My latest podcast is up on the New Books Network website! In it, I interview Frank DiMatteo about his biography of the mob boss Antonio Anastasia. Enjoy!

Terrible news! The newspaper reports that a plane has crashed on the deck of the 'Balaska', their Uncle's ship, and injured several passengers. A telegram is delivered that day to inform Lettie Briggs that one of those (minorly) injured was her father. The telegram giving the news is delivered by the plane's pilot's son.

All in a typical day at the Starhurst School for Girls.

The telegram boy ends up getting fired for being slow to return from jobs (his bicycle tires were flat, and then the bicycle got hit by a truck - excuses, excuses). The Dana Girls (and Evelyn Star, before she gets tired and gets out of the mystery) take sympathy on him and want to pump him for more information about his bad pilot of a father.

At the boy's home, they find the house in disarray: "Mother would never leave the house untidy!" Sure enough, there's a crook tossing the place and he almost gets away with a tin box full of cash. Except he runs in a peculiar way, turning in a circle before running off.

There is some doubt as to who actually owns the money as it was obtained dishonestly. The girls are asked to find the real owners and foil some other crimes along the way.

This was ridiculous and fun, but there were two strikes against it. First, there is the black cook at Starhurst, Amanda, who had had a brief cameo in 'By the Light of the Study Lamp', whose man friend resorts to theft to keep her supplied with fancy cologne. Oh man. I've talked enough about that garbage this week. Next! The other, more minor point, but still pointing to some underlying cultural rot, is the character of Lettie Briggs. The girls are constantly thrown together, and when the girls should react with sympathy or admiration with each other, they fall back on snobbery and cold shoulders. When Lettie and Louise are caught in the crossfires of a mad woman accusing them of vandalism (somewhat accurately, but don't let's get into that now) to a policeman. Jean creates a distraction and allows them to make a run for it. Lettie is thrilled, but the Danas impatiently wait for her to leave them alone before getting on with business. Later, at a fancy dress dance where the girls partner the girls as was the custom at a girl's school, Lettie tries fighting off a prowler on the grounds. It's even the frontispiece picture, but no one comments on her efforts except to say she was clearly losing. Written nowadays, the girls would develop a grudging respect for each other at least.

Dana Girls

Next: 'The Mystery of the Locked Room'

Previous: 'The Secret at the Hermitage'

'The Secret at the Hermitage' wastes no time in signalling to the reader that there are changes afoot. Louise and Jean are relaxing in their room after classes joking about an item in the paper. Jean is "sprawled" on the window seat and is described as "inclining to boyishness". A suddenly cheeky Evelyn Star appears in the doorway joking about the school food and is invited to grab a cookie. A quick trip to a shop to get a wristwatch repaired is suggested and Jean rushes out to grab the hat she left in Doris Harland's room. Who are these girls? It's an unremarkable scene, except for that we've never seen anything half as natural so far in the Dana Girls books. Mildred Wirt Benson brings a little life to the archetypes.

As is becoming traditional, the latest mystery really begins with the girls giddy with excitement at the chance to escape from campus, if only for a few hours. The article they were reading earlier in the paper had to do with the former warden of the women's penitentiary in Penfield. Howard Norton had been dismissed for negligence, especially after the escape of an inmate. Little do they know they're going right into the heart of case.

They are surprised at the bus stop by Mrs. Grantland, the woman for whom they retrieved a pearl ring in 'Study Lamp', who offers them a ride into town with a quick stop so they can admire her newest hobby: art collecting. There they admire a particularly fine statue signed N.R. that Mrs. Grantland was told had been made by an inmate of the prison.

Later, in the shop where watch is being repaired, the girls are accosted by Norton. He is near-sighted and convinced that the sixteen year old Louise is the much older escaped convict Nina Regan! This begins a bizarre game of cat and mouse where Norton continues to pop up in distant woods, parlors, and other locations to accuse Louise of being Nina.

The Warden's menace is such that Lettie Briggs comes up with a brilliant prank to spook Louise on a field trip by dressing up as Norton and scaring her. It works, but unknown to the fleeing Lettie, Louise is hurt and accidentally left behind by the class. Louise is hurt, alone in the woods, and winds up in a stranger's car and deposited 40 miles from Starrhurst. A hermit finds her and offers her shelter for the night, which Louise takes, but is genuinely freaked out by the whole situation.

Are things not weird yet? That's because I've forgotten the girls digging deeper into the story of Nina Regan, her wrongful conviction, and the plight of another inmate who is separated from her sick child. The solution rests in the hands of Mrs. X.Y.Z., if Jean doesn't get eaten by a tiger first. Yeah. you read that right. A tiger.

Bring on more of these, please.

Dana Girls

Next: 'The Circle of Footprints'

Previous: 'A Three-Cornered Mystery'

The Freaks of Mayfair is a series of portraits of fictional inhabitants of Mayfair. The stories, in so far as they are stories rather than vignettes, are not related to each other, and I think the book would have worked better for me if they had been. 

Without this connection, the portraits, while funny in part, are not all that memorable. I think, I would have enjoyed these better if they had been connected because it would have allowed the characters to interact and develop another dimension outside of the small snippet we get in each story. I guess, what I was missing was that characters cross over into the stories of other Mayfair inhabitants, much like characters in Wodehouse's Wooster stories pop up throughout various books and we get to recognise people we have already met. 

So, while this was an amusing way to spend a few hours, The Freaks of Mayfair is not on par with the Mapp and Lucia stories simply because the is too little of the various characters before we move on to the next story, whereas we get to follow Mapp and Lucia through several trials of their relationship.

Still, there was one story called Aunt Georgie that seems to introduce us to the blueprint for George Pillson in the Mapp and Lucia series, and it was fascinating that Benson must have already assembled the cast of Mapp and Lucia when he wrote The Freaks of Mayfair in 1916. 

Every so often I read a book that seems like it was written using one of those speech-to-text programs, and this is one of them. The sheer amount of slang and ungrammatical language makes it feel not so much like a biography of a mob boss as a transcript of a Mafia member telling tales about a legendary hitman over a plate of spaghetti alla bolognese.