THE SECRETS OF HIDDEN CREEK

The plural secrets indicate that there is not just one buried treasure here but two. One is a store of hidden Confederate gold, and the three Dodd children found the clues to its location in an aged diary. And that was discovered in a secret passageway of Winwood, the dilapidated, haunted (?), cursed, never completed castle near their grandparents' summer cabin in Georgia. The other treasure was a collection of rare coins thought to have been stolen by the dead father of their friend Arie Chance and never retrieved. Double the mystery doesn't double the credibility of either of these formula adventures or their attendant surprises. Becky, the oldest of the Dodd trio and the narrator of their story, tells it all very convincingly and readers may even be willing to forget that they've been through this territory so often before. Becky, Jenny and Chuck Dodd approach the intrigue in precisely the way you'd expect three children on their summer holidays to react; Aric Chance, whose family is quite poor and who has his father's criminal reputation hanging over him, is very well drawn, and even the little old lady who lives at Winwood is reasonably believable. Still, all that glitters is not gold in this story which girls will enjoy polishing off.