Adults Without a Clue

The Clue of the Dead Duck

Scott Young
Toronto: Little, Brown, 1962
159 pages

Morgan Perdue and Albert "Young Ab" Magee are up to no good. They've taken advantage of a trip taken by Black Ab – he's Young Ab's dad – to skip school and do a little illegal duck hunting. Friend Sally Connors wanted to join them, but the boys had waved her off. Morgan and Young Ab leave well before dawn, piloting a boat down Irishman's River to the very same floating bog Black Ab uses when hunting duck. No sooner do they arrive than they are attacked and Morgan is knocked out.

The boy regains consciousness to find Young Ab and the boat gone. He spends a long cold day on the bog before being rescued by Sally. She'd grown concerned when the boys hadn't returned. Morgan's rescue sets off a futile search for Young Ab. The Ontario Provincial Police are called in, the RCAF sends a helicopter from CFB Trenton, and yet there is no sign of the missing boy. 

There's suspicion from the start. Morgan Perdue is a foster child. He's spent his childhood being shuttled from place to place by Children's Aid. Morgan considers his two years at the Magee house the best he's ever lived, which is something given that the period coincides with Mrs Magee's sudden illness and death. Though no one blames the boy for her passing, Young Ab's Aunt Winnie has always considered Morgan a bad seed. She's certain he's hiding what really happened on Irishman's River:

"Are you sure you and Young Ab didn't didn't have some kind of an argument and then that that [sic] temper of yours didn't get the better of you?"

Detective Sergeant Bower of the OPP has a similar theory. A grim, unfriendly man he isn't so much intent on investigating as obtaining an a confession.

It's this treatment of Morgan, this terrible prejudice, that lends weight to what would otherwise be just another adventure story for children. The boy wants to clear his name, but more than anything he wants to find his friend.

The children of The Clue of the Dead Duck come off so much better than their elders. Sally proves herself a capable, loyal friend. Pearl, Young Ab's little sister comforts Morgan as the adults point fingers. Meanwhile, Morgan somehow manages to find the strength to continue his quest in the face of insinuations and accusations levelled by the adults. His actions, not those of the police, lead to the break in the case and the arrests of the persons responsible for Young Ab's disappearance. 

The Clue of the Dead Duck is the sixth book in Little, Brown's Secret Circle series. A strange name, don't you think? It suggests a group of crime solvers, like the Three Investigators, yet the books have no recurring characters. What they do have in common is Arthur Hammond, who not only served as the series' general editor, but provided plot outlines for each title. The subtle social commentary of The Clue of the Dead Duck sets it apart from Max Braithwaite's The Mystery of the Muffled Man, the only other Secret Circle book I've read. Whether this is the result of Young's influence or that of Hammond, a man known for his social activism, is a matter of further research. Ultimately, credit goes to the author. Sketching out a story is one thing, writing this is quite another: 

The last thing Young Ab said before he went to sleep was that the alarm was set for four o'clock and that we'd better get some sleep.
     But sometimes when I'm just about to go to sleep things seem very clear to me. If I've done something wrong during the day, it's in those few minutes before I go to sleep that I worry about it. Now I started thinking, suppose there's an accident? Suppose somebody gets shot? The faces of all the people I knew around Irishman's Lake, all the people who accepted me right now because I was under Black Ab's protection, came up in my mind. But as I  lay therein the dark, these faces seemed to be looking at me accusingly. Old ladies had their heads bent together and were looking out of the corners of their eyes at me, and I was scared.

Sadly, The Clue of the Dead Duck remains relevant. It hasn't aged.

Note: The Clue of the Dead Duck was read for the 1962 Club. Reviews by fellow club members can be found through this link.

Other books from 1962 reviewed here over the years:

Canada 1962

The Damned and the Destroyed - Kenneth Orvis

Four Days - John Buell

Lust Planet - Olin Ross [W.E.D. Ross]

The Mystery of the Muffled Man - Max Braithwaite

The Ravine - Kendal Young [Phyllis Brett Young]

Object: A well-constructed hardcover with series design. The eight illustrations, cover included, are by Douglas Johnson. I purchased my copy last year at Craigy Muir Curiousities in Spencerville, Ontario. Price: $5.00.

 

Access: Very few copies are listed for sale online – prices range from US$6.00 to US$13.96. Note that not one features the dust jacket.

In 1981, The Clue of the Dead Duck was reissued as a Seal mass market paperback. As far as I've been able to determine, it was a split run with Scholastic Canada. These editions are being sold by pretend booksellers like Thriftbooks at prices ranging from US$30.42 to $42.48.

Related posts:

Yeah, I Know the Muffled Man

Christmas With Neil Young's Dad

Teamwork

Hidden Thanksgiving Day Verse

Lines for the day from Canada and Other Poems, Thomas Frederick Young's lone volume of verse. Published in 1887 by Hunter, Rose, the table of contents is interesting in that the page numbers are off. What makes it truly curious is that there's no mention of 'Thanksgiving Day,' one of the stronger poems in the collection. 

THANKSGIVING DAY

                     God of the harvest, once again

                         Our joyful tones we raise,

                    For all Thy goodness, day by day,

                         We give Thee thankful praise.

                    With blessings rich, from fertile field,

                         And gifts from fruitful tree,

                    We wish, this day, our thanks to yield

                         With earnest hearts, to Thee.

                    We ploughed the ground, we sow'd the seed,

                         But Thou didst send the rain

                    In grateful show'rs, in time of need.

                         And now we've reap'd the grain.

                    The sun with grateful heat did shine;

                         The dew did nightly fall;

                    And now, for loaded tree and vine —

                         We give Thee thanks for all.

                    The bee, in well-fill'd honey cells.

                         Her sweets for us hath stow'd,

                    The crystal water in the wells,

                         For us from springs hath flowed.

                    The lowing herd, the prancing steed

                         Received we from Thy hand.

                    And we, this day, return oar meed

                         Of praise, throughout the land.

                    Then let us sing with earnest hearts,

                         Tho' joyful be each lay,

                    And thankful ev'ry song that starts

                         On this Thanksgiving Day.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Related posts:

An Expatriate Canadian Poet's New England Thanksgiving

for Canadian Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving Verse by J.K. Foran

Dr  Logan's Ode for Thanksgiving Day

An Old Thanksgiving Ode by James McIntyre

Jean Blewett's 'Thanksgiving Song'

Jean Blewett's 'Thanksgiving Prayer'

Edna Jaques' Award-Winning Thanksgiving Verse

Thanksgiving in the Midst of War

'October in War Time'

A Thanksgiving Hymn

Thanksgiving Day Advice

'Thanksgiving Morn'

Bliss Carman's Lesser-Known Thanksgiving Poem

One Woman's Boy's Own Adventure

Gold in Mosquito Creek
Dickson Reynolds [Helen Dickson Reyonds]
London: Museum Press, [1952]
192 pages

Strapping fifteen-year-old Randy Piers and younger brother Tom are preparing Old Pete the pack pony for a three-day fishing excursion to Mosquito Creek when up pops Lester Barnes. The Piers boys are none too pleased. A softie from New York City dolled up in a dude ranch outfit (here I'm paraphrasing Tom), Lester asks if he can come along. Good Canadians, Randy and Tom are far too polite to deny the visitor's request.

Lester's investor dad shells out dough for additional grub and the trio set out from Copperville. The town is a product of the author's imagination, but British Columbia's Mosquito Creek, is very real. And there is gold.

The fishing party is crossing a railway bridge when sounds the "wailing hoot of a train whistle." Old Pete is so spooked that all four of his legs fall between the ties. I was certain that one or more would be broken, which shows what little I know about pack ponies. Pete is just fine. I also learned that I don't know a lot about locomotives. This one manages to stop before reaching Pete, and the boys raise the pony with the aid of ropes and a blanket. Just how this is done isn't described in detail; after several readings, I'm still not sure exactly how it worked.

The trio manage to reach Mosquito Creek without further incidence, but once there Lester slips on a rock and is carried away by a fast moving current. Randy tries to save him, only to be swept away himself. Both are rescued by surprisingly spry old sourdough Jake Olsen. Once the boys are safe and on solid ground, he suggests they get out of their wet clothes.

Make nothing of that, Jake doesn't want them to catch cold.

The old man makes a living, of sorts, panning for gold in Mosquito Creek. Lester learns that Jake once sought fortune in the Klondike, leading to my favourite line of dialogue: 

"Oh boy! Were you up there?" Lester almost squealed with excitement. "Tell us some yarns, oh please!"

Jake shares a chilling story about a friend freezing to death, but nothing more. With winter a few months away, the old man is more focussed on building a cabin. He hires the Piers brothers to pan for gold while he gets to it. Lionel can't join in because he and his father are returning east to what I'm assuming is a Park Avenue penthouse. 

As the jacket illustration suggests, Gold in Mosquito Creek is a novel of adventure and danger. The railway bridge and slippery rock provide something of a template; if something can go wrong, it will go wrong. Randy fails to tie a tent flap, so wakes up to sleeping skunk. Jake fells trees to make his cabin, until a tree falls on him. Thoughts that a bear might eat their provisions are followed by a bear eating their provisions. At a Copperville picnic, Tom worries over keeping his new ice cream pants clean, only to have them stained by grape juice. Back at Mosquito Creek, he doesn't wear hiking boots, and so strains his ankle. Will the boys encounter another bear? You can bet on it.

Lurking in the background is a "tough-looking hombre" (here I'm quoting Tom), whom the Piers brothers first encounter in Copperville, just as they're beginning to work for Jake:

The swarthy man is a foreigner, but not a good one like Lester's wealthy investor dad. The reader is made aware of just how bad the earring-wearing man is by the fact that he's been tardy in paying a dentist's bill.

As it turns out, the swarthy foreigner is the leader of the Gold Ring Gang; a "saturnine" man serves as his number two. They've been moving about Copperville for some time. The third member of the gang was shot at the Bodega Hotel – reason unknown – and ends up sharing a hospital room with Jake (who almost lost a foot on account of that dang tree). This is how the bad men learn that the old sourdough has two or three thousand dollars worth of nuggets squirreled away at his camp.

It's at this point that Gold in Mosquito Creek shifts gears, revealing Dickson Reynolds as Helen Dickson Reynolds, author of He Will Return. The plot turns ridiculous, the dialogue laughable, and I felt I was finally getting my money's worth. 

The gang is successful in stealing Jake's gold. In doing so, one or more of their members tries to shoot Randy and Tom goes missing. It's assumed that the younger of the two Pierce boys has been kidnapped or killed. Their parents are not consulted when Copperville Constable Denny Day enlists young Randy to spy on the gang's hideout. Somehow he assumes the men won't recognize the boy they tried to kill. It's all bit of a disaster, as reflected on these two pages. The dialogue is worth the read:

cliquez pour agrandir

Everything in Gold in Mosquito Creek is fairly cut and dry. It's not a mystery novel, yet mysteries remain, the foremost being that an American criminals might cross the border, driving thousands of kilometres in a stolen car to a remote region of British Columbia. The Gold Ring Gang spend weeks in Copperville, taking rooms in the Bodega Hotel. The town's police know they are there and do nothing; not even when one of the gang is shot.

That's something, right? Someone shot in a small town

Maybe not.

All this for a haul of nuggets amounting to between two and three thousand dollars ($33,000 - $49,500 today).

Was that really worth it?

They tried to kill Randy.

I'll never understand the criminal mind.  

Object and Access: Gold in Mosquito Creek was first published in 1946 by Thomas Nelson & Sons, New York, NY. A bulky book bound in red boards, the Museum Press edition shares nothing in terms of design. The Nelson edition features a cover and six illustrations by American artist Grattan Condon. His rendition of the scene depicted on the British jacket is superior.

There has never been a Canadian edition.

My Museum Press copy was purchased earlier this year from a British bookseller. Price £2.50. Evidence suggests that it was a Christmas gift.

Library and Archives and seven of our academic libraries hold copies of the Museum and/or Nelson editions.

As I write, one Museum copy is being sold online. Price: £8.00.

The Nelson edition is nowhere in sight.

Related posts:

But Why Would You Want Him To?

The Very Strange Story of a Disulusional Abandoned Wife

Worst. Dialogue. Ever.