There's No Such Animal: "Miracle on Vine Street" (1941) and "The Sematic Crocodile" (1941) by Fredric Brown

Fredric Brown was a wildly imaginative pulp writer of science-fiction and detective stories who was not averse to cross pollinating seemingly incompatible genres, "stretching the boundaries of any given genre" into his very own "strange, private geography" – giving us such wonderful oddities as The Bloody Moonlight (1949) and Night of the Jabberwock (1951). Recently, I stumbled across two of his little-known, somewhat anomalous, short stories differing greatly in tone and presentation from his more hardboiled, science-fiction tinged mysteries.

During the early 1940s, Brown penned two short stories for The Layman's Magazine, a periodical of the Episcopal Church, in which Rev. Roger L. Young, Doctor of Divinity, solves two so-called "slice of life" mysteries.

"No esoteric mumbo-jumbo could fool that fellow. Lord, no! His two feet were solidly planted on God's good earth."

The first of these stories, entitled "Miracle on Vine Street," was published in the January, 1941, issue of The Layman's Magazine and presents "the young Doctor Young," as he's known to his parishioners, with an honest to God impossible problem! Doctor Young learns a miracle has taken place on his street when his wife, Martha, asks him how a cat could have walked across a ceiling. One of their neighbors, Mr. Weatherby, had been painting and papering a new nursery the previous day, but, on the following morning, there was a track of paw prints on the ceiling – a track of prints made in pink paint! Before he went to bed, Mr. Weatherby had called his wife into the nursery to have a look at it and they both looked up at the ceiling, which they're "absolutely positively sure" was bare of any cat tracks. So how did they get up there?

Doctor Young tells his wife that he has no problem with people believing that "cats walk across ceilings" or that "the devil makes them do it," but when parishioners blame God, well, that's something else altogether. And he's determined to "take that cat off the ceiling" and "put it on the floor where it belongs."

"Miracle on Vine Street" is a very short story with a relatively simplistic plot, but not everything is shared with the reader and this will prevent you from working out the finer details of the solution. Nonetheless, it's still a fun, sweet little mystery with a likable and lively detective who has more than a touch of G.K. Chesterton's Father Brown. Particularly his personal outlook on what constitutes a miracle, which is not something as cheap as mere paw prints on a ceiling. I enjoyed it.

The second and final story, "The Sematic Crocodile," was published in the February, 1941, issue of The Layman's Magazine and is a cross between a juvenile mystery and a slice of life story. Something along the lines of Theodore Roscoe's "I Was the Kid with the Drum" (collected in The Argosy Library: Four Corners, 2015) and John Russell Fearn's "The Thief of Claygate Farm" (collected in The Haunted Gallery, 2011), but without any serious crimes.

Doctor Young is told by Sheriff Rance Clayton that his five-year-old son, Tommy, came home that morning with "a real whopper." Tommy had been playing outside when he came dashing home with the story that he had been chased by "an enormous crocodile" with "big red eyes," but the stream is only a foot deep. So his father finds it hard to believe he was chased by a fifteen foot crocodile and grounded him for the rest of the day. However, Doctor Young believes there's a kernel of truth to the boy's story and demonstrates there was something very human underneath the monstrous appearance at the stream.

"The Sematic Crocodile" is a minor, but charming, story with the kind of solution you would expect from one of Robert Arthur and William Arden's The Three Investigators mysteries. I enjoyed reading this one as well.

So, yeah, these stories are absolute lightweight mysteries, but showed a unexpectedly different side of Brown with surprisingly down-to-earth plots and homely characters that are the polar opposite of those usually found in his darker, grittier and more hardboiled detective fiction – which makes them standout among his work. You can read these stories in The Layman's Magazine of the Living Church, Numbers 1-20, on Google Books. Enjoy!

The Rat-a-Tat Mystery (1956) by Enid Blyton

Enid Blyton's The Rat-a-Tat Mystery (1956) is the fifth of six novels in The Barney "R" Mystery series, the only series she wrote for children over the age of eleven, which follows the exploits of "a down-at-heel circus-boy," Barney – whose sole companion used to be his pet monkey, Miranda. A rather lonely existence that ended when he befriended two siblings, Roger and Diana Lynton, along with their mischievous, trouble-making cousin, "Snubby," in The Rockingdown Mystery (1949).

So now they're spending their holidays together and these sleepovers generally result in the Lynton home resembling a disaster-stricken area.

The Rat-a-Tat Mystery opens with Mr. Lynton putting down his newspaper, as a crash came from upstairs, asking his wife "how long do these Christmas holidays last." Christmas had been "a mad and merry time" in the house with a drizzling rain keeping the children indoors and Snubby's always enthusiastic black cocker spaniel, Looney, sweeping through the place "like a hurricane" – slowly driving Mr. Lynton to his limits. Luckily, an unexpected telephone call from Barney invited Roger, Diana and Snubby to come and stay with him for the remainder of their holiday at a big lakeside house that his grandmother owns. Apparently, Barney found his long-lost family in The Rubadub Mystery (1952).

Rat-a-Tat House is an old, remote place with turrets, towers and tucked-in windows, where "Oliver Cromwell once stayed" and "a celebrated Spaniard" was imprisoned, which lays at a now frozen lake. The house also has a ghost story to tell.

Originally, the place was named after the lake and village, Boffame House, but 250 years ago, someone began hammering on the front-door with "the enormous lion's head knocker." When the footman hurried to answer the door, nobody was standing there. This phantom knocker went on for a hundred-and-fifty years and people believed it was a warning that there was "a traitor in the house," but it has been over a hundred years since the ghost "hammered at the door" with the lion-headed knocker. So why would it start it now, right?

Well, the first few days at Rat-a-Tat House were pure bliss with them playing card games, ice skating, snowball fights, tobogganing and building a huge snowman, but the silence of the second night is broken by a strange, eerie knocking sound ("RAT-A-TAT-TAT! RAT-A-TAT-TAT!") – someone was hammering on the front-door with the knocker. When they go investigate the following morning, they discover a singe track of heavy boot prints going to the bottom of the front-door steps. There were, however, "no footmarks showing that he walked away again." Whoever this person was, he could not have entered the house through the front-door, because it was securely locked on the inside with two great bolts, top and bottom, two locks that were stiff to turn and "a heavy chain." So how did this person manage to vanish into thin air? And this is not the only impossible situation of the story.

Mrs. Tickle is the sister of Barney's grandmother's cook and the adult supervision at Rat-a-Tat House. She witnessed how the big snowman the children had made, which has now disappeared, shuffled pass the kitchen window and had looked inside! Add to this that the snowfall has cut them off from the outside world and the presence of two of unsavory characters with an interest in the cellar, they once again find themselves up to their necks in trouble. Sadly, this charming and intriguing premise is as good as The Rat-a-Tat Mystery is going to get.

I've praised Blyton's superb handling of the clues and red herrings in The Mystery of the Invisible Thief (1950) and the warm, lively characterization and sparkling humor of The Rilloby Fair Mystery (1950), which also had a clever innovation on an age-old locked room-trick, but none of those qualities were present here – as the plot is largely uninspired and razor-thin. The solution to the single track of prints in the snow is another oldie, but this time without a touch of originality and the answer to the peeping snowman was disappointingly simple. And those two shadowy villains lurking around the house? They only briefly appeared, but mostly remain in the background and the conclusion to these main plot-threads, which tied everything together, was concluded off-page.

The Rat-a-Tat Mystery still has some wintry charm and a lingering Christmas spirit, but lacked the lively, sparkling humor and characterization of The Rilloby Fair Mystery. It didn't exactly helped that the plot was uninspired and starved of even an ounce of ingenuity. So you can say this was a bit of a letdown.

However, I don't want to end this review on a sour note and so decided to give you my own two alternative solutions to the two impossible situations from this story. If only to prove why I'm everyone's favorite locked room fanboy (right, guys?).

Firstly, we have the puzzle of the single track of boot prints in the snow, but my answer depends on a third, mini-locked room puzzle: how where the villains able to enter the kitchen when Mrs. Tickle had locked and bolted the kitchen-door? The answer to this little side-puzzle is quickly found and I would have used as both a clue and as the key to the ghostly knocking on the front-door. In my scenario, one of the villains would enter the house through the kitchen and unlocked the front-door, while the other walked towards it, knocked and entered – locking the door behind them and vanishing from the house with their kitchen-door trick. This would make it appear as if the knocker had impossibly vanished from the front-steps. You only have to come up with an explanation as to how they got their hands on a (duplicate) key to (un)lock the front-door.

My alternative solution to the wandering snowman may seem obvious, but there were certain items present in the story offering a way to make the situation appear to be truly impossible.

I would have tightly wrapped a piece of tarpaulin, taken from the boathouse, around one of the toboggans and remade the snowman on top of it, because one snowman looks very much like the other – especially if you dress him up with the ornaments from the original snowman. And then you drag it across the kitchen window. Why wrapped the toboggan in tarpaulin, you ask? The tarpaulin helps make the track-marks of the toboggan look (slightly) different from the track marks the children made with the unwrapped toboggans. More importantly, it would give the impression that the snowman had actually come alive and had dragged himself through the snow.

So what do you think of my two alternative solutions? Would you accept them as solutions to these, admittedly, originally posed impossible problems?

Anyway, The Rat-a-Tat Mystery was a huge disappointment after being pleasantly surprised by the unexpectedly good The Mystery of the Invisible Thief and The Rilloby Fair Mystery, which I didn't expect from Blyton, but if you're looking for a harmless, wintry mystery with a little charm, you can easily throw this one on your holiday reading-list. Other than that, I can't really recommend it.

The Rilloby Fair Mystery (1950) by Enid Blyton

Enid Blyton's The Mystery of the Invisible Thief (1950) earned a spot on my best-of list of 2018 as a textbook example of a perfectly plotted and fairly clued detective story. A children's mystery novel about a rash of burglaries in a small, quiet village and the seemingly impossible disappearance of the culprit, but my second excursion in The Five Find-Outers and Dog series, The Mystery of the Burnt Cottage (1943), was more focused on introducing the characters than with the plot – as it was the first book in the series. So that was a little disappointing.

However, someone (anonymously) recommended a title from another one of Blyton's many series in the comment-section. A story tentatively described as a locked room mystery about "a series of mysterious thefts of various valuable documents from rooms that are hermetically sealed." Say no more!

The Rilloby Fair Mystery (1950) is the second title in The Barney "R" Mystery series and the only series from Blyton's hands "recommended solely for children over the age of eleven." The stories are reportedly "full of atmosphere" with "a haunting, wistful quality," sparkling humor, strong characterization, clever plots and sophisticated language – a perfect summation of the qualities of The Rilloby Fair Mystery. Honestly, the protagonists of this series, including the animals, are some of the liveliest and most convincingly drawn (child) characters I have come across in these juvenile mysteries. And that includes Roger and Bill Baxter from Martin Colt's Stranger at the Inlet (1946).

There are four main characters in this series: a brother and sister, Roger and Diana Lynton, who spend their school holidays with their orphaned cousin, Stubby, who's always accompanied by his energetic, overly enthusiastic black cocker spaniel, Looney. During their first adventure, in The Rockingdown Mystery (1949), they befriended a circus boy, Barney, whose only friend up until then was his pet monkey, Miranda.

Apparently, Barney is searching for his long-lost father and this is a plot-thread that runs through the entire series. I wonder if Barney was based on Rémi from Hector Malot's classic Sans famille (Nobody's Boy, 1878). Or, if you're Dutch, you probably know the book under the title Alleen op de wereld (Alone on the World).

The Rilloby Fair Mystery takes place during a four week Easter holiday and the Lynton's are preparing the home for the arrival of two house guests, Stubby and Great-uncle Robert, who have never met each other. So, when they have an unexpected meeting on the train, Stubby tells Great-uncle Robert a tall tale about being on the run from "an international gang," the so-called Green Hands – warning him to be wary of "anyone wearing green gloves." A story that startles the old, pompous man because he has just came from a place where historical documents where inexplicably stolen from a locked room.

A little tall tale that comes back to haunt Stubby when he discovers that the old, stuffy gentleman, whose leg he pulled on the train, is the Great-uncle of his cousins. So he spends a good portion of the story attempting to dodge Great-uncle Robert.

However, the story of a thief who "apparently passed through locked doors or barred windows" to take historical and valuable documents from various homes and museums is too good to ignore. Roger, Diana and Stubby study the newspaper and astutely observe that the string of thefts can be linked to a traveling fair, which means that either "the fair goes to places where there are rare papers to be stolen" or somebody in the fair is snooping around each place they go "to see if there are any in the neighborhood worth stealing." So, off they are to the fair, where they're reunited with their old friends, Barney and Miranda, but also meet a whole host of carnival characters.

There's the ginormous, thunder-voiced owner of the fair, Tonnerre, with his elephants. Vosta and his two chimpanzees, Hurly and Burly. Billy Tell, the "famous cracksman" in charge of the shooting gallery, his son, Young 'Un, and his sharp-tongued mother, Old Ma. All of whom could potentially be the mysterious burglar who can "go through locked doors and fastened windows."

As they roam around the fair and pry information from Great-uncle Robert, the children deduce the next target of thief, Marloes Castle, which has a room housing a modest collection of documents and stuffed animals protected behind three locked doors – of which the third has two locks and a burglar alarm. The windows are always fastened on the inside, protected by bars on the outside, while the chimney is too narrow to crawl through. A practically impenetrable muniment room! Nonetheless, this elusive burglar succeeds in entering and leaving the locked room without any trace, or triggering the alarm, but this time the burglar took something very different from the room. A huge clue to part of the locked room-trick.

Honestly, nearly every adult or seasoned mystery reader will have a pretty good idea how the locked room-trick was worked at this point and I sighed with disappointment. But my disappointment was short-lived.

A very old trick that I don't like to see in a locked room story, but I have to give it to Blyton, she added something very clever to it that made it acceptable again in 1950. Getting in-and out the locked rooms was only one part of the trick, but how the documents and papers were selected put a new spin on an age-old trick. My only real complaint is that the solution was presented as a one-size fits-all locked room-trick. There was an obvious reason why it worked in the private room, of Marloes Castle, but you're not getting that lucky with every single room storing a private collection of valuable papers. A brief, throw-away line in one of the last chapters betrayed that Blyton was aware of this.

So, plot-wise, The Rilloby Fair Mystery can largely stand toe-to-toe with The Mystery of the Invisible Thief. A mystery novel with a locked room problem as its central puzzle and a fairly clued solution, but lacked the clever switch-and-bait with the clues and red herrings – which elevated The Mystery of the Invisible Thief to the status of a minor (juvenile) classic. However, where The Rilloby Fair Mystery shoots pass The Mystery of the Invisible Thief is the more mature dialogue, lively characters, sparkling humor and the warm, homely scenes. Such as the opening scene at the breakfast table or the depiction of a normally quiet household invaded by children and animals. It makes you want to give the world another chance.

Everything considered, I think I like this series a lot more than The Five Find-Outers and continue my exploration of Blyton with The Barney "R" Mysteries, but don't expect those reads to be in chronological order. The Rat-a-Tat Mystery (1956) is penultimate title in the series and has an impossible problem of the footprints-in-the-snow variety, which is presented in a way very reminiscent of the impossibilities from Edward D. Hoch's "The Gypsy's Paw" (collected in The Iron Angel and Other Tales of the Gypsy Sleuth, 2003) and Anne van Doorn's "Het huis dat ongeluk bracht" ("The House That Brought Bad Luck," 2018). Now I want to know if Blyton had a third solution for this particular vanishing-trick.

So you know what to expect next!

Zaregoto: The Kubishime Romanticist (2002) by NisiOisiN

Back in January, I reviewed Zaregoto series: kubikiri saikuru (Zaregoto, Book 1: The Kubikiri Cycle, 2002) by the palindromic "NisiOisiN," the open, stylized penname of Nisio Isin, who produced nine so-called "Light Novels" (Young Adult) in the fanciful, off-beat Zaregoto series – complete with manga artwork depicting the various characters from the stories. The Kubikiri Cycle is a traditionally-structured mystery novel centering on a group of people stuck on an island with someone who has a talent for murder. There are even two impossible crimes and the solution to the murder in the locked storage room is a paragon of the locked room story!

Zaregoto series: kubishime romanchisuto (Zaregoto, Book 2: The Kubishime Romanticist, 2002) is the followup to The Kubikiri Cycle and takes place a mere month after the murders on Wet Crow's Feather Island, but the plot is markedly less conventional.

The nameless narrator of the series is an apathetic 19-year-old university student, nicknamed Ii-chan, who considers himself "a broken thing" and developed a "go-with-the-flow type" of personality in order to avoid any kind of conflict or disagreement – someone who really prefers to be "a passive bystander." So he often downplays his own abilities and say whatever it takes to keep things as uncomplicated as possible, which also makes him an unreliable narrator. But a compelling one at that.

The Kubishime Romanticist opens in one of the practically deserted dining halls of Rokumeikan Private University. Ii-chan is grappling with his bowl of kimchee when a classmate, Aoii Mikoko, plops down in front of him, but he's pretty bad at even remembering personal encounters with people and is afraid "this might prove to be a painful encounter." And he's not entirely wrong.

Ii-chan and Mikoko-chan not only take the same core subjects, but they were in the same foreign language classes, who had been paired up in English class, which meant they had met and talked a number of time – only he couldn't remember her at all. Mikoko-chan is not difficult to remember, because she the hyper personality of child addicted to pixie sticks. She invites Ii-chan to a small, intimate birthday party of another one of their classmates, Emoto Tomoe, together with two of their fellow students, Atemiya Muimi and Usami Akiharu. All four of them are long-time friends. Naturally, Ii-chan doesn't remember anyone of them and doesn't want to intrude, because "a fifth person would throw off the balance," but his don't-rock-the-boat attitude makes him accept the invitation.

So why would a close, intimate circle of friends invite a solitary, anti-social outsider, like Ii-chan, to a birthday party? Obviously, Mikoko-chan likes Ii-chan, but he misses all the cues. Or did he? You can never be exactly sure with him.

Anyway, the birthday party, small as it was, can be considered a success, but the following morning, he finds two police-detectives of the Kyoto Police First Investigative on his doorstep. Emoto Tomoe had been murdered after the party ended and her four classmates are the prime suspects, but all four appeared to lack a proper motive and they all have alibis, of which the strongest is the double alibi of Ii-chan and Mikoko-chan – who returned to his apartment and the neighbor vouched for them. So who murdered the student mere hours after her twentieth birthday?

If you haven't read The Kubishime Romanticist, you would probably assume from all of this that the book is a fairly conventionally-structured detective novel, but the murder is not the focal point of the story. Ii-chan and his interactions with the other characters in the story are the focal point. And that brings us to one of the more unusual characters he interacts with.

Kyoto is plagued by a serial killer, christened "The Prowler," who has murdered and dismembered six random people when the story opened, adding six more to his body count before the end, but these killings are largely irrelevant to the plot. However, what's important is that Ii-chan has an unexpected encounter with this elusive serial killer, Zerozaki Hitoshiki. Ii-chan and Zerozaki turn out to be "the same breed," like "mirror reflections of one another," but with the difference that one of them is a passive bystander and the other an active serial killer – which gives them something to talk about. They even have a philosophical conversation in a karaoke bar, of all places, about their damaged personalities and the murders.

So here we have a protagonist, in what's still essentially a mystery novel, musing philosophically with a murderer about life, death and his crimes. Something I have always associated with the psychological crime stories and police procedural from continental Europe. This is something you would expect from a German krimi-series, such as Derrick, or Tim Krabbé's overrated novella Het gouden ei (The Golden Egg, 1984). But not from a zany, manga-esque Japanese light novel populated with quirky, anime-like characters.

Nosing around when "one of his classmates is murdered" and maintaining "friendly relations with serial killers" brings Aikawa Jun back in his life. Aikawa Jun is known as mankind's greatest private contractor, a jack-of-all-trade, who turned her hands to "walking dogs, solving locked-room murder mysteries or catching mass murderers." As long as there's buck to be earned, she would take the job. And what she wanted was The Prowler.

The Kubishime Romanticist is, plot-wise, a step down from the brilliant, traditionally-structured The Kubikiri Cycle, but the plot-threads surrounding the murdered university students was still pretty solid with a good alibi-trick and a nice play on the least-likely-suspect. I found one aspect of the second, quasi-locked room murder a little hard to swallow, which, considering the solution, could have been easily remedied. However, the plot stuck nicely together for a somewhat unconventional, character-focused mystery novel. And I really liked it. I'm also becoming fond of that cold, hardhearted narrator and would like to read more, if more of them get translated.

Well, here's where I can end this review with some good news about the Zaregoto series. The Kubikiri Cycle and The Kubishime Romanticist were originally translated and published by the now defunct Dey Rey, but Vertical has revised and reissued them under slightly altered book-titles, Decapitation: Kubikiri Cycle and Strangulations: Kubishime Romanticist. Vertical is continuing the series with a brand new translation of the third book, Zaregoto series: kubitsuri high school (Zaregoto series, Book 3: Hanging High School, 2002), which is scheduled for release on September 24, 2019! So I will try to get to Hanging High School before the end of the year.

The Clue at Skeleton Rocks (1932) by Hugh Lloyd

Percy K. Fitzhugh was an American writer who published close to a hundred boy scout novels, comprising of a handful of distinctly different scouting series all set in the fictional town of Bridgeboro, New Jersey, which were very popular with both children and adults – contributing greatly to the growth and popularity of the Boy Scouts in the U.S. Reportedly, there were thousands of boys who joined the scouts "because of his writing."

During the early 1930s, Fitzhugh's popularity began to decline and decided to turn his hand to the juvenile detective story.

Between 1931 and 1934, he adopted the penname of "Hugh Lloyd" and produced ten volumes about Hal Keen. A tall, red-headed youth whose uncle, Denis Keen, is an agent for the Secret Service Department and functions as the plot-device that allows Keen to have adventures all over the world as the book-titles testify – e.g. Kidnapped in the Jungle (1931), The Lonesome Swamp Mystery (1932) and The Lost Mine of the Amazon (1933). However, the Hal Keen books are very different from most juvenile mystery series that have been discussed on this blog. Very differently.

A distinguishing characteristic of Fitzhugh's writing is realism. This is why so many of his scouting novels bore "the official seal of approval of the BSA" and regularly received fan mail addressed to his various Boy Scout characters.

Fitzhugh's adherence to realism resulted here in a more mature, but darker, series closer to Peter Drax and George Bellairs than William Arden or Bruce Campbell. As one reviewer noted, "people are not only killed," but they are murdered and have "a noir feel" without having urban settings. I agree. Another notable difference is the age of Hal Keen. I assumed Hal was somewhere in his late adolescence, between 17 and 19, but a late chapter revealed he was a "young man of twenty-one."

So this series promised to be something out of the ordinary and decided to sample it with the seventh title.

The Clue at Skeleton Rocks (1932) begins with a wrecked schooner, Sister Ann, which has struck the reef at Skeleton Rocks, Maine, where one of those "lonely, wave-swept lighthouses" stands and this immediately begs the question – why was the ship wrecked so close to the light? And what happened to the crew? Secret Service in Washington believes the wrecked schooner was none other than an old smuggling vessel, Isle of Tortuga, which carried opium. So this brings Denis Keen to Skeleton Rocks. And he brought along his nephew, Hal.

Captain Dell of the lighthouse tender, Cactus, tells them nothing thrilling has happened on Skeleton Rocks in more than forty years, but one of the two lighthouse keepers, Bill Hollins, had committed suicide on the night Sister Ann ran up the reef. These events turned the hair of the other keeper, Edgar Barrowe, white over night and his behavior became even more peculiar than usual. And than there's the man who Hal saved from drowning, Danny Sears, who vanishes at the first opportunity he got. This won't be the last time Sears made a sudden entrance and exit.

Denis Keen described his nephew as someone who "invites trouble" and, when it doesn't come, "he just goes looking for it." Hal decides to stay behind on Skeleton Rocks to spend his Easter holiday as a lighthouse keeper's apprentice, but he really wants to figure out what happened on that fateful night and befriends "the orphaned half-wit," Dillie Rawson – who was very close with Hollins. Hal also finds the time to fall in love with the daughter of the doctor from the nearby Porthmouth, Elissa.

Unfortunately, this is all I can tell you about the plot of The Clue at Skeleton Rocks, because the plot is paper-thin and has an infuriating explanation breaking one of the cardinal rules of detective-fiction.

I already mentioned how Lloyd's realism and writing-style reminded me of Bellairs and Drax, but have only read one novel by each of them, High Seas Murder (1939) and The Cursing Stones Murder (1954). Nonetheless, they have more than one thing in common with The Clue at Skeleton Rocks. All three are darker, moody crime stories with a shipping background, minimalistic plotting and a lack of any meaningful detective work. Sure, you have the titular clue, but, since the murderer's identity is draped in a layer you can never peel away, until it's revealed, the clue is rendered completely useless.

All things considered, The Clue at Skeleton Rocks is an interesting curiosity, to be sure, but failed hard as a genuine detective story and was perhaps a little bit too much on the darker and serious side to be considered a juvenile mystery – which makes this curiosity only recommendable to the curious. If you're one of those curious-minded, I have some good news. The previously mentioned The Lost Mine of the Amazon is available on Gutenberg, but I'll be giving the rest of the series a pass.

And if you want to try some genuinely good juvenile mysteries, you should track down one of these titles: J. Jefferson Farjeon's Holiday Express (1935), Martin Colt's Stranger at the Inlet (1946), Manly Wade Wellman's The Sleuth Patrol (1947), Enid Blyton's The Mystery of the Invisible Thief (1950) Bruce Campbell's The Clue of the Phantom Car (1953), Robert Arthur's The Mystery of the Whispering Mummy (1965) and William Arden's The Mystery of the Shrinking House (1972).

The Mystery of the Burnt Cottage (1943) by Enid Blyton

Last year, I reviewed the eighth title in Enid Blyton's The Five Find-Outers and Dog series, The Mystery of the Invisible Thief (1950), which is a juvenile mystery aimed at children between 8-12, but has a plot drenched in the traditions of the pure, Golden Age detective story and scrupulously observed the rules of fair play – even turning the red herrings into clues once you realize they're red herrings. A schoolbook example of how to plant clues and red herrings!

Naturally, older or more seasoned mystery readers will immediately peer through the veil of intrigue, but that doesn't take away from the fact that The Mystery of the Invisible Thief is a technical achievement in plot construction. A plot that must have surprised and impressed its intended audience. So, as a fan of the simon-pure jigsaw-puzzle detective story, I intended to pay a second visit to this series. Just to admire Blyton's putting together a fair and sound plot.

My fellow crime fiction addict, "JJ" of The Invisible Event, was the one who pointed my attention to this series and he posted a glowing review of the "exceptionally promising" debut of The Five Find-Outers and Dog.

The Mystery of the Burnt Cottage (1943) begins on a dark April night, in the village of Peterswood, when the titular cottage of Mr. Hick is set ablaze.

The cottage is old, half-timbered and thatched with a straw-roof that had been converted into a workroom, where Mr. Hick kept valuable papers worth "thousands of pounds," which impelled Mr. Hick to dart towards to the burning workroom – getting pulled back by three people while screaming "my papers" and "get them out, get them out." A fire expert from the insurance company determined that petrol had been used to torch the cottage. This was a case of arson!

Peterswood is a small, quiet village in the English countryside where Larry, Daisy, Pip and Bet live. Larry is the oldest of the group and Daisy's older brother. Bet is the baby of the group, just eight years old, who's often teased by her brother, Pip. Just around the time of the fire, a plump, well-dressed boy moved into the village with his jet-black Scottish Terrier, Buster. The name of this initially unpopular, self-satisfied boy is Frederick Algernon Trotteville and his ingratiation into “the little company of four friends” is the high-mark of the novel.

I mentioned in my review of The Mystery of the Invisible Thief that the antics of the children were very cartoon-like and how their pestering of Constable Theophilus Goon kind of reminded me of The Exploits of Quick and Flupke, but here the children were surprisingly realistically characterized – even showing how mean-spirited they can be. Frederick is christened "Fatty" on account of his size and initials. He had already been "Tubby" and "Sausage" at school and now he would be "Fatty."

In his own review, JJ pointed out the obvious subtext of Fatty being emotionally neglected by his parents. Fatty can do whatever he want, wherever he want and whenever he want. There's no parental oversize. Larry remarked Fatty has "so much pocket-money he doesn't know what to do with it" and there was a rather sad scene where Fatty was eagerly lapping up the attention Pip's mother was giving him. This is surprisingly dark, if you ask me!

Fatty bonds with Larry, Daisy, Pip and Bet when they form a detective-club to find out who burned down Mr. Hick's cottage and destroyed the valuable papers. Bets comes up with the name when Larry explains to her what a detective is ("oh, a find-outer").

The Mystery of the Invisible Thief has many features of the Intuitionist School of G.K. Chesterton and John Dickson Carr with a seemingly impossible disappearance, a bizarre clue, disguised red herrings and the kids are even friends with Inspector Jenks – who's the antithesis of Constable Goon. On the other hand, The Mystery of the Burnt Cottage is firmly rooted in the traditions of the Realist School of Freeman Wills Crofts and John Rhode. A good portion of their investigation consists of trying to find the person who left rubber-soled footprints, with criss-cross markings, in a muddy ditch in the garden of Mr. Hick's garden and "a bit of grey flannel" from a suit caught on a thorn. This puts them on the trail of a tramp who was one of the many people in the garden on the night of the fire. And they discover that there were "a lot of quarrels and upsets on the day of the fire."

Mr. Hick had "a fine old quarrel" with his man-servant, Horace Peeks, who was fired on the spot, but had he set fire to the cottage as revenge? Peeks has been secretly dating a fellow servant, Lily, who still works for Mr. Hicks and uses the Five Find-Outers to post a warning letter to Peeks. Mrs. Minns is the talkative housekeeper of Mr. Hick and is constantly yelled at by her employer about her cats or letting the children into his kitchen. Finally, there's a scholar obsessed with old documents, Mr. Smellie, who had an argument with Mr. Hick over certain papers.

Unfortunately, the plot and clueing were uninspired, workmanlike and lacked genuine fair play.

The footprints in The Mystery of the Invisible Thief was a clever, tell-all clue presented as a red herring, but here it was simply a question of tracking down the person who owned a pair of rubber-soled shoes with criss-cross markings, which didn't even seem to matter in the end – because the arsonist made a stupid slip of the tongue. Fatty noticed. Same story with the piece of cloth. More annoyingly, you never really get an opportunity to break the alibi, because you're told about a certain location when the alibi-trick is explained. Very unfair. However, you don't need these clues to figure out who or why.

All in all, The Mystery of the Burnt Cottage is not as good a detective story as The Mystery of the Invisible Thief, but serves its purpose as an introduction to The Five Find-Outers and Dog. So a good, but imperfect, series debut that will not deter me from exploring this series further. The Mystery of the Pantomime Cat (1949) and The Mystery of Holly Lane (1953) sound promising!