The Secret of the Mansion (Trixie Belden #1)

Campbell, Julie. The Secret of the Mansion (Trixie Belden #1)

June 3, 2025 by Random House Books for Young Readers

E ARC Provided by Netgalley 

Trixie lives with her parents and brothers on Crabapple Farm near Sleepyside. She desperately wants a horse, but her mother says the family finances won't stretch that far, not do they allow her to go to camp, although her older brothers do. To occupy herself, she takes care of her younger brother Bobby. She also meets a new neighbor, Honey Wheeler, whose famiky is so wealthy that they worry about her being kidnapped. This doesn't stop the girls from snooping around Mr. Frayne's house after the 82 year old collapses and has to go to the hospital. In the house, they find Jim, who is fifteen and has run away from home and his stepfather, Jonesy. He hopes that he can live with Frayne, who is his uncle. If he can't, he will get a job on a cattle boat, because he is not about to go back home. The girls hope they can help him find the will, but when Mr. Frayne dies, Jim is afraid to contact the authorities. There are a number of other complications, including a pilot who parachutes into the area, leaving Bobby unattended at the sea shore, and Frayne's house being set on fire. The girls manage to pull a mattress out of the house, which ends up being stuffed with Frayne's purported treasure. Jim leaves, and is content to let everyone think he has died, but when the girls find out that he has been left a half a million dolllars in a trust, they think about going to look for him. 

Strengths: This is an excellent example of books that were popular at this time, and I can see why Trixie is one of the enduring characters of teen literature. She has a lot more spunk than a lotof the vintage characters I've come across, and is willing to take a lot of risks. There's a lot of action, and some real danger; Bobby gets bitten by a snake, Trixie hits her head in the water, a ladder falls on Jim. Sure, kids back in the day were allowed to go out and have adventures, but we never seem to mention that people actually got hurt while on them! also, back in the day, people apparently left diamond rings lying about a lot more than they do now. The Belden books were published by Whitman Publishing, so I doubt that many of them survive; they were generally had paper over board covers and highly acidic paper, so fell apart very easily. I did appreciate that the original illustrations were included. 

Weaknesses: This had a very Scooby-Doo quality to it, but without the fake ghosts. By modern standards, it's not very believable, or even very good. Since this book was originally published in 1948, Trixie was roughly the age of my mother, who would be 91 if she were still alive. It's hard enough to get children to read titles from the 1990s, since it is "the last century" to them! 
What I really think: I collect vintage teen literature, but hadn't read a Trixie Belden title before. This series has been reprinted countless times, so it's not in any danger of being lost to time just yet. This was interesting to read, but I don't think I can justify buying it for my middle school library. 

I do, however, sort of want to do a deep dive into all of Julia Campbell's work, especially the Cherry Ames titles that she wrote. My cousin had some of the books, but I was never allowed to read them.