This is the only one of my fourteen Penny Parker books for which I have the dustjacket. It's signed, so I know that K.S. Woerner did it as well as the frontispiece.

As usual, there are several mysteries going on. One is who caused the explosion at the Conway Steel Plant that killed at least two people. Another is why someone keeps sneaking into the Riverview Star photography room when nothing is being stolen. There's also the question about why a sailor was slugged and thrown off a vessel named the Snark. (I wonder if Ms. Wirt named it that for Lewis Carroll's poem, The Hunting of the Snark. If so, heh.) The mystery that made the cover is Professor Bettenridge's ray machine that detonates mines. Is it a fake or not?

There's a little safety lesson in chapters 8 and 9. It's very lucky for the sick man that Penny recognized him. The police assumed he was drunk and were taking him to jail to sober up. The medic alert bracelet hadn't been invented yet. Ms. Wirt did give him a small engraved disc on a string around his neck, but the police didn't find it until Penny explained who and what he was. (The man didn't help himself by having the disc hidden under his shirt collar.) As we later learn, the man had a friend with the same illness who did get put in jail to 'sober up'. The friend died.

The details about the demonstrations of the professor's device were interesting. I like the way Penny tried to help Ben Bartell, a reporter who was fired because his boss didn't like the story uncovered. So why is this my least favorite of the first fourteen Penny Parker mysteries?

I've been complaining about the change in Penny after book ten, but this book really gets my goat. Mr. Parker doesn't have enough reporters and Penny needs money. Mr. Parker doesn't think Penny can hack being a regular new reporter writing obituaries and rewrites. Excuse me? She put out a weekly newspaper in The Secret Pact . In chapter two of that mystery, Ms. Wirt wrote, 'Ever since she was a little girl, Penny had loved newspaper work. Her entire life seemed bound up with printer's ink and all that it connoted. She had learned to write well and Mrs. Weems, who had served as the Parker housekeeper for many years, predicted that one day the girl would become a celebrated journalist.'

In Ghost Beyond the Gate, the last book before the change I deplore, Penny is described as thoroughly enjoying reportorial work (chapter 3). When the Riverview Star staff have had enough of temporary-main editor Schiff, one of the copy readers suggests Penny take over. Penny's uncertain, but Salt reminds her about that weekly newspaper. The staff know their jobs and are willing to follow Penny's orders. Granted, she's acting as editor, but she finds the job surprisingly easy. We're reminded that she's served as reporter, society editor, and special feature writer in the past. Penny does a good job. I'm expected to believe that her father has so little confidence in her? Please!

I wouldn't have minded that most of the staff didn't seem familiar with Penny if Ms. Wirt had stressed that they were new. Elda Hunt, the reporter who gives Penny a hard time in this book, says she's been working at the paper for over a year in chapter 17. That's long enough to have known Penny better than she does. Of course, she does more than just complain about the publisher's daughter being given a job. What she says about Penny to another female reporter is a lie. (See the end of chapter 1). She pulls a dirty trick on Penny in chapter 2. Of course Elda assumes that Penny is being given better assignments later in the book because of who she is, not the fact that Penny is the more talented writer.

Another thing I didn't like was that in cbapter two Salt Sommers is described as Penny's best friend, next to Jerry Livingston (who is still in the Army Air Force). What about Louise Sidell? Well, in chapter ten she's described as a 'school girl friend who lived near the Parker home'. Louise is admitted to be a chum in the same chapter, but it still seems a demotion to me.

By the way, Jerry Livingston takes no more active role in this book than sending Penny a letter from the Army camp where he is.

1946 prices: Penny is earning only $25.00 a week, however, the brief long-distance call she makes in chapter 20 cost her only a dollar.

Mr. Parker saying that Penny had become Tillie the Toiler in chapter 17 made me smile because I have an old Whitman book about that comic strip character. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tillie_the_Toiler

If you don't mind the changes to Penny, you should enjoy this mystery. If I hadn't read books one through ten, I'd have given it a higher rating. ( )