Htchck Mys Shrnkng Hse

The Mystery of the Shrinking House offers up yet another impressive display of young Jupiter Jones' deduction skills. At first, there does not seem to be much of a case at all-a Countess wants to reclaim the items from her dead brother's estate, all of which had recently been purchased by Jupe's Uncle Titus for the Jones Salvage Yard. By the time the Countess arrives to make the request, all of the items have been sold, and the boys take on the task of tracking the items down. They find almost everything except for a strange series of 20 paintings; these paintings all depict a particular house, and the house is drawn progressively smaller on each one. When bad guys show up to interfere with the Three Investigators' budding investigation, Jupiter knows that the strange paintings are the key to something big. It is worth noting that this book features Jupiter's young nemesis Skinny Norris, but Skinny once again proves himself to be no Dr. Moriarty to Jupiter's Sherlock Holmes. It's a well-told story, complete with a surprise or two at the end. The whole logic of the shrinking house clue ended up feeling slightly contrived, but the path to discovery was an enjoyable one. The boys seem to walk right into one trap after another, but these detectives have never left a mystery unsolved and refuse to do so now, even in the face of danger. There is plenty of action in these pages, but this story really does hinge on the deductive reasoning powers of Jupiter Jones. In this, his fourth Three Investigators mystery (and the eighteenth in the series as a whole), William Arden demonstrates a good feel for the characters, but even he fails to capture all of the nuances that made series creator Robert Arthur's books so gripping and entertaining.