Outside the obvious regulars, I don't remember a lot of returning characters who appeared in one 'Three Investigators' book, vanished again and then showed up for another one later on in the series.  However, my memory is clearly faulty because there are quite a few of them and it seems that most show up in M. V. Carey novels. Last time, in 'The Mystery of the Invisible Dog', she brought back Dr. Barrister of Ruxton University, who had played an important part in 'The Mystery of the Singing Serpent' six books earlier. This time, she brings back another character from that book in Allie Jamison; two, if you count her horse, Indian Queen.

As if to underline to the primarily male readership that girls aren't stupid, Allie shows up in the book at headquarters, highlighting how the boys' security isn't particularly strong. Neither, it would seem, is its location because she manipulates them into spending the summer with her in New Mexico, just so Aunt Mathilda doesn't tackle that junk that's hiding the forgotten trailer they adapted into their HQ. Of course, they find her annoying as heck but that's okay. Behind all that is a mystery and that's what matters.

She's spending the summer with Uncle Harry, Harrison Osborne, who's growing Christmas trees outside Twin Lakes in the hills of southwestern New Mexico. As you might imagine, he owns a chunk of land, but he sold some of it to a millionaire called Wesley Thurgood, including the old played-out silver mine on it. That's Death Trap Mine, of course, so named for an accident. And while Wesley is a local boy from Twin Lakes whose father worked the mine, giving him plenty of nostalgic reasons to want to own it, Allie doesn't believe a word of it.

And she has good reason. Sure, he wears a hardhat like he's an honest-to-goodness miner, but he also wears brand new jeans and sports manicured nails. He's even installed a guard dog and that doesn't make sense if there's nothing in the mine to protect. And, when headstrong Allie finds her way inside to take a look, he throws her out with a vehemence that suggests that he's worried about something other than her safety. She's sure there's a mystery to be solved, even though nobody else buys into that theory at all.

Of course, there's a mystery to be solved because this is a 'Three Investigators' novel and they don't take long to deepen it. Of course, Allie persuades them to sneak into the mine alongside her and, while they quickly get thrown out again, she stumbles on a body. Then again, they're a little interested before that point because Pete remembers why he knows the name of Wesley Thurgood. He's a car collector who lends certain vehicles to movie productions that his dad has done special effects work on. Except he doesn't seem to live up to that billing, suggesting that he might be lying about everything.

We might be excused for assuming that we've figured everything out only half a dozen chapters in when the sheriff lets everyone know that the body belongs to a bank robber, Gilbert Morgan a.k.a. a whole bunch of other names with the same initials, but it really isn't quite that simple. Sure, Morgan was locked up in San Quentin for armed robbery and, after six years of his fifteen-year sentence, he was released on parole and promptly vanished. He was reported missing five years earlier, so the dots certainly seem easy to connect.

Fortunately, Carey has more hidden up her sleeve to deepen this novel. Unfortunately, it's still a pretty easy one to figure out. Ironically, while I did notice the key telegraphing moment that we need to catch to solve the bank robbery before the boys do, I didn't figure out what Wesley Thurgood was doing in the mine until she told us. I have no excuses, because it makes complete sense and all the clues were certainly there, so I can only assume that Carey did her job with an array of red herrings.

There's a little research here and opportunity for deduction, as always, but much of this one is taken up by the boys (and Allie) poking their noses where they don't belong to see what might be there. Pete plays a frequent part this time out, even if much of his involvement is by being a target. It's Pete who's knocked over when Thurgood's rambunctious guard dog gets into Uncle Harry's chickens. It's Pete who nearly loses his head when they look into a prowler in the barn. And it's Pete (and Allie) who get kidnapped towards the end, forced into surviving by drinking from a barrel cactus.

By comparison, Jupe's most prominent non-deductive moment is blowing up a shack by accident; he merely meant to set it on fire to attract attention but it turns out to be full of explosives, an error that could have been deadly. It surely does its job, but it's not like Jupiter Jones to make mistakes like that. He isn't on top form here, which is refreshing, but not necessarily what we're looking for in a 'Three Investigators' mystery. As in 'The Secret of Phantom Lake', he does good work to figure out the mysteries but he could have saved himself a heck of a lot of it if he'd seen something much earlier in the story.

So, while this is enjoyable enough, it's not an essential entry in the series and it's the weaker of the two Careys in a row, even if there's some palpable southwestern flavour. I live in Arizona not New Mexico, but some of this is very familiar, right down to Magdalena, the housekeeper who's certainly not averse to firing warning shots to scare off Thurgood's dog when it decides to steal Uncle Harry's chickens. Anyway, after two Careys, it's back to William Arden next month, for the first of two mysteries in a row for him, 'The Mystery of the Dancing Devil'. ~~ Hal C F Astell

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