Brains Benton Books by Charles Morgan, III

A number of new Brains Benton stories have been written by Charles Morgan, III.  The books are available for purchase from Lulu.com.  I decided to purchase five books that are available in hardcover with dust jacket.  These books have nice cover art.  The illustrations kind of remind me of the older Boxcar Children picture cover books.

The first of Morgan's books, The Case of the Carrier Pigeon, was partially written when Morgan was young and was finished many years later.  The sixth Brains Benton book, The Case of the Painted Dragon, concludes as Brains and Jimmy find a carrier pigeon that has been shot.  The Case of the Carrier Pigeon continues the story of the wounded pigeon, and the pigeon leads Brains and Jimmy to attempt a rescue of a young man who is being held captive by a dangerous gang.

This is a very good book.

In The Case of the Lost Loot, the Bentons and Carsons have forbidden Brains and Jimmy from spending time together in the Bentons' garage after what happened to the boys in their previous case.  Brains finds another place for the boys to meet, and this inadvertently involves them in another mystery.  The book has a plot and a subplot.  I was not surprised one bit when the two plots ended up joining near the end.

The Case of the Lost Loot is outstanding.  It has everything a series book enthusiast could want in a book.  The boys go scuba diving and exploring in two different caves.  They have adventures during thunderstorms.  The story is delightful and engaging. 

In The Case of the Stolen Jewelry, Brains and Jimmy are plunged into another mystery when Jimmy finds stolen jewelry stashed in a bottle.  The boys tangle with a dangerous gang as they search for the ones responsible for stealing the jewelry.

This book also has lots of great adventure.  The boys are confronted by gang members at the bottom of an old quarry and face a desperate situation as they try to escape.  They stake out the headquarters of the gang by watching from the nearby woods.  Stinky and Stony, two boys from the original series, try to form their own detective agency in this book.  I love how characters from the original books are woven into these books.

This book introduces a great character, Nick the beatnik.  Nick is a "cool cat" who is always asking "what's buzzin, cuzzin." I love Nick.  He is the type of character that adds so much to a series book.

The Case of the Stolen Jewelry is also outstanding.

In The Case of the Final Message, Brains and Jimmy follow a series of clues left by a friend's deceased father.  The clues lead the boys to Washington, D.C., where they witness the inauguration of President Kennedy.

On page 91, I love the reference to mimeograph paper.  Jimmy loves to smell the fresh copies and so did I in elementary school.  Ah, there was nothing like the smell of mimeographed copies!

The mystery in this book takes on a greater significance since the boys are tracking down a father's final message to his family.

This book is outstanding.

In The Case of the Disappearing Magician, a magician has been accused of a bank heist.  It's interesting that this is the third story about a magician accused of theft that I have read in the past month.  I also found it interesting that the bank heist was planned to coincide with the July 4 fireworks so that nobody would hear the dynamite.  This reminded me of one of the Ken Holt books, but not the title with the magician.

Nick the beatnik returns in this book, and as before, he is hilarious.

This book is excellent.

These are amazingly good books and are as good as the original six Brains Benton books.  The books do have some typos in them, which is typical of self-published works.  It's hard enough to get the typos out of a single blog post, so getting all of the errors out of an entire book would be most difficult.  Any typos are of no concern.  I'll take an outstanding self-published book with a few typos any day over what is coming out of a certain publishing company with respect to its major series book properties.

These are extremely good books.  I think that they may even be better than some of the original six Brains Benton books.  They are that good.

Brains Benton #5 Waltzing Mouse and #6 Painted Dragon

In Brains Benton #5, The Case of the Waltzing Mouse, Brains and Jimmy travel to the lake for a two-week vacation.  Before their departure, the boys make the acquaintance of a professor who owns a menagerie of animals.  He ends up at the lake as well, and soon the boys learn that someone is after the professor's money!  The boys do their best to help the professor.

Like with volume 4, I found Brains unnecessarily condescending towards Jimmy in this book.  He makes snide remarks about how unobservant or unintelligent Jimmy is.  Brains has always had an air of superiority, but it was either near the level of what we see in Jupiter Jones or just slightly more than Jupiter's for the first three books.  In both volumes 4 and 5, Brains is insufferable.

In Brains Benton #6, The Case of the Painted Dragon, Brains and Jimmy become friends with a Japanese boy named Mikko who begins attending their school.  Several men follow Mikko around town, and the boys become concerned.  They learn that these men are after a valuable pearl necklace that Mikko's Japanese relatives badly need.  Brains and Jimmy follow slim clues in hopes of finding the necklace.

This book is the same size as the other books and has about the same number of pages.  However, the text is noticeably smaller, which makes the story a good bit longer than the other books.

Jimmy makes so many mistakes in this book.  Towards the end of the story, Jimmy thoughtlessly blabs everything about the case to a man who is one of the criminals.  Jimmy, Jimmy... what are we to do with you?  Jimmy has five cases under his belt, and he acts this stupid?  Jimmy has been depicted as a bit flighty throughout all of the series, but this went too far, in my opinion.  If this were the first book, I could have seen it.  In the sixth story, I found it hard to believe.  I also found it very hard to believe that Brains didn't become furious and unforgiving of Jimmy's stupidity.  He forgave Jimmy way too quickly, when for lesser offenses, he was brutal to Jimmy.

I enjoyed both of these books.

The Three Investigators series features three detectives:  Jupiter Jones, Pete Crenshaw, and Bob Andrews.  The Brains Benton series features two detectives:  Brains Benton and Jimmy Carson.  When Robert Arthur created the Three Investigators, he turned Brains Benton into Jupiter Jones and Jimmy Carson into Pete Crenshaw.  Arthur then created a third investigator, Bob Andrews, who was modeled after Robert Arthur himself.  So the Three Investigators were basically updated versions of Brains Benton and Jimmy Carson with Robert Arthur written into the story as the third detective.  It makes perfect sense.

Jupiter Jones is a softer version of Brains Benton.  Jupiter is arrogant, but Brains Benton is arrogant to a fault.  Pete Crenshaw is a more competent version of Jimmy Carson.  Both Pete and Jimmy scare easily, but Jimmy scares even more easily.  Pete and Jimmy both make stupid decisions, but Jimmy's mistakes are far worse.  Brains is the person who records the cases in the Brains Benton series, and that role was given to Bob Andrews.

If you enjoy reading the Three Investigators series, make sure you try the Brains Benton books.

Items for Sale + Reading Update

I have two extra issues of Schoolgirls' Weekly that I placed on eBay yesterday.  I used an auction for each, just in case more than one person is interested.  You can find them in this category of my eBay store.

I also listed some new books on eBay yesterday in order to avoid losing out on most of my remaining January free listings.

Jennifer's Series Books on eBay

I haven't listed any new books on Bonanza, but I have most of a set of Rick Brant books available in addition to many other nice books different from what I have listed on eBay.

Jennifer's Series Books on Bonanza

I finished reading one of the Brains Benton books by Charles Morgan last night.  The book was The Case of the Lost Loot.  As with most self-published books, it does have some errors in the text, but the story is so excellent that I didn't mind at all.  There are probably a few mistakes per chapter.  There are not a huge number of mistakes, but they always stand out when I read books.  The book is outstanding and is a worthy addition to the Brains Benton series.

When I finished the book, I reflected that I had just read a story that is better than anything Simon and Schuster has published for Nancy Drew ever since they took over the publication of Nancy Drew.  Yes, I'm saying that this Brains Benton book is better than all of the Nancy Drew Digest, Girl Detective, and Diaries books.  It's also better than some of the original 56 books as well.

The reason I compared the book to Nancy Drew is because I read the eighth Nancy Drew Diaries book, The Magician's Secret, a few days ago.  It's sad how far Nancy Drew has fallen.  The new Nancy Drew books lack that spark that makes a book special.  The Case of the Lost Loot has that spark.  There were several scenes during The Case of the Lost Loot when I was utterly delighted by a passage.

Many of the best books available today are being published by independent authors.  The publishing companies have their own agendas, and people who are able to write creatively and not have to answer to an editor are able to create wonderful books. 

The Brains Benton books by Charles Morgan are available on Lulu.com.

I read 21 books in January, so I'm on track to read almost as many books as I did last year.  I am going to read three more books by Charles Morgan this week.  After that, I will choose from the books seen in the following photo.

Most of the books were purchased with the intent to try them to see whether I should pursue additional books by those authors.  The last three on the right were purchased because they are by the authors of Rick Brant and Ken Holt, and I definitely plan to read them.

I also want to read the fourth book in Neal Shusterman's Unwind Dystology, but I'm not sure whether I will do that this month or wait awhile.

Cherry Ames and Biff Brewster are still on my list of series that I want to read soon.  I also want to read the Hardy Boys books again, but I don't think I will choose those in the next few months.

I know that some of you want me to review certain series or books, and I'm sure some of you want me to get back to girls' series.  I have been asked several times in the last year if I will review the Nancy Drew Files.  That's way too big of a commitment right now, and I don't have the motivation for it.  I have read them before, and I found the set difficult to get through because of too much repetition.  I'm going to have to be finished with absolutely all other books I want to read in the near future before I read those again.  I'd like to review them someday, but I don't have the stamina for them at this time.

I have to want to read a book.  If I'm not in the mood, it's not going to happen.  I'm not sure how many of the books in the above photo that I will try this month, because to be honest, I'm not sure I'm in the mood for some of them.  Hopefully, I will have the motivation to try several of them.

Brains Benton #4 The Case of the Roving Rolls

In Brains Benton #4, The Case of the Roving Rolls, the boys try to find a missing golden vial that must be recovered for Prince Halam to ascend to the throne in the Middle Eastern country of Kassabeba.  The boys suspect that the vial has been hidden in a Rolls Royce that was sent to America at about the time that Halam's father died of mysterious causes.

Quite a few events in this book match up with the plot of the Three Investigators book, The Secret of the Silver Spider.  Brains and Jimmy search for a golden vial, while the Three Investigators search for a silver spider.  Both items are necessary in order for a man to become ruler.  Plot elements of Silver Spider were definitely copied from this book.  Silver Spider is probably my least favorite Three Investigators book by Robert Arthur.  I did not enjoy it very much.  I did enjoy The Case of the Roving Rolls, since it was more believable than Silver Spider, despite how convoluted parts of the plot were.

Brains is very annoying in this book.  I don't mind Brains' superiority as he lords it over Jimmy in the previous books, but he takes it far in this book.  Rather, the author took it too far.  Early in the book, Brains keeps telling Jimmy over and over that he knew how the Rolls drove itself in different scenes throughout several chapters.  Enough already!  Tell your partner, now!  A little suspense is fine, but this is too much.

This type of behavior continues from Brains all through the book.  In all of these books, Brains acts mysterious about his discoveries and commonly withholds telling Jimmy everything he knows.  However, he does relent fairly quickly.  In this book, he keeps dragging it out over many pages of text.  It's way more than necessary, and I found it quite obnoxious.  It should have been toned down just a bit like in the other books.

On page 101, we learn that Brains "liked to have everything all wrapped up nicely and neat as a box of candy before he started handing out solutions."  Let's see... who else is like that?  Why, Jupiter Jones!  Arthur had to have modeled his series after Brains Benton.

I enjoyed this book just a little less than the previous books due to my aggravation with Brains.

Brains Benton #2 Counterfeit Coin and #3 Stolen Dummy

In Brains Benton #2, The Case of the Counterfeit Coin, Jimmy finds a foreign coin in his change from his newspaper customers.  Jimmy excitedly calls Brains to tell him, and while Jimmy is on the phone in the drugstore, someone tries to steal the coin!  The boys launch an investigation and discover that the coin is a counterfeit of an ancient Greek coin.

On page 33, the boys leave quickly because they are afraid that the Bentons' housekeeper, Mrs. Ray, has an errand for them.  This reminded me of all the times the Three Investigators stay away from Aunt Mathilda so that she doesn't put them to work.

I enjoyed this book.

In Brains Benton #3, The Case of the Stolen Dummy, Brains and Jimmy find a submerged vehicle in a pond.  An old dummy is hanging out of the vehicle.  The dummy once belonged to Will Parslow.  Meanwhile, someone stole $5,000 from a real estate agent's office, and Will Parslow was seen in the office that night.  Parslow is accused of the theft based on circumstantial evidence, but Brains is certain that Parslow is innocent.  The boys set out to prove it. 

On page 18, Jimmy's narration informs the reader about a recent fundraiser.  The reader is then told that Jimmy "is telling you all this for a very good reason, as you'll find out later."  It's refreshing for a series book to outright inform the reader that certain information is important.  I already knew that it was before Jimmy's statement, because every time seemingly random information is told to a reader in a series book, the information always plays a role in a later part of the story.

On page 71, Jimmy learns that Mr. Gault and his wife were murdered with a hatchet.  Ouch.  That's a bit gruesome for a series book.

In this book, a bitter old woman causes trouble.  We can all relate to that, because we've all had to deal with such people.  I live right next to some of them.

On page 105, Brains and Jimmy go looking for an obscure book for Mr. Benton.  The book is The Canaanite Period of Syrian History.  They find the book in the first store they check in a nearby town.  Right.  Just like if I go looking for an obscure series book, I will find it in the first store I check.  I wish.

On page 132, Jimmy reacts with horror to the news that a certain man is a convict, guilty of grand larceny.  He is scared to death to be around the man.  This particular man is scary, but I thought it was a bit ridiculous to be terrified of someone who was convicted of theft.

I thought this book was a pretty good mystery.  I guessed who was likely involved fairly early in the story, but the clues were not that obvious.  I also had a suspicion as to why that person was guilty, but the pieces didn't fully fall into place until near the end of the story.  This is an an engaging book.

Brains Benton #1 The Case of the Missing Message

After I heard that the Brains Benton series is similar to the Three Investigators series, I decided to read the Brains Benton books.  The similarities are quite striking.

Barclay "Brains" Benton and James "Jimmy" Carson have their own detective agency.  Brains is "X" and Jimmy is "Operative Three."  Jimmy is the narrator.  The two boys use coded messages to communicate by telephone.  They have a secret headquarters.  Brains makes most of his equipment from junk.  The two boys have business cards.  The tone of the books matches the Three Investigators series.  I felt like I was reading a Three Investigators book.

The Brains Benton series was published before the Three Investigators series, and Jupiter Jones was clearly based on Brains Benton.  According to a letter written by Robert Arthur, Arthur's original name for Jupiter Jones was Genius Jones, which is rather similar to the name Brains Benton.

As I began reading The Case of the Missing Message, I noticed that certain events are rather similar to events that occur in The Secret of Terror Castle.  Both books open with a coded message received by telephone from Brains Benton/Jupiter Jones.  In The Secret of Terror Castle, Jupiter and Pete run away from Terror Castle, terrified.  Brains and Jimmy run away from the Madden Place in the same fashion.  Both Brains and Jupiter proclaim that they will go back the next day, much to the dismay of the other sleuth.  Jimmy uses the expression "creeps" while Pete uses "gleeps."  And if that isn't enough, Brains and Jupiter talk in the same superior fashion.

In this passage from page 71, Brains reminds me of Jupiter, and Jimmy's reaction reminds me of Pete.

"The crime lab of the Benton and Carson International Detective Agency is well equipped," Brains said loftily.  "There are sleeping accommodations as well as a small bathroom."

"And food?" the Queen said.  "Skeets will have to eat."

"My partner and I both live at home," Brains replied.  "It should not be too difficult for us to . . . ah . . . obtain the necessary provisions."

I could almost see myself pulling stuff off the kitchen shelves without Mom knowing.  Creeps!  This was going to be just great!

I greatly enjoyed this book.