The Mexican Mystery Stories for Girls series is a three-book series published in the United States in 1936. I imagine that the series was geared toward the same or similar audiences as the massively popular Nancy Drew mysteries and similar “mysteries for girls” also being put out by the Stratemeyer Syndicate (and other publishers) during that decade.
This trilogy’s author, Helen Randolph, is a pseudonym for a two-person writing team, Virginia Fairfax and Helen Allan Ripley.
As one might imagine, all three of the Mexican Mysteries are now out of print, but they’ve since fallen into the public domain, and scans of the original hardcovers are up on Project Gutenberg. At the time I read these books, I was waiting for copies of some other vintage children’s books to arrive by mail, so I decided to take the opportunity to read this easily accessible (and short!) series.
Book 1: The Secret of Casa Grande
The first Mexican Mystery quickly introduces the reader to the protagonists, in a set-up that’s likely to be familiar to even casual readers of Nancy Drew: a group of three girl friends, two of whom act as foils to their more adventurous, unconventional ringleader. (I’m talking about Nancy, Bess, and George, obviously.)
The characters here are:
- Jo Ann: brown-eyed and intelligent, with dreams of attending college to become an architect; also a noted tomboy
- Peggy: auburn-haired, fond of pretty clothes and having a good time—but not opposed to getting dirty when the situation calls for it
- Florence: a bland, blue-eyed character who’s timid and overly concerned with keeping up proper appearances; secretly admires Jo Ann and Peggy and strives to emulate their more confident personalities
The “mystery” in Casa Grande is atypical, because there’s no villain or centralized conflict, aside from Jo Ann and her friends attempting to learn more about the titular casa. The three girls are on vacation from their boarding school in the States and are staying in Mexico at Florence’s home with her doctor father (Florence’s mother being conveniently absent due to an unexplained illness). On their first day in Mexico, the girls note that there’s a window on the exterior of the house that doesn’t have a corresponding interior window. They then do some sleuthing and uncover some local history.
Without spoilers, Casa Grande features: mysterious old ruins, a strange house, hidden tunnels, mummies, buried treasure, and long-lost historical documents.
While I love the subject matter and the authors’ clear love of the Mexican setting, my main complaint with this book is that the driving conflict that keeps the girls from unraveling the mystery is…etiquette. I’m used to smart, capable, unashamedly snoopy Nancy Drew, who forges boldly ahead without fear for reputation or social niceties. In contrast, Jo Ann & Co. are highly concerned about propriety and ruining their reputations—which makes it difficult to do anything important, since apparently girls of the “high classes” in Mexico couldn’t go out on the streets alone. So a large portion of Casa Grande is just Jo Ann trying to sneak out while her friends cover for her. The central moment of the story (depicted on the cover) is when Jo Ann climbs on the roof via a construction scaffold, but finds that she can’t climb back down because the construction workers have come back from their lunch, and interacting with them in any way would bring shame upon herself and her hosts.
I mean…okay. Sure.
Weird thing is, while she’s “trapped,” Jo Ann thinks to herself that if they were American workers, her situation wouldn’t be a big deal, but these Mexican workers apparently are more menacing by mere dint of their nationality. Which smacks of racism. But to be clear: these books are 100% racist. Mexican people in Casa Grande are portrayed as lazy, inefficient, and unintelligent—though there are exceptions for “high class” Mexicans such as the local priest and lawyer.
In summary, I found the seemingly arbitrary constraints placed on the protagonists’ actions to be frustrating, and I certainly do not want to minimize the fact that the text is blatantly racist. But I found The Secret of Casa Grande to be a cheerful adventure, in its own way.
Book 2: The Mystery of Carlitos
Picking up again at some point after the first, Randolph’s second Mexican Mystery succeeds in amping up the excitement and raising the stakes, but manages to be even more racist than its predecessor. The bigotry in The Mystery of Carlitos is not only rampant, but doesn’t particularly make sense—for reasons to be explained below.
This time around, our three protagonists are staying in an old adobe house in the mountains, along with Florence’s ailing mother (absent from the last book due to her illness). I think the rural setting lent itself to a more satisfying mystery and investigation, since the characters’ actions weren’t constrained by some amorphous concept of etiquette. Rather, Jo Ann and her friends tramp around the countryside in trousers, shoot bears, ride horses, and apprehend kidnappers at gunpoint. Even mild-mannered Florence seems to find a spine here, instead of fading into the background like a barely considered afterthought. So, on this respect, Carlitos is great fun.
What the rural setting also gives the authors, however, is the freedom to let their prejudices come all the way out of the bag out of the bag. While perhaps some city-dwelling Mexicans might be worthwhile companions, Randolph makes it clear that the indigenous folk who live in the countryside are not. In fact, most of the plot mechanics in this book rely on the unrealistic ignorance of the locals and on the girls’ superior skills and abilities to “save” them. Carlitos wants us to believe that the local residents have never seen writing, have no cultural concept of a party or celebration, don’t drink cow’s milk (apparently poor people only drink goat milk), and—best of all—have never seen guns before in their lives.
Respectfully, 16th century Spaniards arrived in modern-day Mexico equipped with muskets aplenty, so I’m pretty sure the indigenous Mexicans in 1936 were, indeed, familiar with firearms.
The mystery here involves a blue-eyed boy whom Jo Ann finds living with these backwards people, and whose “finely cut” features prove that he isn’t actually Mexican. Jo Ann then launches an investigation into the titular Carlitos’ heritage, and in the end she rescues him from kidnappers and delivers him into the arms of his wealthy uncle. Meanwhile, the protagonists do nothing to address the squalid conditions that Carlitos’ foster family was living in—the native Mexicans, the authors assure us, are perfectly happy to live in poverty, and it wouldn’t do to raise them beyond their stations.
LOL, y’all.
Book 3: Crossed Trails in Mexico
The third and final book in this series is the best of the bunch. It’s disappointing that there weren’t any more installments after this, because it seems that the authors had finally gotten a grip on their characters and the story format. Also, this book is markedly less racist, for no discernible reason (the entire trilogy was published in the same year).
The book opens with the girls, plus young Carlitos from the previous book, roadtripping from Mississipi to Mexico. Along the way, they cross paths with some smugglers (not sure if the book ever clarifies WHAT, exactly, is being smuggled—drugs?). After arriving in Mexico, the girls continue to have run-ins with the villains; eventually, they help apprehend the smugglers and are richly rewarded.
Although a good story, Crossed Trails, like previous books, is more of an adventure than a true mystery. There’s little investigating to be done, and the main conflict here is whether Jo Ann can locate the detective/agent who is on the trail of the smugglers in order to give him information. The actual capture of the bad guys happens off-page.
Again, I enjoyed this book more than the two previous because of the surprising absence of racist sentiments. To be clear, Crossed Trails still has troubling aspects: the girls are staying at a silver mine run by a rich American businessman (colonialism!), and a minor subplot involves Jo Ann purchasing pottery made by an indigenous woman at wholesale prices in order to up-sell it to swanky American buyers (exploitation!). This latter act, however, is portrayed as “generous” because Jo Ann pays the woman more than other white buyers would—although certainly nowhere close to their US retail value. *insert shrug emoji*
(Also, I am not 100% sure if one of the characters was in brownface at one point in order to hide from the smugglers???)
Overall Thoughts
In conclusion, I think the Mexican Mysteries for Girls series was fairly good, considering what it is and when it was written. (And by whom it was written—one of the authors is responsible for a highly suspect series about a Girl Scouts troop in Mississippi that’s full of waxing nostalgic about the Antebellum South.) As I stated above, these books aren’t true mysteries so much as adventure stories for girls—even Jo Ann at her most determined never does any real sleuthing, much less of the same caliber as the much more popular Nancy Drew. I did appreciate the descriptions of Mexico, although they were certainly filtered through a white imperialist lens.
tl;dr: a not-so-harmless (but ultimately commonplace) trilogy about three teenaged girls gallivanting around Mexico; highlights include surprise mummies, a bear hunt, and illicit use of an ironing board.
