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Lily: Finally, there’s a book in this series that somewhat resembles a mystery!
Lorraine: I dunno, girl. I still think why these kids enjoy being homeless so much is a mystery…
Nugs: Are you guys totally sure these books are really mysteries? I mean, judging from the titles, I got the impression that they were all, like, epic period pieces or something.
Lily: So, apparently, a few years have gone by since we last saw the kids in Surprise Island. The two older kids are now in high school.
Lorraine: Seriously? WTF? Somewhere the girls of Stoneybrook are all, “Kids aging in a book? UNFAIR.”
Nugs: >Call me old-fashioned, but I tend to not want any surprises on my island.
Lily: The book opens up with the kids getting a call from their loser uncle who lives with them and their grandfather, Joe. He was working on Surprise Island and he wanted the kids to go visit him.
So the Gramps Money Bags gets the kids and the housekeeper – Mrs. McGregor, and meets Captain Morgan to take them to the island where Joe is “working” in a cave and finds “Indian things.” I think it’s all code for drugs. Here Joe introduces the kids to a woman named Alice who is also working in the cave with him.
Lor: Meaning she also likes drugs?
Lily: I’m pretty sure yes.
At dinner, Benny is just pushing his food around the plate thinking about Alice and Joe. He confesses to Gramps that he thinks Alice likes Joe.
Lor: Like she likes drugs?
Lily: Mmmhmmm. Gramps reveals that Joe and Alice are getting married and all the kids and the dog can participate in the ceremony! If a dog was going to take part of anything in my wedding, I’d make sure he was wearing a diaper. Don’t want dog pee and poo all over the place.
I thought the chapter with the actual wedding would be exciting. It wasn’t. But I learned that Violet plays the violin. I didn’t think these kids could do anything but be annoying.
Lor: Violet was learning to play back in book #2. That I remember that makes me really sad. Don’t even try and tell me that it was only one book ago, because I am inconsolable.
Lily: Yeah, sometimes things I remember from these books make me super sad.
While Joe and Alice are on their honeymoon, the kids express how bored they are. They wonder why they can’t go into the Yellow House on Surprise Island. They asked Gramps $-Bags why they couldn’t, and if he could tell them if he wasn’t upset that they kept asking about it.
To shut the kids up, he tells them the story: Gramps $-Bags dad (Great-Gramps $-Bags) built a barn for his prized race horses. The dude who built it for him was named Bill. Bill built the yellow house for him and his wife. It was said that Bill had some bad friends. One night, Bill’s wife smelled something weird coming from the living room. (Lor: DRUGS!) She walked in, but Bill was just reading. Later she heard weird noises coming from the living room just to walk in again and see Bill just reading.
One day, Bill just disappeared! This was a shock to his wife. She called the police who found no traces of Bill anywhere. Because he disappeared, Great-Gramps $-Bags told her she could come move in with him and be his housekeeper.
Lor: WHAT A BUM DEAL. “Hey sorry you lost your husband. Why don’t you leave your house and come clean my shit? Yes? Yes? Yes? Deal!”
Nugs: Excuse me, but I love cleaning. Are there spreadsheets, too?
Lily: And guess who it is? Mrs. McGregor, DUN DUN DUN!
The kids decided they should solve this mystery once Joe and Alice get back from their honeymoon. Which was on Surprise Island. For rich people, they don’t really know how to party.
Lor: Lily, Surprise Island is where the drugs are, duh. Sounds like a party to me.
Lily: Oh, right… rich people have islands made of [insert drug here].
Joe and Alice return from their honeymoon on the lamest island on Earth in their new station wagon. The kids are all like why do you have a station wagon? It’s just you two. I kind of wanted them to say “we’re pregnant!” because I could go on a better tirade about how you can’t know you’re pregnant 50 seconds after having sex. But apparently, it was just for them to take the kids around with them.
Lor: Not to keep mentioning Twilight, but I saw Twilight this weekend. Basically I learned that you CAN know you are pregnant 50 seconds after sex if you are banging a vampire. Write that down, kay?
Nugs: I had to see Twilight, too. Holy mother of all things stupid was that an awful pile of shit. The only thing that kept me going was the drinking game I constructed, my biting commentary and the fact that I fell asleep for ten minutes towards the end.
Lily: I will keep that in mind the next time I have sex with a vampire, Lor. Anyway, they tell them they’re going to solve the mystery of Bill, so they all pile into the station wagon.
Once there, they start looking around and find that there was a bucket with whitewash. They look at all the floorboards to see if anything could be hidden there. Nothing. Then they go to the chimney that Benny had been crying about all day. Well, they start tapping all the bricks in the chimney and find that some sounds different than others, and that those are painted with the whitewash! ZOMG! They’re getting closer to solving the mystery!!!! They remove the bricks and find a note written to Bill. He may be in Maine.
They end up going to Maine to look for Bill. While on they way, they reveal that the letter Bill was reading was from his brother, Sam, who was a very bad man who didn’t want Bill to give Great-Gramps $-Bags some money from the sale of 2 racing horses. He couldn’t help find Bill because he was struck and killed by a car 2 days after Bill disappeared.
After like a million chapters of them meeting different woodsy animals and eating potatoes, (Lor: WHAT?) something interesting happens. They meet someone who may be able to tell them where Bill is. But just as they are going to get news … Benny disappears!
The kids and their cousins begin to look for Benny and enlist one of the “Indian” girls to help them search for him. You know … because Indians can see everything. The Indian girl leads them down a path where Benny walked through. Violet tells her there’s no way Benny went down the path, but the Indian girl is all like STFU, I can see things you CAN’T.
Lor: For some reason I am reminded of that creepy fuck, Grandmother Willow.
Once they got Benny, they didn’t go in to see the hermit. I mean, if my little brother was lost, and some random guy found him, I’d at least go up to his from door to say thanks. Such ungrateful kids.
Once Benny was back in the custody of his siblings and cousins, he starts saying he thinks Dave (the hermit) is Bill! He says the houses are so totes the same!!! He has to be Bill! Naturally, his family thinks he’s stupid.
Benny’s like but the house here and the house on Surprise Island are so totes the same! Look at the door! The chimney! THE CHIMNEY!!!! They start digging around and find a tin box with the money from the horses Bill sold!
They go Dave’s house and they all start calling out for him: DAVE! And then Benny was like YOUSE GUYS, HIS NAME IS BILL. And low and behold, Dave/Bill is all like ZOMG, How did you guys know it’s me?! (Nugs: Uh, no offense guys, but I didn’t even read this book and I knew it was you) The kids are all like, we need to take you home to Mrs. McGregor, home, so and so.
They grab Bill and the money and start back home. Along the way they give Bill a makeover, because apparently hermits lack proper hygiene practices. Once they arrive back to Gramps $-Bags house, they’re all like LOOK WHO WE FOUND! Bill gives the money to Gramps $-Bags and is all like naw, I don’t need that chump change… while the kids are like you can so use it to clean up Surprise Island, cuz it’s lookin more like Garbage Island. The garbage is the surprise.
Gawd, this was the longest book so far, and in the extra 50 pages that Gertrude Chandler Warner stuck in there she did pack in extra boring. I didn’t think it was possible.
Lor: Well. That was pretty dumb! I think the lesson here is don’t do drugs or else you will end up living like a hermit and your brother will get hit by a car and your wife will have to clean up after homeless kids.
Next time on The Boxcar Children: Seriously, how are these children finding all these boring mysteries? Find out in #4 – Mystery Ranch.
I'm Nugs, the resident In-House Snark Squad Organizational Psychotic, or as Lor, calls it, "Prodigy." I cover the BSC along with Sweeney, Goosebumps, and whatever else I occasionally sneak into. I'm a native New Yorker stuck in LA, so my first language is Brooklynese, with a smattering of colloquial English. I'm a total sci-fi and comic book geek, which the Ladies have fostered by adding to my "impressive" collection of robots and action figures, even though they claim to be afraid of me. Also, if Ryan Gosling ever happens to accidentally stumble upon my posts I will probably be arrested. Oh haaaai.
I'm a 30-something south Floridan who loves the beach but cannot swim. Such is my life, full of small contradictions and little trivialities. My main life goals are never to take life too seriously, but to do everything I attempt seriously well. After that, my life goals devolve into things like not wearing pants and eating all of the Zebra Cakes in the world. THE WORLD.
