`Mollie Peer’ slower than first Moosepath League, but worth reading

MOLLIE PEER or the Underground Adventure of the Moosepath League, by Van Reid, Viking-Penguin, New York, 336 pages, hardcover, $24.95.

A decade after New York World reporter Nellie Bly feigned insanity to expose the deplorable conditions in the city’s insane asylums, Mollie Peer is fighting to cover more than Portland society news. Fritz Corbel, editor of the Eastern Argus prefers to leave the unseemly coverage of the police beat to the paper’s best writer, Peter Mall.

“A good lot of our readers would not find Peter Mall’s stories proper for a woman to be reporting,” the cigar-chomping editor tells Miss Peer. Yet, Mollie Peer is far too determined and independent to let what society deems “proper” deter her from tracking down a good story. Tall and attractive with intelligent eyes and a wry set to her large mouth, the 22-year-old is “not the picture of demure femininity but of glowing suffrage.”

It is Mollie Peer’s “nose for news” that sets the Moosepath League on its second adventure during October of 1896 in “Mollie Peer or the Underground Adventure of the Moosepath League” by Van Reid. Reid’s first novel, “Cordelia Underwood or the Marvelous Beginnings of the Moosepath League” introduced Tobias Walton, Sundry Moss, Christopher Eagleton, Matthew Ephram and Joseph Thump (of the Exeter Thumps) as the founding members of the league and chronicled their first adventure. All of these gentlemen hurtle headfirst into a new escapade with Miss Peer in Reid’s latest book in the series.

A former bookseller, Reid lives and writes in Edgecomb. The author can trace his family roots in Maine to the 18th century and admits to being “enamored of 19th and 18th century literature” and enjoying “writing in an old-fashioned syntax.” “Cordelia Underwood” was favorably reviewed by the New York Times last summer, then listed as one of the best books of 1998 in its year-end edition. The recently released paperback made the publication’s New and Notable list.

The fate of Bird, the little boy who made a minor appearance in “Cordelia Underwood,” is at stake in the new novel. Mollie Peer meets Bird on an evening walk near Portland’s waterfront. Reid describes him as “a waif, a ragamuffin, four or five years old, his clothes barely holding together. …” She has barely begun a conversation with him, when a Mr. Pembleton, a scarecrow of a man as ragged and dirty as the boy, snatches Bird from the street.

Concerned for the child’s safety, Miss Peer follows the pair and is fortuitously rescued from the pirate’s cruel grasp by the league’s Tobias Walton. Walton just happened upon Miss Peer in her moment of trouble when the wind blew his hat off and he chased after it. Walton’s and the league’s adventure with Miss Underwood was touched off in a similar manner in the previous book.

Miss Peer, with able assistance from the redheaded baseball player Wyckford Cormac O’Hearn and the always sincere but often inept aid of the Moosepath League, rescues Bird from a band of smugglers. The boy is snatched from their safety, however, when out-of-work actor Amos Guernsey, who has a curious connection to Miss Peer, beguiles Eagleton, Ephram and Thump. The adventure ends in a rip-snorting standoff at Fort Edgecomb, rumored to have been a hide-away for turn-of the-century pirates.

“Mollie Peer” is a bit darker than its predecessor, after all the life of a child hangs in the balance rather than a chest full of treasure.

There also are fewer digressions from the main adventure, a standard plot device in Dickensian fiction. Perhaps, that is why the pace of “Mollie Peer” seems to lag in comparison.

The way the action starts, then stops, is agonizing for readers who quickly become as devoted to Bird’s rescue from a life of crime as is Miss Peer. While the tangents in “Cordelia Underwood,” such as Mr. Walton’s encounter with an escaped circus bear, were almost always amusing and delightful, those in “Mollie Peer” are, for the most part, terribly tedious.

The exception is when Reid interrupts the hunt for the little boy to let Wyckford O’Hearn join Louis Sockalexis’ team in a game of baseball.

Reid admitted that while he likes baseball a lot and “appreciates the aesthetics of the game,” he is not “the rabid statistical, historical sort.” His brother is, however, and the author confessed he sought advice from his sibling on how to describe certain plays. While Reid’s prose is often lyrical, it practically sings when he writes about the early years of the national pastime, sometimes borrowing phrases from sports writers of the day.

“The pitcher took a couple of hen scratches at the mound when he returned. He took a stance. Some fifty nonregulation feet of clarified air separated them, and the buttery light captured the glint in Wyck’s eye and the set of the pitcher’s chin like a magnifying glass. Wyck thought the crowd had quieted; he thought he could hear the movement of the pitcher on the mound. …

“The ball came in as fast as any pitch Wyckford had ever seen — an express, the Flying Cloud, the fastest horse, the electrical charge racing along the telegraph wire, a round white bullet at a level to the ground and a distance from Wyckford that could only have been managed by a month of his mother’s prayers. …”

Despite the slower pace, the Moosepath League’s latest adventure is a worthwhile read. Reid’s plot and style are a delightful departure from the dark corners of human existence illuminated in the majority of fiction titles that grace the current best sellers list. While Bird’s future seems assured at the end of “Mollie Peer,” his true identity will not be known until December 1896 when the Moosepath League embarks on a Christmas caper.

This century’s readers will have to wait until the next to read “Daniel Plainwater or the Holiday Haunting of the Moosepath League,” the final book in the trilogy that chronicles the league’s early adventures.