I haven't been looking forward much to 'The Mystery of the Nervous Lion', because it's the second and final contribution of author Kin Platt, writing as Nick West. Part of that is because M. V. Carey started out her contributions so strongly in between these two books, but mostly it's because 'The Mystery of the Coughing Dragon' was so weak that even a merely average series entry following it would have highlighted its shortcomings. Fortunately, this is a step up for Platt but it's still a minor entry in the series, enjoyable but flimsy.

Before I dive into its merits, or the lack of them, I have to call out the foreword for once. Each time out, Alfred Hitchcock gives us a brief introduction to the Three Investigators, just in case we might be starting out with the series. Those introductions have got skimpier as the series has run on and this one is no exception, but it begins with the words "Greetings and salutations!" which stood out to me. I routinely used that as a kid in place of "Hello" and happily passed that overblown habit to one of my nephews, but I thought I'd borrowed it from the movie 'Heathers'. Apparently, I'd seen it in print even before that, in 'The Mystery of the Nervous Lion'.

Hitch gets the story going too, because the Three Investigators haven't had a case for a while until he rings HQ with one. A film unit, albeit not one of Hitch's, has hired Jungle Land as a location. It's a sort of minimal safari place run by a gentleman named Jim Hall, who doesn't want any accidents because he's put the place up as insurance, as a $50,000 bond. However, his lion is suddenly nervous so he's even more worried than he should be. Hitch believes that the boys can figure out what's up with George the lion, so off they go in Konrad's truck and the game is afoot.

Platt does start things off well, because the gates are open so the film crew can get in and out, so the boys wander in and meet up with Jim Hall, who rather surprisingly strands them in the middle of Jungle Land with a wounded George on the loose, ready to set up the first showcase moment of suspense. Of course, it turns out that Jim Hall wasn't Jim Hall at all, but a former trainer who was fired for drunkenness, troublemaking and cruelty to animals. Hank Morton apparently didn't want to leave after he was fired, so hung around to cause more trouble.

Nowadays, I'm a fifty-something grandfather of ten living in Arizona. However, when I read this for the first time, I was a ten-year-old boy living in suburban Essex. This entire series felt exotic to me back then. Never mind Worthington and the gold-plated Rolls. Everything felt vast, with distance between everywhere and Uncle Titus's junkyard sprawling so far that the boys can hide an entire mobile home under the junk to serve as their headquarters, but this book was the pinnacle of the series for exotic.

Most of it takes place in Jungle Land, where Jim Hall lives with his nephew, an orphan called Mike, and George, who's a sort of gigantic house pet. Sure, Mike has a .22 rifle and he seems to be ready to use it, given that it's he who saves the boys from the wounded George at the outset, but I can't help but wonder how Jim passed the health and safety inspection needed to allow him to foster an orphan. They make you put plastic covers on electrical outlets and child locks on cupboards. But he can run around with a .22 rifle while Jim's wrestling with a fully grown lion in their kitchen?

If that wasn't an exotic enough lifestyle, there's a Hollywood feature being shot on their property, even if it turns out to be a quickie production and its stars are fictional ones with chiselled names like Rock Randall and Sue Stone. Hollywood's only half an hour away. Half an hour away from me at the time I read this was Liverpool Street station in London on the train. Less palatable but exotic nonetheless, next door to Jungle Land is a scrapyard with an industrial metal shredder so big that it can eat cars and scream its delight through the hills as it does so. Did I mention there's a gorilla too? Mike's other uncle, Cal Hall, is a big game hunter in Africa who sends animals back to him and this gorilla is a recent arrival. Routine for the Three Investigators was larger than life for ten-year-old me.

The limitation that hauls this all back into reality is much the same as with Platt's previous book in the series, 'The Mystery of the Coughing Dragon'. The location is an isolated one, so it's inherently self-contained. Travel here is generally between the junk yard and Jungle Land and back, with that slight expansion of scope into the scrapyard next door. There are no bystanders and the extras are kept at a distance in the film production. That means that the cast of characters is limited: the two Halls; sinister Hank Morton and his eventual replacement, Bo Jenkins; Jim's vet, Doc Dawson; the film's producer, Jay Eastland; and a suspicious customer called Olsen at Uncle Titus's junkyard who wants all the iron bars he can find.

That doesn't leave a lot of possibilities for us to sift through. One of them's going to be a bad guy, at least, and we've pretty much ruled out both Halls from moment one. Doc's the only one who's not painted in sinister colours, given that Morton is ruthless from the outset, Eastland's obvious money troubles easily solvable by that $50,000 insurance policy with Jungle Land as collateral and Olsen clearly up to no good, even if we have no idea yet why he needs iron bars. That only leaves a single character, Bo Jenkins, an unknown quantity for us to really figure out. Of course, Platt could well be misleading us, but it's not much of a shock when the mystery is eventually solved.

This is a step up on 'The Mystery of the Coughing Dragon', but clearly not far enough to keep a spot on the Three Investigators writing team for Kin Platt. The next eighteen books would be penned by M. V. Carey and William Arden in rough alternation, until Marc Brandel showed up late with a pair of books of his own, in and amongst more by Carey and Arden.

The best things about this one have to do with its exotic setting. That effect lessened on me over the years, as I grew up and travelled, but it remained more palpable in this particular book than its predecessors, however evocative some of those were. Jim Hall is very likeable and his nephew Mike too, even if, rather ironically, he's an all-American kid so not as exotic as the traditional new kid in each of these novels.

The worst have to do with reusing plot points and relying on cheap plotting. The former manifests in the core of the mystery. Did Platt really think we'd forgotten the lead pipe cinch gimmick from the best book thus far, 'The Mystery of the Stuttering Dragon'? That seems like a real stretch. The latter comes partly through hamfisted setup but mostly through one unbelievably awkward scene of exposition that's spoken aloud so that the Three Investigators can conveniently overhear some crucial clues at precisely the right moment. That's poor plotting even in a pulpy children's series.

And so, overall, this is a poor entry in the series, albeit with bonus points. So it isn't the bottom of the barrel because that's still 'The Mystery of the Coughing Dragon'? It's still clearly fifteenth out of the sixteen books thus far. ~~ Hal C F Astell

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