This is a decent little story, and if a little bit bland is at least not as off-putting as some of the other books in this series. It helps immensely that the solution to the mystery, obvious as it is, does not involve Grandfather Alden hoovering up more resources in his attempts to control every business in the land. Instead, the four grandkids are using the summer to get jobs of their own, and I much prefer stories like this, where they're doing for themselves, rather than being given fancy vacations every other week - the very first Boxcar story was all about self-reliance and making do and I miss that. That being said, it's becoming clearer and clearer that the only Boxcar child Warner has any real interest is Benny, which is a bit of a shame as he's the one I like least. The girls - including my favourite, Violet - barely get a look-in, despite the fact that they were the most proactive, both getting more interesting jobs and getting them first, before the boys even thought of job-hunting.

As I (very vaguely) understand it, very soon the Warner books stop and the rest of the series is written by other authors? I'd be interested to see if that leads to a more equitable division of protagonists...