The story moves along well and easily holds the reader’s interest. This middle grade mystery has a touch of the gothic woven into the plot. With the help of Aggie and her new friend Kyle Johnson, will Mallory be able to solve the mystery? And is the ghost of Violet Marlatt trying to tell her something? There also seems to be some sort of collusion to sell the old house going on among a stranger from New York named Lionel Simpkins who drives a maroon car and almost runs Mallory down, the old Marlatt caretaker Albert Hampton, real estate agent Artemis Wurly, and even the assistant bank manager Roger Dunslop who just happens to be Mrs. Then she starts having sudden nightmares in which a voice calls for her help. Mallory sees a light in the top window of the empty manor. Some think that the mansion is haunted.Īll Mallory really wants to do is to go back to Philadelphia, but strange things start happening in Cedar Creek. The Gilmartins rent a cottage which is part of a deserted estate, the Lawrence Marlatt Manor, from which the young Marlatt daughter, Violet, had disappeared some fifty years before following a party. It is Lorna’s old hometown, and Mallory likes being near her grandmother Aggie but misses all her old friends in Philadelphia. How would you react if you had evidence that a dead person was trying to tell you something? Thirteen-year-old Mallory Gilmartin has had to move with her mom Lorna and older brother Ron from their home in Philadelphia, PA, to the small community of Cedar Creek, VA, after her father leaves the family and her mother finds a job there.
The author has “modern and gothic world collide” in this very readable series-“all the right stuff for a New Age Nancy Drew”. Of course, a ghost named a Violet will only draw more interest.
Having just moved to Cedar Creek, her mom’s home town, from Philadelphia, Mallory is not thrilled with this ‘small town’ stuff until she begins to meet some new friends while investigating the Marlatt Mansion. The more Mallory learns the less sense the ‘deal’ makes. As Mallory is checking out the Marlatt Mansion, she uncovers a real estate deal connected to the mansion and its heir that appears to being ‘pushed through’ quickly which even affects her grandmother, Aggie. Haunted mansion on Dark Hollow Hill! Anne Loader McGee’s The Mystery At Marlatt Manor (#1) begins a series whose protagonist is 13 year old Mallory Gilmartin, a teenage sleuth in Cedar Creek, who believes she hears a voice calling her name in her dreams or maybe the term nightmares is a better fit which draw her to an abandoned ‘haunted’ mansion where 50 years ago, the young daughter of the Marlatt family disappeared.
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