On page 5, Jean and Aunt Harriet look for clues.
On page 6, the guests flee because of the fire in the closet. I have always loved Louise's response. "Oh, please don't go. We have so much to eat."
The kids quit coming to the Danas' house for treats because word of the fire had gotten around to everyone. I think the opposite would actually be true, at least for any kids not with their parents. The parents might avoid the house because of the fire, but the kids would love to get in on the action. In today's social media world, the Danas' house would be swamped with people trying to get video in order to post it online.
On page 7, Aunt Harriet is described as a "lovely, motherly person." This amuses me, simply because I just know that Harriet Adams was describing herself.
On page 14, Aunt Harriet discovers that Uncle Ned's expensive barometer is missing. Aunt Harriet is the one who calls the police.
On pages 49 and 50, some birds have been stolen from a bird collector's home. The girls are told that "someone broke in and left three vicious cats" in the room to maul the birds that were not stolen. I found that statement kind of amusing. Cats are just cats. However, they would by default be vicious if they see something that they want to chase.
On page 51, Jean concludes that the "thief must have had the cats in a bag or container." A bag? What a horrifying thought. It can be near impossible to get the average cat into a cat carrier. I am picturing a heavy burlap bag, but even so, having a cat in a bag sounds rather scary. I wouldn't want to be carrying a thrashing cat in a bag. Yikes.
On page 73, the reader learns that the girls have a break from Starhurst School because the school was flooded. I'm just glad that the girls didn't go to Europe.
On page 84, Louise notices that a phone is unplugged from the wall. She is surprised that the phone uses a jack instead of being permanently installed. During my entire life, every landline phone (aside from pay phones) that I recall seeing has used a jack, so I don't think use of a jack is odd at all.
As I read through the book, I thought about how stupid it was for the men to set the Danas' closet on fire, since the fire alerted them to the mystery. I had to laugh on page 176 when one of the men agrees that it was stupid to start the fire. Awesome!
This is an overall good book, but I was bored with most of the second half. The story has too many culprits, and the business with petrels is a bit stupid.
I consider the final four Dana Girls books to be overall better reading than the final five Trixie Belden books. The Trixie Belden series has a much more precipitous decline in quality towards the end of the series, since a large portion of the Trixie Belden set is actually pretty good. Reading the final Trixie Belden books is a rather disappointing and jarring experience as compared to the earlier books.
The Dana Girls series is a bit odd from start to finish and is a bit mediocre during the entire second half of the set. The final Dana Girls books provide about the same level of craziness as one expects from the Dana Girls series, and these books are actually overall better than some of the earlier Dana Girls books, such as most of #19-24 in the original set.
I cautioned in my introductory post for the Dana Girls reviews that my reviews for the later books in the series would be much different from what others think. I do not find the final Dana Girls books to be anywhere near as bad as most other people say that they are. Certainly the books have problems and are extremely strange, but I found the final books to be mostly enjoyable to read.
I will close out my Dana Girls reviews with a review of the unpublished manuscript for what would have been Dana Girls #18 Strange Identities. As far as I know, I am the only person who likes Strange Identities. I think it's awesome.
3 comments:
My comment is not about Dana Girls, but I don't know where to put it so I'll go with your most recent post. Have you ever read any of the "Malt Shop" style books by writers like Rosamond du Jardin, Anne Emery, Janet Lambert, and Lenora Mattingly Weber? I've started reading some of them and they're pretty entertaining. They're frothy and light, but still interesting reading especially if you're into mid-century era fashions and customs.
I have read a few scattered malt shop books, but it's not been a focus to try to find any. I have not read the particular authors that you mentioned.
The whole idea of the villains doing stupid things that actually the young detectives to the mystery in the first place is one of the more irksome storyline quirks of 20th century juvenile detective fiction.
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