In preparation for a upcoming poster contest Judy is having a work bench built in the Bolton's cellar. Not only will she and Horace have use for it but Judy also wants to have it for her friends; Honey who does not have the space to paint in her grandparents apartments, and Irene who can not afford her own paints.
The work bench is to be built by Stephen and Lon, two young men who are boarding at Irene's house and renting half of the Bolton's garage for their car. Stephen particularly seems to have taken a liking to Judy.
Now that Judy is spending more time in the cellar she is noticing some strange things. First she hears the sound of glass breaking and later she hears whistling. Things also begin to go missing such as an apple she is using as a reference for her poster and a stack of papers places by the furnace for burning.
One night Judy goes out to the movies with Peter while Honey uses Judy's work bench. The couple arrive back at the Bolton house at midnight to find Honey nervous and in a rush to leave. Although she insists she is fine Judy thinks Honey must have experienced something spooky in the cellar.
Irene doesn't end up using the work bench as Kay Vincent has suddenly decided to make friends with Irene and lend her own paints to the mill girl. Kay's snobbery surpasses that of even Lorraine and she has a long history of refusing to associate with any of the girls who work at the mill so her sudden interest in befriending Irene is a surprise to all who know her.
It is the last day to hand in posters for the competition and as Judy and Honey are walking to school they see people rushing despite the early hour. A fire truck ends up passing and soon the girls see their school building up in flames. The school is completely destroyed as well as the students posters which were inside. Judy feels no great personal loss over the latter as her poster turned out embarrassingly bad.
The contest participants are now made up of students from other schools with the exception of Kay who was waiting to turn her poster in alongside Irene who attends Industrial high, a special night school for the mill workers. Judy is certain that Irene's beautiful poster will win the competition so it is a surprise when she opens the announcement letter and sees that she, Judy, has won first place.
Knowing that this is impossible due to her poster being destroyed in the fire Judy heads to the department store where the posters are being displayed. The winning poster is unfamiliar to Judy but after some investigating, and misunderstandings, it is revealed that the poster was created by Honey. However more questions arise when Honey announces her poster disappeared in the Bolton's cellar.
On the night Judy and Peter went to the movies Honey was working in the cellar alone when she began hearing muffled voices. In her nervous haste to leave the house she forgot her poster in the cellar but it was not there when she went to retrieve it later.
With so much happening in the cellar Judy, Horace, Honey, Peter, and Irene all head down there and begin searching for a hidden entrance. They find a trap door in the floor which leads to a sub-cellar which contains another trap door leading to the Bolton's garage. Inside the sub-cellar they find shelves which are empty except for a broken bottle of whiskey. The group is now able to piece the mystery together: the house's former tenant, gangster Vine Thompson, had been bootlegging liquor. Stephen and Lon had rented the garage with the intention of accessing the sub-cellar and sneaking out the liquor. Judy is able to deduce that the boys were hired by Kay Vincent's father, who owned the house when Vine rented it. Kay's sudden interest in Irene's friendship was an excuse to be around the two boarders and supervise the smuggling job. The papers were stolen from the Bolton's cellar to wrap up the liquor bottles with. When Honey's poster got mixed up with them the boys, assuming it was Judy's and being fond of her, had put her name onto it and turned it in for her.
Judy takes this information to police chief Kelly who conducts a raid on Kay's father. It is also soon learned that Kay had copied her poster from a magazine advertisement. Having forgotten the magazine on her desk at school she sent her little brother, Dick, to go retrieve it and while using a match to light the empty classroom he accidentally started the school fire.
Irene ends up being hired by Judy's father as an office girl which pays her more than the mill and gives her an opportunity to learn more about her father's illness as Dr. Bolton is his physician. Irene's father's illness is due to paint poisoning he got while working in unsafe conditions in a factory owned by Mr. Vincent. Irene tells Judy that they will be suing Mr. Vincent over it.
- I found Irene very unlikeable. She gets mad at Judy and wants to end their friendship because she is jealous she didn't win the poster contest.
- I like how Sutton just exnihilated the Vincent family. Kay had been awful to Judy since book two so she certainly had it coming.
- I love how Honey clearly is interested in Horace in this book. They are an adorable couple in my opinion which means I didn't much like how Irene was placed into the role that Lorraine takes when it comes to Judy and Arthur.
- I found the mystery in this book to move a little bit too fast for my liking. It seemed like Judy was making wild assumptions and they turned out to be true. I can overlook it though since it's not the norm for this series.
- I like how we continue to find mysteries in the familiar setting of the Bolton home. I enjoy the mysterious history of the house and like it being used beyond The Haunted Attic.
- I also was a fan of Blackberry helping solve the mystery. I think Sutton did a good job of including him but also keeping him as a realistic cat. He helps them solve the mystery simply by wanting to be let outside.
- I like Stephen and Lon and would have enjoyed if they became semi-reoccurring characters in the series.
Great Review
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