M. V. Carey (1925–1994)

I don't think I ever read this one before! Maybe the cover was too scary for me when I was a child. I know some people don't like the M.V. Carey books, but I think she's simply delightful. They're funny, character-driven, and less reliant on the boys being kidnapped and trapped in caves. In this story, a cultivated elderly gentleman who is a patron of the arts calls on the Three Investigators to help him with a sinister spectral presence who is spying on him and going through his things. show more Jupiter seems to solve this mystery rather quickly with a minimum of fuss, but soon enough there's the theft of a priceless crystal dog statuette, a fire, car bombing, a poisoning, and the ghost of a priest. What I found really unusual about this book was that some of the supernatural phenomena turn out to be genuinely supernatural! I loved Ruxton University and the professors in the Parapsychology Department. This twist made it harder to solve the mystery, but it made the story a lot more fun. show less

This is a relatively late and inferior entry in the Three Investigators series. The series was created by [a:Robert Arthur|50291|Robert Arthur|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1207672247p2/50291.jpg], a woefully neglected author who did a great deal of work with Alfred Hitchcock; Arthur wrote the first nine and the eleventh book in the series. Unfortunately M.V. Carey was no Robert Arthur!

I recently read the book to my son. We've read many of the books in the series together. In this one, show more there were several ways in which the book simply didn't work. Oh, Carey included the usual iconic elements of the series; Jupiter Jones' family, and the hidden Headquarters (a trailer buried under a pile of junk), and Pete, and Bob. But there are several false notes.

One that was particularly annoying was the use of Jupiter's name. Arthur usually referred to him as "Jupiter" or "Jupiter Jones". Once in a while his fellow Investigators, Pete or Bob, would refer to him as "Jupe". But in this book, he is almost always called "Jupe" - not just by other people, but by the narrator. I'm not that picky, but seeing "Jupe" repeated over and over in paragraph after paragraph just got weird! It started to become a meaningless sound - you know how some words get when you say them over and over? I ended up auto-correcting it to "Jupiter" when I read it aloud, except when it was said by Pete or Bob.

The mystery itself was just...okay. Nothing particularly clever or memorable about it. If anything, the resolution was rather anticlimactic. I won't bother to give it away, though.

But another thing that was quite irritating was a dramatic change in a long-standing supporting character, Police Chief Reynolds. In the early books in the series he was supportive and friendly to the Three Investigators, even going so far as to give them official cards identifying them as Junior Deputies or something like that. In Flaming Footprints, he has been completely changed. He's sneering, abusive, hostile, and sarcastic. The change was so extreme that my son remarked on it. Personally, I found the recasting of Chief Reynolds as a stereotypical negative adult authority figure so irksome that I couldn't resist editorializing: "'What do you want now, Jones?' snarled Chief Reynolds, while busily stomping on a cute kitten and simultaneously farting on a helpless old lady."

My son is more generous and/or uncritical than I am. He gave the book 4.5 stars. I feel I'm being generous in giving it three.

Oh, as always I should note that there are probably two different versions of the text extant. Older versions feature the character of Alfred Hitchcock. For legal reasons newer editions have been rewritten to replace Hitchcock with a lame-ass ersatz version. If you decide to pick this one up, try to go for an older edition. But if you're new to the series, I strongly recommend starting with the original nine books by Robert A. Arthur. show less

There's not a lot of reason to read this as an adult unless you have nostalgia for it, and you read it when you were younger.

It's basically a very simply mystery book that consists of withholding information from you and then revealing it bit by bit. It reminded me of Scooby-Doo episodes, as you follow the three young detectives that have to investigate some dubious meetings where a frightening sound was heard during it. You won't find a lot of character development, even with a magnifying show more glass. The detectives are even so kind as to sum up the proceedings of the story halfway, in case you were dosing off, and by the end, they also explain everything to a bewildered Mr. Hitchcock who's been inserted for good measure. He's not part of the story, though.

All in all, a fine book to hand to your pre-teen kids. However, for an adult it's not very engaging, and it doesn't serve you any thrills, so don't expect high quality just because it's associated with Alfred Hitchcock. show less

This is a great cliff-hanger (ha, ha) which finds the boys trapped for most of the action on a remote ranch, whose owner has decided to live what we would now call "off grid". It plays on people's preconceptions and beliefs to wonderful effect - a really good one.