Madge's parents are mentioned it seems as though there could have been plans for her to find her missing father if the series had continued à la the Maxie series.

- Would Anne be legally allowed to remain on Steward Island alone? She is a minor after all.

- When Anne mentions trying to get a loan from the bank Madge remarks that her uncle said banks were reluctant to give loans at the time. That's because it was the great depression. I've remarked before how I love when real life events are worked into these old books.

- It really is great luck Madge just happened to be interested in the Kippling book instead of one of the many books in the Fairaday library.

- After Anne's house gets robbed in the night of her silverware, she thinks someone could be trying to scare her away. She ignores the fact that Clyde had showed up saying she owed him money and then her semi valuable silverware is gone. Also her fathers laboratory is ransacked the same night Clyde says he has Anne's fathers formula. C'mon girls, use your logic.

- Madge just happens to take a wrong trail on Stewart island and happens to trip on the log containing the missing silverware.

- The girls debate on leaving the book with the secret formula at Stewart island or at the Lodge before deciding on the lodge. I don't understand why they would leave it anywhere, they should have been keeping that book within their arms 24/7.

- It's very foolish of the girls to hide the book in the cabin in the woods. Especially when Madge thinks someone was watching them.

- The first time I read this book I was annoyed at how Clyde is allowed to go free and receives no legal action against him. This time I'm ok with it. I guess it seemed less serious because Clyde had worked with Anne father, knew Anne, and had been in her home a lot during his work. It seems more like he was an old family friend, even if not on friendly terms anymore.

    I'm not really sure how I feel about this book. It's not my favorite, that's for sure, but it's not terrible. I think the game might have affected the way I see it..

    By the way, when I started this book I was in a bit of a reading slump so I decided to give an audio book a try. I listened to this on LibirVox, which is a wonderful site full of free audio books all read by volunteers. This one was read by Mary Escano who even did all the characters dialogue in voices. Lack of distinction between characters speaking is a big reason I don't normally listen to audio books so I really appreciated that. If you like audio books then I recommend it.

    Now let us talk about the Miss Clue games. These games started coming out years ago on virtualfamilykingdom.com. They were free to play and released in serialized chapters. There was 5 games made; three Madge sterling ones; Formula for Danger, Cruise Most Deadly, The Haunted Garden, and then Peril at Pemberly and Trials of Salem which are not related to Madge Sterling. The last seemed to be an attempt to pre rip-off the Nancy Drew game Midnight in Salem. Although there was plans for more games there hasn't been any updates in over a year. At this point I don't have much hope there will be more but I certainly would love it if there was.

Anyways I believe the games are still free on VK, I couldn't remember my account login info so I couldn't verify but it's still being advertised on the website. 

    Because I listened to an audiobook I didn't have a physical copy to scan so the image I used comes from an eBay listing of this book which is long gone.

Vicki Barr: Behind the White Veil

    I've read this book just once before and I recall having mixed feeling about it. I was excited at first to see Vicki was now working in my hometown of Seattle but the story quickly went to Alaska where it stayed. Although I don't remember very much of this book I do recall finding everything about it unique; the location, mystery, events, characters, and especially the ending. I really thought all that was great but I recall it feeling, like most Vicki Barr books, boring. However I gave it a full 5 stars on GoodReads so lets see if my opinions changed.

- Ok, ok, I don't want to always be yelling "racism!" at all these old books because I know it was a different time and whatever but some things just make me go "what the heck". Now that Vicki is assigned to a run between Washington and Alaska she has been warned by her boss, Ruth Benson, to be aware of "Indian" passengers because, according to her, Native Americans do not discipline their children so the kids will run wild, causing chaos for Vicki. Sure enough on Vicki first flight a Native American child starts cutting his seat-belt with a hunting knife while his parents "proudly" watch. A woman, the wife of a university professor grabs the boys wrist and threatens to spank him. When the parents get upset Vicki worries they'll pull out knives too. Vicki, however, doesn't think anything bad of the woman who threatens, multiple times, to physically punish a child that's not her own.

- I'm on page 19 and I'm struggling to find motivation to continue on. I'm not very interested in finding out about the mysterious hot springs or the share-the-ride stuff. I think a big problem with Vicki Barr books is how long the chapters are, the next chapter isn't until page 30 and just struggling to get through over 10 pages of details and explanations that set up the mystery. I think this whole series would have greatly benefited from being cut into 25 short chapters like Nancy Drew. Some of these books even have 20 page long chapters and it makes them feel never ending.

- Vicki and Max go to eat at Maison Blanc which at the time was a famous Seattle restaurant. Unfortunately the restaurant was burnt down in the 1960's by a burglar so I guess I won't be retracing Vicki's steps through Seattle. Vic also remarks at how steep the Seattle hills are. Always found it strange that San Francisco's hills are legendary whereas Seattle's seem to be kept a shameful secret. They also go to Ivars Acres of Clams and the Chinese room of the Smith Tower, both still open.

- Once the group gets into the valley the story picks up and becomes fascinating. I love how Vicki and Jenny decide to keep optimistic attitudes and be a comfort for everyone else. Also Blair and Alex's distaste for each other really adds to the mystery setting.

- Its a little annoying how Vicki needs Max's approval to leave camp and search for an exit, she's a grown woman. None of the other members of the group require his permission.

- After several meals Jenny throws her paper plate in the fire saying if they ate off them again they'd get ptomaine poisoning. I didn't know what that scary sounding thing was so I looked it up and ptomaine poisoning is what they use to call food poisoning. I love learning old facts like that.

- I like how Vicki and Jenny sort of bond and have a nice friendship. Vicki can confide in Jenny her plans for sleuthing and catching Mordy and Blair, and Jenny doesn't stop her the way Max would. Even though there is a large age gap between them it's not noticeable in their friendship.

- Mordy says he will tell the group where the secret exit is if Max promises not to turn him over to the authorities. Max immediately says no. Is he really going to let 6 people all starve to death because he doesn't want to make a flimsy promise? How stupid.

- Jenny makes a joke about cannibalism but honestly that's kind of a scary thought. If they hadn't gotten out there is a chance that someone selfish like Blair or with a belief in survival like Mordy would resort to it. Or when one of them dies naturally of starvation....it's a horrific thought.

- The ending makes me interested in the next title and although not too long ago I believed I wouldn't read another Vicki Barr title, I think that maybe, far into the future, I wouldn't mind.

    Overall this book is quite good mostly due to its uniqueness. Upon this reading I realized what had intrigued me so much the first time reading and that was the majority of the book taking place in one location. Within the valley the only places they can go are camp, the waterfall, and in the woods. I feel like because of this the book would make a great Nancy Drew style game. I've lowered it down from 5 stars to 4 stars cause the beginning was hard to get through but I am keeping it in my collection.