Arthur M. Winfield (1) (1862–1930)

This was the sequel to The Rover Boys at School, the first book in a long series (25 or so titles). I'm not sure why I read it. I guess I had a need to find out what happened next, after I finished up the first book. I think I'm now cured from that sickness and will leave the Rover boys to languish in the obscurity they deserve.

To be fair, the Rover boys series of books are geared toward 11-year old boys. So there's lots of adventure, good guys against bad guys, guns, sailing, fires, storms at sea, etc. Jumping to unmerited conclusions is ok because you can always tell the bad guys by the way they look. The writing is truly bad. What it reminded me of was the stories Penrod was writing. The Penrod books themselves are reasonably good, having been penned by a competent author, Booth Tarkington. But occasionally, we find Penrod, the 11-year-old hero of the books, hiding out in the barn and scribbling some kind of lurid adventure. So, that's kind of what the Rover boys comes out being, a lurid adventure written by an 11-year old. A competent author would do better, but Stratemeyer, the author, was an entrepreneur, not an author. Apparently, he actually wrote the Rover boys books himself. Many of his other series, e.g. the Hardy boys, were farmed out to free-lancers who had little time to polish their works. Even so, it seems to me that the Hardy boys books I've read in the last couple of years, were not nearly so lame as these two Rover boys books I read in the past month.

Still, it could be worse. There was adventure and lots of action, so at least things didn't get boring. Just incongruous and irresponsible.
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In reading something about the author of the Hardy Boys series (Lesley something or other, a Canadian), I got interested in Edward Stratemeyer, who masterminded a number of popular youth series, including the Hardy Boys, Tom Swift, Nancy Drew, the Bobbsey Twins, and the Rover Boys. Well, I'd never read any Rover Boys, which seemed to be Stratemeyer's first series and one he largely penned himself. Many of the others he outlined and then farmed out the actual writing to others, for a fixed price and no royalties. The poor bastard who wrote the Hardy Boys only made about $100 for a volume, which then went on to sell to several generations of boys over several decades.

Anyway, the Rover Boys is short and active. There's always something going on. Lots of youthful hijinx, scary adventures, e.g. being attacked by a rampaging snake, robbed by a hobo, choked on a moving train, etc. There are also lots of moral teachings, so as to instruct boys as to how to grow up to be proper men, lots of foreshadowing, and of course a summary of the story which pitches the next one in the series. Since the book leaves a number of questions up in the air, e.g. will the rich widow be bamboozled into marriage by the malevolent, former schoolmaster, one must, naturally, immediately go out to buy the next adventure in the series. So, perhaps I shall.… (más)