The Mystery of the Trail of Terror

It was a cold, wet and miserable day yesterday and work was slow. In the late afternoon, I decided to start a new book, one of the two original Three Investigators books I had yet to read. The Mystery of the Trail of Terror is the thirty-ninth in the series and probably the shortest. Pete’s grandfather, Mr. Ben Peck, is an inventor, but he is also impetuous and quick to anger. He has a feud with his neighbour, a Mr. Ed Snabel. Mrs. Crenshaw “hires” the investigators to accompany (i.e., keep an eye on) her father on a cross-country trip by car to New York City, where he wants to find a backer for his latest invention. Mr. Peck is happy to have the boys go with him and they set off at a leisurely pace, making lots of stops along the way. However, to their surprise, they come across Snabel. Mr. Peck and the boys are convinced that he is out to steal the invention. But no matter what they do and how devious a route they take, Snabel always finds them. There is also a gang of bikers on the roads that wants to make trouble. The adventure rolls along, taking the party through clashes with the bikers, a dramatic fire at a hotel and an attempted kidnapping. There is also the impending danger of Snabel stealing the invention. Mr. Peck refuses to tell the boys what the invention is and does not seem particularly worried about it being stolen, which appears out of keeping with his character. Jupiter, in one of the rare pieces of actual investigating in the story, works out that Snabel is not interested in the invention and deduces that he is actually after Bob’s camera. Snabel had an identical camera and in a confusing scene, they ended up being switched. Snabel is a spy and when they finally reach a big city, Mr. Peck seeks out the FBI. The story proceeds to a fairly exciting climax, with rides on the New York subway and the capture of Snabel. When the boys meet Hector Sebastian at the end of the story, they reveal what Mr. Peck’s invention was and why he wasn’t worried about it being stolen: he had mailed it to his hotel before setting out!

This is quite a good story, but it hinges too much on coincidence. That Snabel and the tour party would turn up at the most unlikely spot together, Pismo Beach, is hard to accept. Snabel, who has to hand a roll of film to another spy, would be unlikely to travel such a far distance to deliver his package out in the open. That could have been better contrived. It takes Jupiter a long time to work out how Snabel manages to follow them, finally arriving at the conclusion that he was using a homing device. As the boys had used homing devices themselves on so many cases, it’s strange that he doesn’t hit on such an obvious solution long before. Jupiter certainly does not show much mental prowess in this story and Bob doesn’t do any research. The book is more of an adventure story than a detective novel. But the characterisation is good. The peppery Mr. Peck is a lot of fun and the crooks are passable. There are holes in the plot, it’s true, but on the whole it’s not a bad book. M. V. Carey had reached an all-time low with The Mystery of the Wandering Caveman in 1982. The following year she had redeemed herself with The Mystery of the Missing Mermaid. Trail of Terror was one of three books published in 1984, the others being The Mystery of the Two-Toed Pigeon by Marc Brandel, and The Mystery of the Smashing Glass by William Arden. Now I have only one 3I book to read, The Mystery of the Creep Show Crooks by M. V. Carey, published in 1985.