I found this book hidden away in a school library with a brother-volume The Chicken Devil Mystery, and I was slightly ecstatic with the find. This little novel had all the makings of a great read, and for my family in particular: Christian kids living in Hong Kong, meeting and sharing the Gospel with Chinese friends, facing a mystery of dangerous proportions—oh! What a wonder it was going to be!

We made it six chapters in before we collectively decided that we’d lost all interest in the story. Bechtel’s writing is so unnecessarily wordy, so redundant and flowery when just needed the facts, that it became a frustration to slough through rather than a mystery story to enjoy.

I got an early inkling to this problem when the author introduced the lead character, 12-year-old Doreen Matthews, and her seven friends. Yes, seven little girls in the first few pages who all have names and characteristics that we’re supposed to remember, yet who rarely show up again (at least in the first six chapters). Any good author knows that you can’t dump onto your reader too many facts and names at once. Ease them into the story, so the reader can familiarize himself with the setting and the characters that populate it. Eight little 12-year-old girls thrown at us so immediately? No thank you.

I don’t know anything about the author (though I assume he was a missionary of some sort who had served in Hong Kong during China’s Civil War), but I can guess that he had a daughter whose schoolmates he wanted to represent in this horde of little girls. Perhaps he wrote this tale for their sake and only published it later. Perhaps in 1941, such wordiness was popular and a sign of brilliance. Not so today.

One example of this wordiness comes on the last page (I skimmed the rest of the book so I could tell the kids how the mystery panned out). The final line reads, “Well, I guess that closes the case of the HongKong counterfeiters, because the mystery of the garage at 145 Harrison Road has been solved.” The speech is unnatural, and the redundancy of “Well that closes the case because the mystery has been solved” is simply how this whole thing flows.

It was nice to see little Doreen attempt to share the Gospel with some Chinese folks, and it was totally natural for her (and her father) not to speak a word of the native tongue, but rather require that the Chinese understand their English. In fact, I found it pretty funny that Chinese characters printed on page 24 are printed upside down and not even the author was aware of it! No editor or type-setter caught this massive mistake, because the Chinese language isn’t something they’d ever want to actually learn, even as missionaries, but is something of a novelty that’s cute but beneath their higher intelligence.

I may or may not try to read The Chicken Devil Mystery (1944) on my own time, but if it’s anything like this book, likely not. Since I probably won’t take the time to read it, let me at least make a record of the amazing artwork that adorns the cover. I love it and wouldn’t mind turning it into a poster of some sort for my office.

©2021 E.T.