The Adventure Girls
By the third book The Adventure Girls became the college mystery series that started off the Beverly Gray works, and even though cancelled before the fourth volume was published, the similarities in intended plot are clear: in The Adventure Girls on Vacation the protagonists were set to begin a cruise on a yacht owned by a wealthy friend, the precise theme of the contemporaneous Beverly Gray books.
[7][9] * Errantly referred to as "K-Bar-O" on the dust jacket † Advertised by name at the end of the third book, but never published The Adventure Girls at K Bar O introduces the six titular heroines, to wit, Gale Howard, Carol Carter, Janet Gordon, Phyllis Elton, Madge Reynolds, and Valerie Wallace.
Rising seniors at Marchton High School, the girls arrive at the K Bar O Ranch in northern Arizona at the invitation of Gale's cousin, Virginia Wilson.
"[10] A weeks-long camping trip on horseback pits the girls, along with Virginia's older brother Tom and ranch hand Jim, against a band of rustlers that has driven Mr. Wilson close to the point of "ruin.
Chapter nine sees the girls tour the Colorado River and Grand Canyon, the Petrified Forest, the Painted Desert, Monument Valley (and "El Capitan" therein), and the ruins of the Betatakin cliff dwellings.
Tom is not quite as lucky, with chapter 19 seeing him get shot in the arm as he and the cook, Loo Wong, capture the bandits for the third and final time.
Three are originally introduced as bank robbers (one "short" and "dark haired," a second "tall,"[34] the third an unseen getaway driver), before later being shown to be rustlers also.
Instructed by Gale and Valerie on how to make fudge (despite being a cook, "when it came to candy he wasn't so artful"), he "bowed low" to the girls with "hands hidden in voluptuous sleeves" and "the grin of a delighted child on his face.
The novel opens on the beach, where the girls and three male companions—Bruce Latimer, David Kimball, and Peter Arnold—watch a "shining red monoplane" doing aerobatics above the Atlantic Ocean.
Brent Stockton, as it turns out, is a pilot and inventor of about "twenty-three"[51] who is developing a "more or less foolproof"[52] airplane motor that will be "the most practical and economical as well as fastest.
Brent's plane wins a race, setting him up to "sell his patent to the [United States] government" and accept a job in Washington, D.C., with the Transcontinental Air Line Company.
"[55] Except for one glancing reference at the end of the ninth chapter ("The plane had come through and defeated all Brent's enemies"), they are inexplicably never mentioned again.
[66] The next and final chapter sees Gale and Bruce trapped on Cloudy Island during a storm, and the book ends on an anticlimactic note as they await rescuers from the mainland.
A January 17, 1936 letter from A. L. Burt acknowledges receipt of the manuscript for The Adventure Girls at K Bar O, and asks "how soon could we have two additional stories .
"[6] 25 days later, on February 11, another letter declared The Adventure Girls in the Air "an absolutely interesting story, and especially delightful [is] the description of life in the Canadian woods.
"[68] A contradiction arises when Gale attests to Brent's prodigious aviation skills in the eighth chapter, asking "[d]idn't he fly that anti-toxin up to Alaska to those Eskimos last year and save hundreds of lives?
[6] After The Adventure Girls in the Air was reviewed on February 11, A. L. Burt asked for the third volume to be ready "a little sooner" than the first week of March.
The college has an unpopular new dean, and the main plot revolves around the efforts of an unknown individual to hurt or possibly kill her.
Chapter 4 alone sees the dean sent poisoned candy, have her curtains set on fire, and, with Gale, narrowly avoid a vial of acid tossed from a window.
Two chapters later, college funds are reported stolen from the safe and a typewritten note warning the girls "Do not interfere in affairs that are none of your concern" is slipped under Gale's door.
"[90][91] Gale exerts her efforts by turning "all the girls into Sherlock Holmeses" to find the typewriter used to create the warning note.
[93] The mystery deepens when Gale tests the dean's own typewriter and finds it to produce type identical to that on the warning note.
Meanwhile, while walking on campus at night she is surprised by a "man's figure" with "hat pulled low ... and a long overcoat with collar turned up completely.
As the mystery continues, Phyllis breaks her leg during the Freshman-Junior field hockey game and spends weeks convalescing in the college infirmary.
Left unresolved is both the question of whether (and if so, why) Miss Horton really was earlier poisoned by candy intended for the dean, and also the identity of the mysterious man in "a long overcoat.
"[120] Brent calls to say that he and David Kimball, a friend from Marchton, are flying to Brazil to join "a searching party" sent by the "South American government" (whatever that is).
[122] As with Miss Horton and her mysterious accomplice, Doctor Elton's Brazilian adventure quickly passes from all mention with no details ever related of his time lost in the wilderness.
"[3] Somewhere along the way The Adventure Girls was dropped; its rights never made it to Grosset & Dunlap, but were instead sold to Saalfield, a small Ohio-based reprint specialist without the means to commission new works.
Under A. L. Burt, the books were thick green hardcovers, approximately eight inches in height; the black and white glossy frontispieces copied the illustrations on the dust jackets.
[126] When republished by Saalfield, the books initially kept the same height, but were issued with boards of colors, such as blue, green, or red, and with poor quality paper.
