Trixie Belden Series 1 - 3

This is the year in which I re-read this beloved, nostalgic mystery series from my past to see how they hold up. Please join me if you have them on hand. I plan to share three books every three weeks.   

1) The Secret of the Mansion

Here's the little book that set the huge ball rolling. It's summer holidays and Trixie is feeling frustrated and lonely because her two older brothers are away at camp. But then their miserly old neighbour, Mr Frayne collapses and is rushed to hospital. There are rumours that he's hidden a fortune somewhere inside his atrociously run-down house. At the same time, the Manor House on the other side is finally occupied by a wealthy family with a daughter Trixie's age. The girls strike up an instant friendship, even though Honey Wheeler seems a bit faint-hearted to Trixie. They stumble across a red-haired boy named Jim, who claims to be Mr Frayne's sole heir. Jim has run away from his cruel and unscrupulous stepfather, who would love to get his hands on any dough lying around. Trixie and Honey resolve to help Jim acquire what is rightfully his.    

* The setting, along the Hudson River in New York state, is well established from the get-go. The Belden family lives two miles out of Sleepyside village at Crabapple Farm, the only cosy, modest household in a cluster of three. The other two are mansions; one being the grand Manor House, recently bought by Matthew Wheeler the millionaire, and the other being Ten Acres, the run down home of elderly Mr Frayne. The nearest large town seems to be White Plains. 

* Trixie is a lovable, what-you-see-is-what-you-get type of girl, but it's soon clear her weaknesses include impulsiveness and overconfidence. She's game to try daring feats with total confidence that she'll pull them off perfectly first time. She also has a way of accidentally offending people with her straightforward approach. 

* Her little brother Bobby comes across as demanding and a bit spoilt. Everyone loves him to pieces but hangs out for other family members take their turns amusing him. It's easy to see why. Who wants to bother reading Peter Rabbit fifty times? His family seem to follow the path of least resistance and cave in to his demands rather than standing up for themselves and calling the shots occasionally.

* It seems to me their parents put a heck of a lot of responsibility on 13-year-old Trixie's shoulders. It's school holidays, yet she babysits Bobby, cares for chickens and spends hours helping tend the veggie garden in drought conditions. Fair enough, they're helping her earn money to buy a horse, and when her two older brothers are home, they divvy the load between them. But still, what a responsible young lady!  

* Don't get me wrong, I like Mr and Mrs Belden. They're very cool parents who actually develop rounded characters of their own.  

* Honey is as sweet as her name. Wistful, tactful and always intuitively figuring out how others feel. That's more than enough to make up for her anxious streak. 

* Jim is the sort of determined boy whose hard luck, David Copperfield style story wins him the devotion of the target audience. To this day when reminiscing about the series, several middle aged friends say, 'I had such a crush on Jim.' He's a nice guy, even under stress, if a bit gruff at times.

* There are mixed messages about the Beldens' religious affiliations. On the one hand, they don't appear to be a church-going family, since Trixie always cycles to Mr Lytell's general store to pick up the newspapers from New York on Sunday mornings. Yet Mrs Belden listens to Bobby say his prayers each night, when he sometimes blurts out 'secrets' to God, such as what Trixie bought her for Christmas. 

* We're told the Belden family struggle to make ends meet, since their father's salary earned from working in a bank must spread to cover the pending demands of college tuition for four kids. Yet it seems they can still afford to have their laundry done outside of home. (We know this because Honey almost collided with a laundry truck turning into the Belden driveway while she was learning to ride a bike. Perhaps the driver was looking for Manor House and accidentally made a wrong turn. After all, the Wheelers had just moved in down the road.) 

* We get some good background on a few staff members at the Manor House who will turn out to be key recurring characters. Regan the groom is a friendly, easy-going guy with a murky past as a runaway orphan in his teens. And Miss Trask, the neat, grey-haired governess was once Honey's math teacher, and accepted the new position after they established a bond together. It's suits her because the higher salary can help her care for her invalid sister. 

* I'm pleased that there aren't many descriptions that can date the story too badly. The kids all run around in generic T-shirts and jeans, while Mr Belden drives a simple station wagon. No popular contemporary music or revealing brand names are mentioned. Sure, they use a landline telephone and it's set clearly before the days of internet. Perhaps this could occur anywhere between its original publication date of 1948 to the mid 1990s. My gut feeling tells me late seventies to mid eighties is a good fit.

* Sadly, I wouldn't really consider this one an ideal mystery story. Trixie, Honey and Jim don't really solve anything by deduction, but rather have a tendency to barrel into significant revelations by total accident. I know from my past enjoyment that this doesn't set a precedent for the rest of the series, but if this was my first reading, I might be a bit worried.   

* And what's with the snarling yellow dog? I thought he'd turn out to have a far more significant role and was saddened by his fate in this book.

* Yet on the whole, so far so good. Thumbs up. 

2) The Red Trailer Mystery  

 

This story picks up directly where The Secret of the Mansion finishes. Trixie and Honey are off to look for Jim, who has taken off unaware that he is now heir to a fortune of half a million. They decide to seek him first at some of the boys' camps where he planned to enquire about work opportunities. Miss Trask is their willing driver, and they take the Wheelers' luxury silver trailer to sleep in. (As an Aussie, I know them better as 'caravans'.) An evasive, ragged family seem to own the luxurious red trailer parked next to them at the first stop-off point. Their hangdog demeanor doesn't seem to match their flash vehicle, and they certainly aren't in holiday mode. What's more, the girls discover there are crooks in the area, stealing trailers, stripping their contents for the black market, then abandoning them. Can the weird family have anything to do with the racket? And most importantly, how will Trixie and Honey find Jim?

* I love the rural, upstate New York setting. It reminds me of National Park areas and caravan parks where I live. A good story makes the world seem smaller. 

* The first book makes it sound as if the state was suffering drought conditions and people's dams and tanks were struggling to muster a trickle. Yet in this story, torrential downpours occur just a matter of a few days later. I'm happy to roll with that, but funny nobody mentioned what a welcome relief the change was.  

* Taking two dogs along strikes me as such a bad idea. Reddy and Bud cause havoc, and the fact that they're allowed to roam freely through the area dates this book for me. In modern times, pets can't run rife through environmentally protected areas. And rightfully so! They're no longer even allowed at most decent caravan parks. Trixie and Honey are arguably pests too, for insisting that these nuisances come along.  

* Riding in the trailer while it's moving also dates the story. That's strictly illegal now. Also, I'm amazed how many car and trailer owners walk off and leave their keys in the ignition, practically inviting thieves to steal them. What a blast from the past. Were people really ever so trusting of their fellow men? 

* We get to meet the first extended family member who appears throughout the series. It's Honey's cousin, Ben Riker, who is staying at one of the camps for part of the holidays. He's a practical joker and can be a pain in the neck, judging from the reminiscences about their shared childhood at their grandmother's. 

* Jeff, the careless and malicious waiter at the park headquarters gave me a few laughs.

* We get the first mention of the Lynch family, but revealing why would be a spoiler for this book.

* Honey finally gets her adopted older brother, who coincidentally looks a lot like her red-haired father. How cool is that! Yet having said 'finally', the action of Books 1 and 2 takes little over a week in total.

* Trixie mentions in passing an old tenant house on Honey's property at home. Heads up, this will be an important factor in the third mystery. 

3) The Gatehouse Mystery  

Trixie, Honey and little Bobby set off to explore the old gatehouse where visitors in carriages were welcomed to the Manor House in days long past. Bobby trips over and cuts his knee on a sharp, glassy looking stone which Honey identifies as a stunning diamond. Trixie convinces her not to hand it over to her parents immediately, as she wants a crack at solving the mystery of how it got there. That decision attracts jewel thieves on the girls' tails instantly, especially when an eavesdropper overhears exactly what they've done with it. Meanwhile, Trixie's brothers Brian and Mart arrive home from camp at last, and make great friends with Jim and Honey, like Trixie before them. Together, the five of them attempt to solve the diamond mystery and also form a club, the Bob Whites of the Glen. 

* Brian and Mart at last, hooray!!! The fun and wisecrack level soars to a new high when these two arrive home. I always remember all the banter with as much nostalgia as the mysteries themselves.

* We find out Regan is only 22! Virtually a kid himself in my books. To think I used to relegate him to the world of staid of old adults. He comes across at least ten years older.

* Trixie and Mart are regarded as 'twins' for the month of May, since he was only 11 months old when she was born. Her birthday is May 1st and his is June 1st. That's worth mentioning in case it comes useful for records.

* The Wheelers keep a large staff, including a cook, a laundress, three maids, Regan, Miss Trask, a new gardener named Nailor and a new chaffeur named Dick. This time around, their pomp amazes me, since they have members of staff actually wait on them at dinner time. A cook I can understand, but isn't this taking it a bit far? Come on guys, get over yourselves! You're just wealthy, not royalty or nineteenth-century gentry. Surely you can plate up for yourselves.

* Although we haven't seen much of Honey's mother yet, whenever we do see or hear of her, she strikes me as a pampered princess. I prefer Mrs Belden's style by far. 

* It's fascinating how Jim proves that two different people's impressions may vastly differ. When they first see Dick the new chaffeur, Trixie sums him up as weaselly looking while Honey thinks he's quite attractive. They consider the shade of his car different colours too. We shouldn't ever assume the person next to us is taking in the same scene we are. 

* Mart remarks that he has no idea why pickpockets are referred to as 'dips'. Come on Mart, a smart boy like you should be intuitive enough to figure out that it's because they dip their fingers into other people's pockets. 

* Miss Trask enjoys watching the wrestling on TV! I'm afraid that makes me laugh. It's very easy to believe that Regan is such a fan he'd be glued to the screen. But Miss Trask! It takes a huge stretch of the imagination. 

* This final observation probably shows my age. Trixie had no right to hold on to that diamond for a single minute. She was being very naughty and waaaay overstepping herself. Honey and the boys became culpable for agreeing to go along with her. I'm especially surprised at Jim. If they'd handed it straight to the police as they should have, it would have made its way straight back to the lady who owned it, and a lot of shady drama at the Manor House would have been avoided. However, perhaps the crooks wouldn't have been caught, or at least not as quickly. That's surely how Trixie's staunchest fans would defend her.

* Okay, this is actually my last observation. My favourite line in the book comes from Regan. It occurs soon after he scolds Trixie for withholding the diamond. Brian comments that their father will be mad at all of them. Then Regan asks, 'How do your parents stand you kids, anyway?' I guess he'll have the opportunity to ask that question many more times to come. 

Whew, that was great fun. These dudes have had three mysteries already, all within the final weeks of their summer holidays. Please join me at the end of next month for the next three books in the series. Full marks for pure enjoyment and great memories so far.   

Next up will be Volumes 4 - 6