MYSTERY AT WHITE MOCCASINS

It seems very difficult to produce a satisfactory mystery for the early teens. L.A. Wadsworth wrote two good ones for slightly older junior readers in The Disappearance of Dick Shane and The Masquerade Mystery. I don't think -- as a mystery -- this new one measures up to the same standard. On the whole it has too many threads to tie together neatly:- the problem of adjustment of a boy of High School age to the fact of his father marrying again, and of the sudden acquisition of a spoiled small brother; the problem of finding new channels for activity, in the father, who is ill and has had to abandon his career as an engineer, in the new friend next door, who has a real talent for architecture but who changes the focus of his interest constantly and throughout, the mystery of the house they have rented, which is haunted by a ""ghost"" with incendiary proclivities. Well enough -- but not top drawer.