The Yellow House Mystery (The Boxcar Children #3) by Gertrude Chandler Warner

★★★

*** Warning: This review contains spoilers! ***

Well, I appreciated the fact that in this book, the author explicitly stated the ages of three out of the four children. So far, each book tells of a new summer adventure, and the children seem to age accordingly.

For the first time, there is a true mystery in that there is a missing person case to be solved. Luckily, the decades-old crime scene was left untouched, and the whole Alden family investigates, finds clues, and works together to solve the mystery.

The children again are put in a position of having to be resourceful, this time on a canoe / camping trip. Since they actually don't know much about canoeing or camping in the wilderness, cousin Joe takes charge of the trip, and his new wife Alice joins them as well.

I didn't really enjoy this book quite so much as the others I've read so far, and I'm not sure why. The canoe / camping trip was pretty exciting, in theory, but for some reason, I was kind of bored when actually reading about it.

Also, the resolution of the whole mystery seemed a bit too easy, and at the same time, too convoluted. I liked that the kids discovered an important clue in the yellow house that the police missed years ago, but in the end, it seemed like that clue shouldn't even have been necessary. The clue led the family to a particular hiking trail in Maine, and along the way, they asked whoever they ran into whether or not they knew anything about Bill McGregor. But inexplicably, when they met Jim at the end of the trail, they neglected to ask him about Bill. If they had, they would have found out right away that "people used to say that little house was Bill McGregor's place. Then one day Dave Hunter came to Old Village and said it was his." Dave Hunter would have been the obvious person to follow up with. And if "people" knew that Bill McGregor owned that house in Maine - surely Mrs. McGregor must have known about it and could have directed the investigation there - then the original police searching for Bill, regardless of what was or was not found in the house on Surprise Island, should have investigated the house in Maine, where they would have learned about Dave Hunter!