It's still William Arden's turn for a couple of 'Three Investigators' mysteries and Dennis Lynds, the author behind that pseudonym, seems to have been paying attention to what his fellow author, M. V. Carey was doing to fix some basic problems with the series. In other words, Aunt Matilda gets a few things to say, starting on page one, and even a powerplay moment over Java Jim, not just the boys who need to get back to work.

They're in a museum dedicated to local seafaring history, which is sadly closing down. The junkyard bought it all and they're loading up, which is really a crime but a believable one and a great way to set up a mystery. It's here that they meet Java Jim, who isn't remotely happy about the sale and is adamant that he be given a particular trunk. It's his, he says, stolen from him two weeks earlier in San Francisco, and he wants it back. Needless to say, they quickly discover that he's lying and must want the chest for another reason. When a dagger flies out of it because Jupiter Jones triggers a booby trapped secret compartment and he finds a ring inside it, we can guess what that might be.

There are a couple of major problems with the mystery here, which I'll get to soon enough, but the majority of it relies on research and I couldn't be happier. The chest has the name Argyll Queen on it, which they soon find out was a ship that sank off Rocky Beach after hitting a reef in 1870, so Bob heads to the library to find out what he can. Prof. Shay of the Historical Society helps him, because they're researching it too for a pamphlet, and Bob gets to read the diary of one of the survivors, a Scotsman called Angus Gunn, who was murdered a mere two years later by four men, one of whom  was the captain of the Argyll Queen. In other words, there's definitely a mystery afoot!

Now, there's nothing in Gunn's journal about a treasure but Jupe finds a companion journal in the trunk, stuck between its two walls. And that's when Java Jim pounces, right there in the boy's HQ, prompting them to enact a rehearsed plan to counter him. He gets away with its oilskin cover but not the book itself, because Jupe isn't an idiot. I still like moments like that in these novels and I'd loved them as a bright kid forty or so years ago, hoping that I'd have thought of the same plan had that been me instead of Jupe.

So they visit the family, because they're still around. It was Mrs. Flora Gunn who sold the chest and donated the journal to the Historical Society, and she and her son still live at the house that Angus Gunn built on Phantom Lake, along with a distant cousin of her husband's, Rory McNab. I like Rory, who's a quintessential dour Scotsman. His first appearance involves him showing up on horseback and threatening the boys with a sword. There's been another break-in, with nothing stolen but the remaining artifacts of Angus Gunn rifled through for the fifth time.

And so we go. All of this is wonderful setup. The second journal is a fantastic MacGuffin, even with the treasure it potentially serves as a map to being the ultimate MacGuffin. There's already been one attempted theft. There's later an actual theft, the surreptitious photographing of it at night in HQ and an attempt to burn it in a deliberate fire. Lynds was really building up its importance to the story! And it does show the way, with the boys able to figure out four places to go to find more clues to where Gunn might have hidden the treasure.

Of course Java Jim is still on the hunt too and the boys encounter another villain called Stebbins, who used to be Prof. Shay's assistant until he was fired and locked up for stealing from the Society. Rory McNab is another suspicious character, who arrived out of nowhere and constantly suggests that there's no treasure and the boys are just wasting their time, as if he wants them to quit and take over the search himself.

I won't talk through all these locations but they're varied and well-handled, ranging from a ghost town that's being turned into a tourist attraction to an unnamed company whose warehouse was ravaged by fire in 1872. Each step requires research to deepen their understanding of what Gunn was up to. Each step involves danger, from a gunfighter, an avalanche or simply being trapped, as Jupe and Flora Gunn's son Cluny are locked in the hold of a barge; and Pete and Bob inside a shack at a remote quarry. In short, they have to fight for answers, whether through persevering in their research or to escape from tough situations prompted by the villain or villains after the treasure.

Even the research is varied. They learn about the Gunn family's history, of course, but also search library archives, company records and newspaper morgues. They encounter very real obstacles in some of this research, like the fact that the Santa Barbara newspaper's pre-1900 records are lost, courtesy of an earthquake and ensuing fire. I know that problem personally from my genealogical researches in Texas, where one crucial county courthouse burned down with all records lost. Now I have to visit a rundown graveyard on private land to try to build something from worn headstones that nobody's indexed and I don't have Hans and Konrad to drive me there in the junkyard truck from a couple of states away.

Everything thus far has been wonderful. The setup is good, the cryptic message is suitably cryptic and the clues are hard-fought for through solid detective work. The second journal is a wonderful prop and the villains do their best to remain mysterious and villainous. Eventually, of course, Jupe figures it out and unmasks the real villain and that's well-handled too. So where are the problems that I mentioned at the beginning of this review?

Well, I have to be extremely careful about them because they involve spoilers, so I'll attempt to be vague. The first involves a disguise, which has to be completely believable because it's seen close-up by many people over reasonable periods of time. It isn't merely glimpsed in a distance by some unreliable witness. And, given how it's explained, it isn't remotely believable. It's very much in the vein of 'Scooby-Doo' and that's not good. The other has to do with the location where the treasure is buried. No, that's not a spoiler; of course there's a treasure! But it seems to me that the Three Investigators wasted a heck of a lot of time figuring out clues when they had a very easy journey to bypass at least most of it. And they don't take that opportunity, which reflects poorly on them.

Was that vague enough? I hope so. I think those two problems are big ones and they mar the way that everything else plays out. This could have been one of the great books in the series and it's a strong one nonetheless, easily the best from William Arden thus far, but it's sadly not quite what it could have been. ~~ Hal C F Astell

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