THE MUMMY, THE WILL, AND THE CRYPT by John Bellairs

The second Johnny Dixon adventure, The Mummy, the Will, and the Crypt, establishes the characters a bit more and introduces some continuing characters and elements.

Johnny is on a trip with Professor Childermass (which becomes an ongoing theme in the novels; the two are almost always going off on some jaunt or another), touring the mansion of late cereal magnate H. Bagwell Glomus, when they're shown the man's office and the clues he left to his hidden will left behind in his office....a chess set, a tavern sign, and a Greek newspaper. Johnny puzzles over this as a hobby, especially after learning there's a substantial reward going out to anyone who finds it. And he's given further reason to find it....his grandmother is taken ill, and it turns out she's got a brain tumor that requires surgery.

To get his mind off things, Johnny sent to a Boy Scout camp near Mount Chocorua (a real place, and it looks impressive), only to find that that Glomus' summer house is nearby....and it matches some of the clues left in his office. With his new friend Fergie, aka Byron Q. Ferguson, he slips out at night to investigate, where they meet one of Glomus' nephews, a rather strange and slightly disturbed young man. After threatening them, he then shows them a secret passage, and tells them a spooky story of a strange magical guardian who haunts the house. And then there's a hideous scream...

This is a fun tale, where Johnny gets in over his head when panic and anxiety take over and he's not able to think clearly. He ends up going off on a half-cocked quest to find the will, running afoul of Glomus' scheming family and the eerie guardian that tries to keep him away. There are a few contrived bits but the magic rituals involved in raising and controlling the guardian are interesting reading, with some fun little details that stick in the imagination. And yes, the title is given full relevance in the course of the story.

A good, solid entry in the Bellairs canon, if not as shuddersome and eerie as some of the others, but worth searching out.

Back to Bellairs: THE CURSE OF THE BLUE FIGURINE

It's the Halloween season, and THE HOUSE WITH A CLOCK IN ITS WALLS is playing in theaters (I haven't seen it yet, sorry, my budget is tight and I don't get out to the movies much anymore), so it's a good chance to get back to John Bellairs' works.

The Curse of the Blue Figurine introduces his third hero, Johnny Dixon. It's the 1950s, and Johnny is living with his grandparents in Duston Heights, Massachusetts, while his father is in the Air Force in Korea. His mother died a few years before.

In the course of the novel, Johnny makes his first friend in his new town, Prof. Roderick Childermass, a crabby old gent who lives across the street. (Bellairs enjoys these young/old friendships; these days, it would raise eyebrows.) Johnny is also having a problem with bullies at his school, and one day, to avoid them, he ducks into the nearby Catholic church. Feeling mischievous, he sneaks into the basement, and while down in there, stumbles on a hollowed-out book that contains a blue Egyptian-looking figure and a scroll.

The church is supposed to haunted, by the ghost of Fr. Remigius Baart, who supposedly sold his soul to Satan. Johnny is thrilled by his discovery; maybe this proves the legends real? Johnny investigates further, hiding his treasure at home. The figurine, however, turns out to be a replica, and Johnny befriends another older man, a Mr. Beard, who listens to his problems and gives him a ring as part of a joking game.

However, the ring has supernatural powers, and soon Johnny is living in a nightmare.

It's an effective, eerie tale as the ghost of Father Baart seeks some goal through Johnny, and just when you think things are resolved, there's more shocks to be had.

It's a pretty solid tale, although some revelations at the end seem to come out of nowhere. The resolution of the story comes from finding Father Baart's remains in a remote corner of New England, with no explanation as to why they are there.

Still, with its flaws, it's a good solid Bellairs tale, and it kicks off one of his longer-lived series.

THE MANSION IN THE MIST by John Bellairs

I'm back!

Ah, that wonderful Edward Gorey artwork! A Gorey cover, and the Bellairs name, are almost a guarantee of a good time.

At the beginning of The Mansion in the Mist, Anthony Monday, Miss Eels, and her brother Emerson are vacationing on an island in a lake in northern Canada. One night, Anthony finds a wooden chest in a back room of the house they're staying in, and feels a strange urge to get in. The lids snaps shut, and when he opens it again he's in a misty, twilight world of moving plants and a huge, menacing mansion. He makes his way back, and at first his friends don't believe him, as the chest is now gone from the room. But after a while it shows up again, and other sinister things start to happen....

This is late Bellairs, and has some of his strengths and some of his failings. It's got atmosphere to spare, and some quirky humor, and the Canadian lake setting is reminiscent of Algernon Blackwood. But it's got too-convenient coincidences, a ghost showing up where the person is alive and with no explanation, and a plot that needs more background. As it is, the villains of the piece are great. They're a group of wizards who call themselves the Autarchs, who inhabit a vast mansion in a parallel pocket dimension, who plot to draw our world into it so they can rule it. One weakness they have is that the Autarchs are powerless in our world, which makes for some interesting intrigue.

I have to admit...while I found the story wanting in some ways, the ideas behind it are interesting and linger in my mind. The misty, shadowy pocket dimension is a great setting and could be expanded. This would be good for someone doing a role-playing game or something.

This is the last Anthony Monday book; unlike his other two series, this was not extended after Bellairs' death. Soon, I plan to start on his third series, about New England adventurer Johnny Dixon.

THE LAMP FROM THE WARLOCK'S TOMB by John Bellairs

Anthony Monday and Miss Eells are back!

Anthony and Miss Eells are browsing an antique shop when the owner mysteriously shows Miss Eells an old oil lamp, one that gives Anthony the willies but Miss Eells buys for s suspiciously low price. Anthony later borrows it from her to use as part of a science fair project...and he sees a gruesome phantom at the school (the illustration above) and a night watchman dies a bizarre death. More ghostly happenings, the theft of the lamp, and another bizarre death happen before they figure out what is going on and why.

This is one of the better works in Bellairs' world. The plot is a little wobbly at times but still makes sense, and the menace is real. The villain has a truly heinous plot in mind, but there's another factor that could do them in, that's not a deus ex machina but something lurking in the shadows from the very start. There's also some good, real detective work, some weird murals and artwork, an old house on an island, and a wintry setting. There's a fiery climax like something from one of Roger Corman's Poe films, but also a very nicely creepy denouement that I greatly appreciated.

There's a major nod to M. R. James in this one, specifically "The Tractate Middoth," in that you have a ghastly spectre of a bald man with cobwebs over his face, and a strange tomb. And there's a touch of the Lovecraftian universe as the Lamp of Alhazred, a relic from the Cthulhu mythos, is mentioned.

All in all, a fun read, and a worthy part of the Bellairs canon, probably the best book of the Anthony Monday series....and there's only one left...

THE DARK SECRET OF WEATHEREND by John Bellairs

Anthony Monday and Miss Eells are back! And battling the supernatural!

The two are whiling away a summer afternoon by driving through the Wisconsin countryside, when Miss Eells has the inspiration to explore the abandoned Weatherend estate, once home to industrialist J. K. Borkman. In a shed they find some bizarre statues that refer to weather phenomena, and then realize the estate is now inhabited and are chased away by a dog....but not before discovering, and taking, a book they find under the floorboards in the shed.

They soon meet the Borkman heir who's moved in, Anders, and it's clear he has supernatural powers, as he wants the book and exercises some sort of mind control over the two to get it back. Not only that, but all sorts of bizarre weather patterns are holding over Hoosac, WI, leading to speculation that world could end. It's up to Anthony, Myra, and her brother Emerson to figure out a solution and save the world.

I have no idea of Bellairs wanted to start a new series with 1978's The Treasure of Alpheus Winterborn but it took him six years to revisit his characters. This is an entertaining adventure but sometimes is a bit lacking; there are plot holes unfilled, such as the nature of the villain and his motivations, and information filled in afterward that nobody could actually know. But the notion of a sorcerer who wants to wipe out civilization with monster storms, and some of the bizarre clues and traps involved, are good, if the execution is sometimes lacking. Overall, enjoyable but flawed.

More Bellairs on the way!

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!

THE HOUSE WHERE NOBODY LIVED by Brad Strickland

The next volume of the Barnvelt adventures, by Brad Strickland, The House Where Nobody Lived is a fun little chiller based on some reality, and is also fairly different from the others. Besides that hideous cover painting.

It's sometime vaguely in the 1950s. (By now, Strickland had been pressured by the publisher to "freeze" his characters age-wise and the timeline being just the '50s.) Lewis and Rose Rita, out rambling around town, come across Hawaii House, an isolated building in an odd architectural style that had been built by a sea captain who had first taken American diplomats to Hawaii in the 1800s; the house was in the style of wealthy Hawaiian landowners. (Back then, they had been called the Sandwich Islands, though.) However, there's a gruesome tale of how once people moved in, everyone in the house died in the space of one night, all being found frozen to death. The two hear drumbeats from inside, and see phantom figures, and flee the scene. Time passes.

Later, a family buys the house, and Lewis and Rose Rita befriend the son, David Keller, who has a speech impediment. (Which is handled nicely, and Lewis and Rose are actually realistically sympathetic.) But the family has problems; they never get a decent night's sleep, and dream of drums and phantom figures. David has a haunted aspect about him, and when Uncle Jonathan and Mrs. Zimmermann manage to visit the house, they find weird emanations abounding.

I won't tell much more, but I was happy to see that there's no unnecessary secret-keeping, and the book's menaces are based on Hawaiian mythology, and it's all very nicely handled. In fact, I'd say that while the writing in this isn't brilliant, at the same time it's one of the best structured stories that Strickland had done for the Barnavelt series. I came away without any issues regarding continuity or plot lapses. It may not be art, but it's damned good craft.

So, a solid late entry for the Barnavelt saga, worth reading.

THE WHISTLE, THE GRAVE, AND THE GHOST by Brad Strickland

More fun with the Barnavelts!

Teenage Lewis Barnavelt is on a Boy Scout trip in the woods near New Zebedee, MI, when he stumbles on a boulder with the inscription HIC IACET LAMIA. Nearby, he finds an tubular object under a stone he's picking up for the camp fireplace. That night, his tent is shredded by an unseen force. Lewis is having troubles with bullies again, as well as an unfriendly priest at the local Catholic church he attends.

The whistle has the words SIBILA ET VENIAM inscribed on it; Lewis cleans it off and hopes to learn the history of the strange object. He opens up to Uncle Jonathan and Mrs. Zimmermann (thankfully, the days of pointless secret-keeping are over) and they investigate. However, Lewis is chased by the bullies one night and blows on the whistle in a panic...and a strange being shows up...

It's clearly an extrapolation of the classic M. R. James story "Oh Whistle and I'll Come to You, My Lad," and this time the spirit is explicitly vampiric and forms a body from whatever is handy...bedsheets, dead leaves, whatever. There's discussions of "deep magic," stuff from outside our dimension that is so rare that the magicians in the story won't sense it or know how to combat it. (Of course, it ends up being part of the story!) And the grumpy priest turns out to have his own secret as well.

It's good fun, solidly written, if not especially artistic. There is a late-story revelation that kind of comes out of nowhere, but it works well enough, and the creature is eerie and memorable. Good reading for an autumn afternoon.

THE TOWER AT THE END OF THE WORLD by Brad Strickland

Hooray! Back to more book reviews! Sorry, folks, I was sidelined for a while by various factors, including a serious illness in the family, my own struggles to find a job, and being sent reeling by the election results. It's been a rough few weeks, although it looks like I have a couple of interviews coming up so here's hoping.

Anyway...The Tower at the End of the World is Strickland's sequel to the first Barnavelt novel, The House with a Clock in Its Walls. It opens with the Barnavelts being invited by Rose Rita's Grandpa Galway to visit him on an island in Lake Superior, where he's house-sitting for a wealthy Navy friend, for a holiday full of sailing and exploring. It all sounds good, until Uncle Jonathan is attacked in the house's basement and the long-shut door in the coal bin, that leads to heaven-knows-what, is pried open. Although there are disquieting footprints, nothing is taken, and they're willing to dismiss it as a burglar.

On their island holiday, Lewis is given a letter with some macabre drawings on it, Mrs. Zimmermann, an accomplished witch, feels something is off about it, but can't put her finger on it. Meanwhile, the crew are sailing on the lake and come across an island where none was before, an island decorated by bizarre sculptures and a tall, sinister tower. They explore briefly, but are too freaked out to stay.

Back in New Zebedee, Lewis has a number of frightening experiences, including an encounter with a Japanese evil spirit, the Kuchisake Onna, or Wide-Mouthed Woman. It's obvious that Lewis is being targeted by some supernatural force....but who? and why?

It turns out that Isaac and Selenna Izard, who had built the house the Barnavelts now live in, and who had planned to destroy the world, had a son, Ishmael Izard, and he plans to not only get revenge on Lewis but complete his parents' work. The team has to work to not only save Lewis from being devoured by supernatural beasties, but also locate and destroy the new Doomsday Clock.

It's entertaining for fans of classic horror and ghost stories; part of the plot is (obviously) based on "Casting the Runes" by M. R. James, including a mention of the evil wizard Karswell. There's also an amusing reference to real-life crackpot mystic Hans Horbiger, who believed the universe was made of ice.

There's a lot of good teamwork here, with Lewis and Rose Rita being open with the adults about what's going on, and more trust evident. The solution to the story is a little obvious, but maybe it's because I'm so steeped in esoteric lore that the minute I read that the mysterious isle was called Gnomon Island I immediately knew the nature of the new Doomsday Clock.

Still, it was a good read and definitely one of the better ones. It was sadly lacking any Edward Gorey art; Gorey had passed away and further books would be without his special style.

THE BEAST UNDER THE WIZARD'S BRIDGE by Brad Strickland

More supernatural hijinx in New Zebedee!

In the first novel of the Barnavelt series, mention is made of an enchanted bridge that was supposedly built by a local wizard to prevent an ancestor's ghost from coming for him. This book uses that and builds on it.

The old Wilder Creek Bridge is being torn down, and to be replaced by a new modern bridge. Uncle Jonathan and Mrs. Zimmermann are concerned, but won't say why. Lewis and Rose Rita begin to suspect that they're hiding something major, and begin looking into things themselves. They find out a meteor fell to earth years ago, bringing with it something unholy...

Yes, this is basically a reworking of Lovecraft's "The Colour Out of Space" for young readers, but it works well. The titular beast isn't a colour, but a classic Cthulhoid semi-shoggoth, and scenes of Lewis and Rose Rita visiting a blasted farmstead are some of the more striking horror images that have ever featured in any of the Bellairs/Strickland canon. They actually worked on me a little, rousing memories of abandoned farms and withered fields around my childhood home.

It also has an appearance by inept witch Mrs. Jaegar, always welcome.

One of the more significant things about the Edward Gorey cover art is that it's probably the only time that Gorey illustrated Cthulhu. (The back cover is a scene from the novel where one of Uncle Jonathan's illusion shows is hijacked by other forces, and they witness the rising of a creature, presumably Cthulhu. It's memorable.)

This is a particularly recommended part of the series, because it tackles Lovecraft so effectively for younger readers.

THE SPECTER FROM THE MAGICIAN'S MUSEUM by Brad Strickland

More YA horror from Brad Strickland, using John Bellairs' characters. This time Lewis Barnavelt and Rose Rita Pottinger are facing a horrific situation...they are being forced to perform in the school's talent show. Talking it over with Uncle Jonathan and Mrs. Zimmermann, Lewis has the idea of doing a magic act, and they visit a local museum of stage magic (that's under construction) for assistance and ideas. While perusing the library there, Lewis finds guidance, and Rose Rita stumbles on a strange document, a scroll that was the last will and testament of a female magician/faux-spiritualist named Belle Frisson. Rose Rita gets a paper cut from the scroll...and the drop of blood turns into a spider!

This turns into a fun adventure with Rose Rita falling more and more under the influence of a malevolent spirit, and the two visit a strange magician's cemetery in a nearby town. (The Gorey frontispiece shows a photo of Belle Frisson and an image of the cemetery that I just love.) Belle's marker is a tall column that is capped by a stone sphere...that turns slowly, one revolution in about six weeks. (That gives me a macabre shiver.)

This delves a bit more into Rose Rita's personality, as we see her becoming withdrawn and sullen toward Lewis and the others, and Strickland smartly puts a supernatural spin on normal adolescent behavior. I will criticize it for having a few clumsily-inserted character with some of Lewis' classmates suddenly having speaking parts, but I found out that these were contest winners who had their names used in the story. Uncle Jonathan and Mrs. Zimmermann are fully involved, not kept on the sidelines, which makes a good change.

The final confrontation with Belle Frisson is memorable and spooky, and I wish there had been more about her background and personality; she's a bit of a cipher. But overall, it's still good fun and I enjoyed it immensely.

THE DOOM OF THE HAUNTED OPERA by John Bellairs & Brad Strickland

Another Bellairs/Strickland "posthumous collaboration", although I'm strongly of the opinion that this is all Strickland. After this one, the covers would site, "John Bellairs' Lewis Barnavelt in (book title) by Brad Strickland."

Lewis and Rose Rita are doing a project on local history and remember stories of an abandoned opera house over some downtown shops. (Apparently Bellairs based this on a real abandoned theater in his childhood home town.) They ask nicely and are let in to look around, when Lewis stumbles on the score of an opera, hidden in a decayed piano, and is warned away by a ghost. Still, they take the opera away to show their teachers, who are suitably impressed. Meanwhile, Uncle Jonathan and Mrs. Zimmermann go off to Florida to attend a friend's funeral and wrap up his affairs...not coincidentally, their old friend was a wizard.

When a tune from the opera is played at a PTA meeting, a man claiming to be the composer's son shows up, and gets everyone worked up into a frenzy to get the opera produced. Lewis and Rose Rita, who distrust the man, go on a fact-finding mission and realize the town is surrounded by an impenetrable fog cloud, and no communications can go in or out. They attempt to find members of the county magician's society (who are real wizards and witches), only to find their houses gone and the neighbors having no memory of them. And Uncle Jonathan and Mrs. Z are away in Florida. All alone, the two have to face a man who wants to become the King of the Dead.

This is good fun. The requisite thrills and chills are all there, as well as some good light humor. There's a great scene in the town cemetery where Lewis and Rose Rita are menaced by a sort of demonic guardian statue that can only move when nobody's looking at it, and which becomes more and more grotesque every time they see it. And this book introduces two fun supporting characters: Rose Rita's Grandpa Galway, a repository of local history and tinkerer, and Mildred Jaeger, a sensible, grounded would-be witch who simply lacks magical talent, but has a lot of knowledge.

Again, the kids are on their own, but this time there's a good reason as they're physically cut off. None of the old "Oh, we can't tell them because they'll hate us!" stuff.

This is a good YA horror programmer, not groundbreaking, but a fun read.

THE VENGEANCE OF THE WITCH-FINDER by John Bellairs and Brad Strickland

"By John Bellairs, Completed by Brad Strickland," claims this book's cover and title page, but I'm inclined to believe it's mostly Strickland. That's not entirely bad.

Set concurrent with the previous book, THE GHOST IN THE MIRROR, this depicts Lewis' adventures in Europe with his uncle. They go to England first, to visit a cousin who lives in the ancestral mansion in the British countryside. Lewis is intrigued by a maze on the property, and moved by the poverty of his cousin, decides to explore and find a possible treasure within. He's assisted by Bertie Goodring, the son of the his cousin's housekeeper, who is blind after being struck by a beam during the Blitz. (The book touches on some of the realities of life in postwar Britain, where rationing was still in force.) They find a hidden area in the maze (as seen on the cover above) and unleash something invisible and hostile. Lewis and his uncle continue to journey through Europe, and when they return to Barnavelt Manor for a visit before returning to the US, they find things there to be strange and sinister....

It borrows elements from several sources, including M. R. James' "Mr. Humphreys and His Inheritance," Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Musgrave Ritual," and the real story of Matthew Hopkins. Bellairs/Strickland takes jabs at adult hypocrisy. Strickland was good at characterization and with this book it really starts to become a feature of the series.

It's got some good atmosphere in the descriptions of the maze and the old house. However, in the end this is one of my less favorite books in the series. One of the antagonists just shows up, supposedly "summoned" but summoned offstage. And Lewis is terrified of talking to his uncle about his experience in the maze, which presses credibility. Uncle Jonathan has been extremely understanding of Lewis' involvement with the supernatural, and Lewis should have got over his fear long before now. The way Lewis keeps his secret just doesn't ring true and seems more a plot device than anything else.

Still, it's a decent entertainment, and the hardcover is worth getting for the Gorey cover.

THE GHOST IN THE MIRROR by John Bellairs and Brad Strickland

John Bellairs died in 1991, but his books were continued by author Brad Strickland. This book was a bit of a surprise as we were to believe the Barnavelt series ended in 1976...but in 1993 it was resurrected, and ran for quite a while.

It's the summer of 1951. Lewis and Uncle Jonathan have taken off for Europe, and Rose Rita and Mrs. Zimmermann were supposed to go with them, but Rose Rita broke her leg and can't travel, so Mrs. Z is staying home with her. Mrs. Z is having her own issues; she's experiencing weird phenomena in her house, and a ghostly figure in an old mirror seems to be calling for her.

Soon all is revealed. Mrs. Z does miss her magic powers, lost back in THE FIGURE IN THE SHADOWS, and while she was fine without them for a while, she misses them. The mirror ghost is the woman who originally taught her magic, and is offering her a chance to get her powers back if she "rights a great wrong." Mrs. Z must travel to the town of Stonebridge, PA, where her teacher, Granny Weatherbee, lived, and Rose Rita, now released from her cast, goes with her.

Not sure what wrong must be righted, or how, they travel to Pennsylvania...and when they exit a tunnel through the mountains, suddenly find themselves in a snowbound landscape, with no road. They hide their car and get a lift from a passing farm family, the Weisses, in their horse-drawn wagon, and then realize it's 1828! Young daughter Hilda is Granny Weatherbee as a young girl, and the family is beset with problems, including being suspected for witchcraft by the locals!

The jacket claims this book was "completed" by Strickland, but I've heard that Bellairs left behind only a bare outline that had to be fleshed out fairly significantly. Strickland does a decent job. His descriptions of their travels don't capture the feel of small-town America the way Bellairs could, but he did gothicism well. He handles the historic setting OK (there are a few times when it just didn't seem quite right) but the Pennsylvania Dutch milieu is interesting, and the inclusion of some of the folk magic of the area is a plus.The villain is appropriately nasty, and has an OK motivation. There's some real menace at work here, and there's a harrowing dream scene and a great nasty ending for the villain.

In the end, Mrs. Z does get her powers back, which is good, because the series would carry on for a while yet. The original hardcover also has a great cover and frontispiece by Edward Gorey. Strickland isn't Bellairs, but he had his own strengths and would carry the Bellairs brand for a number of years to come.

More Bellairs: THE LETTER, THE WITCH, AND THE RING

Lewis Barnavelt has gone off to Boy Scout camp for the summer, and his best friend Rose Rita Pottinger is left at home feeling resentful. She's also turning into a teenager, and dealing with enormously ambivalent feelings about growing up.

Her friend, the good witch Mrs. Zimmermann, offers to take Rose Rita with her on a trip to visit a farmhouse she inherited from an eccentric cousin, who claimed in a letter to have found a magic ring while digging in a nearby field. They drive up there, encounter an unfriendly neighbor with a grudge against Mrs. Z, and go to the house to find the ring stolen.

They continue on a long rambling holiday around Michigan's Upper Peninsula, but eerie happenings keep popping up, and at one point Mrs. Z becomes mysteriously ill. They head back to the house...and then Mrs. Z disappears, and Rose Rita must figure things out on her own.

THE LETTER, THE WITCH, AND THE RING (1976) is a bit different for Bellairs; this time he was seriously trying to explore Rose Rita's emotions and feelings about getting older. I'm not sure it always rings true, but it's good he was stretching himself.

The villain, Gert Biggers, is probably Bellairs' most sympathetic villain; she's someone who has led a hard life and wishes for a fresh start. Too bad she's consumed with bitterness and resentment, and a psycho to boot. There's some interesting background to Mrs. Zimmermann, and she also presents a good example of self-acceptance as she adjusts to life without her powers, which were lost in the last book.

There's some good atmosphere here, with the empty farmhouse and the storm-tossed fields, but sometimes the book drags a little with the descriptions of them driving around small-town Michigan. Rose Rita makes a new friend with local farmgirl Aggie Sipes, who's kind of interesting, but she never appears again.

In the "About the Author" bit at the end, it's claimed this is the final volume of the Barnavelt trilogy, but many years later the series was continued. More about that later....

THE FIGURE IN THE SHADOWS by John Bellairs

It's 1949, the autumn after the events in THE HOUSE WITH A CLOCK IN ITS WALLS. Lewis Barnavelt has a new best friend, Rose Rita Pottinger. He also has a bully problem, in the form of tough Woody Mingo, who wants to make Lewis miserable.

Trying to cheer Lewis up after an encounter with Woody, Uncle Jonathan opens up Grandpa Barnavelt's trunk, containing things from his Civil War days, including a "lucky" coin that he won in a poker game, and was wounded over. Lewis hangs on to the coin, hoping in some vague way it will bring him luck. However, in the night he hears a piece of mail being delivered; puzzled, he goes down into the hall and finds a postcard with his name on it, and a single word: "Venio," which Lewis knows means "I come." The card quickly vanishes.

Later, Lewis and Rose Rita, poking around in Uncle Jonathan's library, finds Mrs. Zimmermann's doctoral dissertation, on magical amulets. She includes a prayer/spell that will sense a powerful amulet, and Lewis uses it to test the lucky coin...and it jumps in his hand. And things get stranger from there....

THE FIGURE IN THE SHADOWS (1975) is a decent sequel to HOUSE, and goes more into Lewis' personal problems than before. Rose Rita is an entertaining character and is well drawn; she will stick around for the rest of the series and take center stage a few times. It's a decent story, the sort of thing that would become fairly cliched in various media (bullied kid turns to magic to defend self, with horrific results), and Bellairs would recycle the concept later in another series.

It has some problems, though. There's a lot of back story around the amulet and the mysterious ghost that stalks Lewis that comes out at the end, and it's mostly conjecture on the part of the other characters. It would have been better if there had been clearer clues to what was going on and identity of the spirit. The situation with Woody Mingo is never resolved, which reflects real life, but he also never shows up again in the series. Mrs. Zimmermann loses her powers after a magical duel with the spirit....how? How did it become so powerful when she could battle Selenna Izzard and come out on top? Bellairs doesn't always seem to have a clear idea of how his universe's magic works. And I really disliked how someone JUST HAPPENS to have a magic item in their pocket that is just the right thing to use against the spirit. And although it's given to one of the characters, they never use it again and it's forgotten about. (That is a weakness with Bellairs...in some of his other books, characters end up with powerful items by the end that seem to vanish between books and never show up again.)

Still, it's a fun read, with some chilly atmosphere, as it mostly takes place in winter. Good for when the summer heat gets to you.

THE HOUSE WITH A CLOCK IN ITS WALLS by John Bellairs

This is an old favorite from my childhood, and one of the works that set me on the path I am on today.

It's the summer of 1948. Newly orphaned Lewis Barnavelt goes to live with his uncle Jonathan in the town of New Zebedee, MI (based on the author's childhood memories of Marshall, MI, and some touches of his then-home of Haverhill, MA). Lewis notices some strange behavior from his uncle and his neighbor, the elderly Mrs. Zimmermann. Finally, the truth comes out: Uncle Jonathan is a wizard, although not a very powerful one. Mrs. Zimmermann is a powerful witch, although a good one, and they've been trying to find the source of a strange ticking in the walls of the house, suspecting it's something left behind by the house's former owner, an evil sorcerer named Isaac Izard.

Lewis has problems of his own at school; he's fat and bookish, and not very athletic, but he tries. He's also not very popular, but ends up befriending Tarby Corrigan, a popular athletic kid who can't participate in any games because of a broken arm. They start to drift apart, though, as Tarby's arm heals. Lewis, attempting to impress Tarby, claims he can raise the dead, and the two meet on Halloween night to raise a spirit in the town cemetery.

The experiment doesn't go as planned, and Lewis finds himself sitting on a painful secret, afraid to tell anyone. Meanwhile, the ticking in the walls grows louder, a mysterious woman moves in across the street, eerie happenings occur, and Lewis stumbles on clues indicating that Isaac Izard had plotted to destroy the world....

It's horror for younger readers, sure, but it's a fun and atmospheric read. The town is described lovingly, and the characters are appealingly human. Lewis' problems with bullies and a friend who grows increasingly distant and dismissive rang true for me as a kid. It's also got great illustrations by Edward Gorey (see the cover above). Gorey would end up supplying covers and frontispieces for most of Bellairs' works over the years, to the point that the two are almost inextricably linked in my mind. Lewis and his family and friends would appear in a full dozen works, and Bellairs also had two other series running along the same lines, one starring Anthony Monday and set in small-town Minnesota, and another starring Johnny Dixon and set in small-town Massachusetts.

It's not all dark and grim; there's quite a bit of humor on display, and Bellairs was obviously an educated man. Uncle Johnathan's name, Jonathan Van Olden Barnavelt, is lifted from an Elizabethan tragedy. Mrs. Zimmermann is based on Wisconsin poet Mary Zimmermann, whom Bellairs had befriended many years before. There are many literary in-jokes you'll come across here and there in Bellairs' books.

Reading it as an adult, there were a few things that jumped to my attention. There's a few supernatural occurrences that don't seem to make a lot of sense, but could be sendings from the villain to demoralize Lewis. (Mainly, the Aunt Mattie scene.) Bellairs describes a chestnut tree in Uncle Johnathan's front yard, an oddity considering the chestnut blight wiped out the chestnut in most of the country starting in 1904. And at the end, the solution to the mystery is found in a secret passage....which, to the best of my recall, is never mentioned again in the series.

Still, despite a few flaws, it's a quick, entertaining read. Bellairs had intended Uncle Jonathan to be the main character and for it to be an adult work, but there wasn't a market for it, and Bellairs was talked into rewriting it as a book for young readers, and it was an unqualified success and won multiple awards when it was first published in 1973. Seek it out...although later verions have a new cover, they at least preserved the Gorey illustrations inside, even for the Kindle version. Highly recommended.