The Last of the Barnavelts: THE SIGN OF THE SINISTER SORCERER by Brad Strickland

Great cover, huh? It's appropriate; this is the last of the Barnavelt series, and the last Bellairs novel that Strickland wrote. Apparently his publisher decided to axe the series.

It's the mid-1950s, and Lewis Barnavelt is having a rough time, as usual. At an end-of-school party, where Uncle Jonathan is performing a magic show, he sees an odd, cloaked figure off to the side, which disappears quickly. Then he has a run of bad luck; he gets two black eyes, he loses his allowance, and twists his ankle. He then looks in the enchanted mirror that hangs in the coatrack in the front hall and sees the image on the cover...the hooded figure tracing a "3" in the air.

What could it mean? Lewis is trying to puzzle it out when his uncle's wand vanishes and later Jonathan himself disappears. What's going on? Who is responsible? And what of the new kid in town, Hal Everit, who has so many questions about magic and sorcery?

It's an interesting story, and I get the vibe that Strickland knew this was it, as he did something a little daring. (SPOILERS!) The thing is, Jonathan is being persecuted by an old rival from his student days, who had participated in the manufacture of the enchanted coatrack mirror, and who now wants it for himself. However, the rival has taken the guise of young Hal Everit, and toward the end of the book there's a scene where the artifical Hal falls apart. It's pretty gruesome for a kid's book.

However, there's one bit that I found a problem, and I had to double-check to be sure I was right. In the first book in the series, the coatrack mirror is clearly described as round, and the Gorey illustration follows suit. But Strickland makes a goof, and describes the mirror as being rectangular. A pretty serious error.

Still, it's not a bad book at all, though not the best of Strickland's work. I felt a little wistful as it ended, but the series could only go so far. The idea of the kids being frozen in time, more or less, and never getting older (when the Bellairs-penned works touched on their getting older), which I understand was the command of the publisher, but it took something away from the series, I felt.

Bellairs wrote two other series, one about Anthony Monday (four books) and another about Johnny Dixon (an even dozen) and I'll get into those later. Now that I'm working again, I have to schedule my reading time more carefully!