It must be another M. V. Carey novel about the 'Three Investigators' because Aunt Mathilda gets the first words and a real conversation. It's breakfast time at the Jones Salvage Yard and they're all talking about the announcement that the estate of Ramon Castillo, old-time horror actor, will be put up for auction. Uncle Titus is interested and so am I, even though I've never seen 'Cry of the Werewolf' or 'The Vampire's Lair', at least not with him as the star. This hearkens back to the days of Robert Arthur's horror adjacent 'Three Investigators' novels already.

Because it is another M. V. Carey novel, her second after 'The Mystery of the Flaming Footprints', we're also quickly introduced to another female character. She's making up for lost time, I believe, not joining the series until book fifteen. This is Allie Jamison, who arrives on horseback, a striking Appaloosa named Indian Queen, or Queenie, just in time for Jupe to almost run into it on his bike. It's scared, of course, and throws Allie so they're enlisted by Aunt Mathilda to walk them home in safety because she's a friend of the Jamisons' maid, Marie. As you might imagine, doing so walks them into a mystery too.

Allie's parents are in Europe, leaving an aunt to take care of her, Miss Patricia Osborne. Aunt Pat is peculiar. She's a homeopath who treats Allie's scrape with cobwebs and gathers ingredients for ointments by the dark of the moon. She's superstitious, of course, and a spiritualist who seems to have fallen under the spell of Hugo Ariel. After Marie goes running into the night, complaining of the weird singing at their meetings, Allie hires the Three Investigators to figure out what's going on. She wants Mr. Ariel gone, along with his weird singing.

I liked Allie pretty much immediately. She's a sharp kid who knows what she wants but not so much that she becomes a brat. She's also more than willing to use underhand tactics, like threatening to reveal their secret entrances to Aunt Mathilda. Red Gate Rover is the little dog with the knot eye, right? How about you get rid of Mr. Ariel and I won't tell. How about you gather blackmail material on him so I can force him out without fear of him coming back? That's ballsy for a young lady, even if the series is old enough to have made it into the seventies, this being published in 1972.

Carey keeps a strong focus on things here, with everything floated early put to use later, even the Ramon Castillo auction. Aunt Pat is also a film buff who collects movie memorabilia, so much that she recognises Jupiter Jones as Baby Fatso, much to his horror. Try connecting all that to the Hugo Ariel angle and you might figure out what's going on before the boys do. If not, you'll work it out soon enough. There's a party tonight with Aunt Pat's weird friends and Allie's inviting them to the house while that happens, so they can snoop.

When I first read these novels, as a kid, my favourites were written by Robert Arthur, the creator of the series, who wrote ten of the first eleven. His idea of what was cool was my idea of what was cool, which generally meant lots of horror adjacent stories with haunted castles, radio screamers and magicians' skulls. He also placed the location wonderfully, Rocky Beach being a stone's throw from Hollywood, so the entertainment industry was woven into the framework of the series from the outset, with Jupiter being a child star, Pete's dad working effects for the movies and the host of the series being the master of suspense, Alfred Hitchcock.

I thoroughly enjoyed most of those on this fresh run-through as a granddad in my fifties, more so than the more grounded William Arden books that looked more to southwestern history than the supernatural and especially more so than the weaker couple of contributions by Nick West. Based on only two instalments by M. V. Carey, though, it's pretty clear that she's the best writer of the bunch. The prose here flows smoothly and naturally, even though her descriptions are more vivid and her characterisations deeper.

Everything's a notch-up, suggesting that my dream book for the series would be written by Carey but with a supernatural framework reminiscent of Arthur, which this absolutely is. You know we're going to see that serpent singing soon, right? There's no obvious reason for that, but we can feel safe in the assumption that the Three Investigators will figure one out soon enough, especially as they have their unofficial fourth investigator on the job too. That's Worthington, their chauffeur, who drives them around in a Ford saloon this time out because they need to be far more incognito than a gold plated Rolls Royce would allow. This is the first time he's given that honorary title.

All in all, there's much to like here and nothing to dislike. I don't remember this being a favourite of mine but it certainly is now. The Three Investigators do a great job, Allie's a worthy addition to their age group, even if she's not from an exotic culture, Carey continuing to move the series away from that trope. Worthington is used well, as is Aunt Mathilda. The villains, not merely Hugo Ariel but the sinister Dr. Shaitan as well, are suitably villainous and they feel acutely dangerous in a few well framed scenes. And yes, we find out why the serpent sings.

I'm almost upset that I'll have to wait three months to read another M. V. Carey novel, as the next two return the series to William Arden. These two authors would alternate, one or two at a time, all the way from this book, which is the seventeenth, all the way to the thirty-fourth, 'The Mystery of the Wandering Cave Man', after which Marc Brandel would join the fray. So I'm looking forward to 'The Mystery of the Shrinking House' next month but even more to the next M. V. Carey a couple of months on, 'The Mystery of Monster Mountain'. ~~ Hal C F Astell

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