MYSTERY ON A MINUS TIDE

Last year's Mystery At Little Squaw River (p. 117, J-51) had a fish hatchery as its occupational background; this time it's the oyster beds in the far west, a precarious livelihood at best, on which the fifteen-year-old Janice Carver and her Aunt and Uncle depend. Then there's Dave, her uncle's right hand young man, who hopes to get an oyster bed of his own, and their paying guest, Miss Munsell, who has reached the end of her resources and who is searching the house, and the pictures on the wall (once Miss Munsell's grandfather's) for some undiscovered legacy. It comes just in time-- a chest buried in the mud, but in between there has been some interesting information on oyster farming and its minus tides, along with some plus values-- a sunny heroine and a practical realism.