The Trouble Hunters

Scan of the cover of my book.

After the intense and challenging reading of the Edith Stein book, I needed to refresh my mental palate with something light and breezy. And so I turned to another book that I picked up at the same used book sale: a young adult/juvenile fiction mystery adventure from 1956.  At 214 pages, it was an easy and pleasant read. I read a chapter or so each night before bed.

I bought The Trouble Hunters by Montgomery M. Atwater because of the title and the cover illustration (uncredited). Although the scan of the book cover above might look weird, it is an accurate representation of my book. I think there was a flaw in the production and the right side is somewhat truncated which results in the outer spine drifting into the left side of the cover.

A reviewer from Amazon.com succinctly summarized the story: 18-year-old Don Buckel is given a job as mule packer for the United States Forest Service by two of his friends in the USFS. Don sets off to the fire-fighting camp on his big Appaloosa horse "Red" accompanied with his dog "Rusty." When he gets to the fire-fighting camp he learns that he was recruited by his two friends to help them find a thief and traitor who is sitting on a cache of platinum, hidden somewhere in the wilderness. During Don's career as mule packer he must face the animosity of another packer, and the deadly acts of the thief who tries to kill him.

Despite the exciting cover, the book is nearly void of illustrations. In addition to two small sketches, a large map of the action spans two pages.

The book has a very tight binding so I could not lay it flat but this turned out ok.

Montgomery Meigs Atwater (1904-1976) was an author, forester, and avalanche expert. He was born in Baker, Oregon and educated at Harvard. He lived in Montana in the 1930s and wrote short stories and mysteries. In the 1950s he was in the U. S. Forest Service, and became an expert in snow avalanche forecasting and control. He was inducted into the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame in 1979 (posthumously).

In preparing this post, I discovered that there were three editions of this book published.

Alternate cover (different edition).

I also discovered that an abridged version had been published in four installment in Boy's Life magazine in 1955 (with different illustrations). A quick comparison between the book and the magazine version revealed that the magazine version has a slightly different ending (but the same crook is caught in pretty much the same way). I am looking forward to doing an in-depth comparison between the two versions. I wonder why the book did not use the illustrations from the magazine version.

The big dog broke through the crowd and knocked the startled man flat on his back.
Illustration by Carol Johnson (courtesy of Boys Life Magazine)

I enjoyed this book so much that I will be keeping my eyes open at future used book sales for a chance to pick up another Montgomery M. Atwater adventure.

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Links:

http://ricketwrite.blogspot.com/2017/02/edith-stein-book.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montgomery_Atwater
https://www.fs.fed.us/
http://www.skihall.com/index.php?_a=document&doc_id=11&id=19
http://boyslife.org/
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Written Saturday 11 March 2017