It's probably fair to suggest that I like this twenty-seventh book in the 'Three Investigators' series more than it's worth, because it touches on subjects that I care about. It's still a good book and an excellent entry in the series with a neat twist to the ending, but I feel that it could have had more depth to it. Every one of the components that speak to me could have been explored much deeper, though, of course, I understand that there was likely a set length that M. V. Carey couldn't exceed. This time out, that feels like a shame.

The first of those things shows up immediately, because there's a lull in the investigation business so Three Investigators are working in the mail room of Amigos Press for the summer. Publishing is a big deal to me, so I was immediately interested in the bones of it all but they're not on show, not least because the entire place is burned down within the first two chapters. Of course, it's there to serve as a connection to the boys and a means to introduce us to actress Madeline Bainbridge, an iconic but reclusive star of the Golden Age who hasn't made a movie in thirty years.

She's arguably the MacGuffin of the movie. She's written her memoirs, which Amigos have bought and are preparing to publish. They can't now, not because the fire burned the only copy—this isn't that straightforward—but because somebody used the opportunity to steal the manuscript. She's also sold the rights to her old films, which have been long out of circulation, to Video Enterprises, but they're stolen too from their restoration facility, Film Craft Laboratory, located on the other side of the road to Amigos. A ransom of a quarter of a million dollars is quickly sought.

We can't go back to Amigos because it's burned down and we never set foot inside Film Craft, as it isn't needed to progress the mystery, so I'm missing out on two backdrops I wanted Carey to paint for me. I'd read entire books set in publishing houses or film restoration labs! The third backdrop she avoids is the movie business, though I'm a little more OK with that because she shows us what happens afterwards instead and that's a much less travelled path in fiction. Here, it introduces us to the Magic Circle of the title.

That's the name given to a group of thirteen friends that were centered around Bainbridge back in the days when she was a current movie star. They were all movie people too, but now they have much more mundane lives. Elliott Farber, her favourite cameraman, runs a TV repair shop; Estelle DuBarry runs a motel; and Gloria Gibbs works for a broker. As you can imagine, these aren't hard for the Three Investigators to interview. Others are dead, some of them for a long time, or are no longer in Hollywood; Janet Pierce married into royalty and moved to Europe. Only Ted Finley is an actor still, plugging away in his eighth decade.

Given the name and the count of thirteen, it doesn't take long to extrapolate that into the coven it also was and Carey handles this angle very capably indeed. Madeline Bainbridge follows the old religion, which is seen in a much more positive light than it could have been at the tail end of the seventies when this book was published. Then again, while her fellow series author, Dennis Lynds (William Arden) tended to focus on historical backdrops, often tied to the Spanish heritage of the American southwest, she often trawled in a supernatural angle featuring spiritualists, magicians and magicians. Here, it's witches, who are emphatically not Satanists.

While it's hardly a major plot point, it seems that Madeline became a recluse, retreating to the Malibu Hills with her secretary, Clara Adams, also one of the coven, because Ramon Desparto, an exotic actor and her fiancé, died in a car crash. She believes it was her fault that she, through her witchcraft, had made it happen and that was the end of the Magic Circle. Whether that was true or not, you'll have to discover for yourself, but I will say that Carey does provide an explanation. I believe she learned her lesson after leaving 'The Mystery of Monster Mountain' far more open.

One aspect of this book that surprised me, coming back to it as a fifty-something classic film buff rather than a teenage boy, is that it isn't obvious who Carey used as a template for many of these movie people. Clearly there's a lot of Greta Garbo in Madeline Bainbridge, not just in timeframes and reclusivity but in staying power even after so long out of the spotlight. That made me wonder about Clara Adams, her sole companion for many years, given that Garbo was famously bisexual. Of course, Carey can't go there in a children's mystery. Janet Pierce is obviously Grace Kelly, but that's about it. None of the rest have obvious sources.

The other was the final revelations, because Carey adds a neat little twist that I appreciated. No, I'm not going to talk about it here, because it would absolutely be a spoiler, but I'll say that it isn't quite as simple as it could have been and I liked that. I also liked how the boys get to that point, as there's a growing delineation between how Carey and Lynds approach the figuring out part of the mysteries. Carey goes for legwork, having the Three Investigators talk to people and follow a trail until it gets to where it must. Lynds, on the other hand, goes for research, spending more time in libraries and archives.

In a way, that makes Carey's core character Pete Crenshaw, who makes a crucial discovery in this book, getting locked in the trunk of a car in a junkyard for his troubles, but Lynds' Bob Andrews, who has a lot less to do this time out. That observation seems ironic, of course, because the First Investigator is Jupiter Jones, whose deductions typically provide the final piece to the puzzles in front of them. However, I think the series benefitted from alternating between these two writers for a long time, because it meant a variety in approach. I'm sure fans had their favourites, but it's always good to vary the formula.

And next up, an increase in that alternation. I came to this from two William Arden books, but he wrote the next one, 'The Mystery of the Deadly Double' before handing back to Carey once more for 'The Mystery of the Sinister Scarecrow' and so on. There are sixteen books left but, within that output, only once does an author repeat from one title to the next. ~~ Hal C F Astell

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