The Secret of the Silver Mines

A stolen fortune in silver. The wild frontier days in Northern Ontario. A bored young hockey player. Just the right ingredients for a middle grade adventure.

Dylan Maples is a grade eight kid who moves from Toronto to Cobalt, a town hundreds of miles north. His dad is a lawyer who normally takes on worthy causes, but he has been offered a big payday to help an unpopular millionaire pursue some silver which he claims was stolen from his family’s company many decades in the past. Dylan is understandably distraught. He’s a fun-living young hockey player with a lot of friends. But he’s also a good sport, and so he doesn’t grumble much as the family drives north to the Canadian Shield and a depressed mining town. At first, Dylan is shocked by his cold new surroundings, but he soon appreciates the crisp snow and the silence and makes friends with Wynona Dixon. It turns out that she is the great-granddaughter of Theobald T. Larocque, the man accused of stealing the silver and a scary recluse whom Wynona has never met. The two hatch a plan to meet the old man and find out what really happened before the evil businessman can rip the town off for a second time. They end up riding their bikes across town to a dangerous abandoned silver mine to attempt a daring recovery.

The best elements of the novel are found in the friendship between Dylan and Wyn. Their relationship and interaction propel most of the story, and they make an excellent team. The parents think Dylan has a crush on Wyn, and the kids are happy to encourage that belief so that they can work on solving the mystery of the missing silver. Dylan is drawn to Wyn right away as he needs a friend and she doesn’t laugh at his giant coat and winter gear when she meets him. The best part is that she turns out to be the town’s biggest hockey whiz. Wyn is the one who talks Dylan into tackling the mystery, and the two succeed because the adults do not have the creativity or the feeling of miscarriage of justice to discover the truth. And so they sneak into her great-grandfather’s house (in a scene both funny and scary) and meet the old man who has been a recluse for decades. The two have real adventures and support each other. The active nature of their investigation is very strong for the most part in the periods when they do not wait for the mystery to come to them.

Peacock faces a few difficult challenges in how to pace, structure and choose appropriate storytelling styles for this novel. Theo Larocque’s stories of his emigration to Canada in the early 1900s and his days as a young miner in Cobalt are narrated by Dylan, often in an “as-told-to” style that can be a bit dry. Much of the action is related in a way that is removed from the present day story where Dylan and Wyn are passive listeners for several long sections of the book. It is difficult to find ways to explain the backstory, but perhaps there were some more creative ways to tackle this challenge. Wyn and Dylan might have found old newspaper articles or interviewed other old-timers around town, slowly piecing together some facts before they found Theo who then explained and narrated some final parts of the story. Or some of these stories might have been more dramatized or told in a way in which the listening pair were more involved. The long sections of narration don’t integrate into the rest of the book as well as they could have and are a bit of a reading hurdle. This leads to some clumsy exposition and the need for Theo to get tired of telling the story, often saying “that’s enough for today”, so that the dramatic tension is extended and the reader doesn’t get given all the answers all at once. Again, other storytelling methods might have kept ramping up the action without interruption. The denouement of the story has some exciting action but also includes a note which explains everything and two interventions from Dylan’s parents. A little more deciphering and sleuthing done directly by the kids would have been welcome, even though they do take charge more than anyone else.

Despite that, history does come alive in The Secret of the Silver Mines. Theo tells the kids the history of Cobalt’s wild days, including fun and evocative tales of old time hockey matches, boom town festivity and high living. Dylan even dreams about being back in the past and experiencing some of the stories he’s been told about. And he comes to an insightful understanding of history: “the past is really only the present, long ago, and also that it affects things that happen now.” He has the maturity to see that he will, one day, be part of history, and that recognition makes it more interesting and alive for him.

The book provides an interesting critique of wealth and the power, the kind of wealth and power that allows certain individuals and companies to disregard ethics and the law. Successful businessmen are portrayed as generally shady, and Dylan’s family is reluctant to get involved in the case from the very beginning. They are not comfortable with the wealthy and powerful, even when it is useful for their finances, and, in the end, standing up for the little guy is shown to be the right thing to do. The book provides the potential for lively discussion of wealth and capitalism and whether it is possible for business dealings to be fair and just. There was room in the story to broach other issues, such as the environmental impact of mining, the boom and bust nature of resource economies and how small communities deal with change.

The Secret of the Silver Mines is a fairly easy read despite its length, and it is not at all obvious that this is a sequel, and so it can certainly be read easily as a stand-alone book. Nor is it obvious that The Secret of the Silver Mines and three other Dylan Maples mysteries, were first published almost twenty years ago. The book doesn’t seem dated, but I did not detect a compelling impetus for republication. The prose style is casual, and the book is a fun read. It tries hard to be hip and relevant to teen boys, with Dylan adopting a playful, irreverent voice, while remaining a good kid. Dylan is a likable and believable character, but occasionally he stops sounding like a kid. What kid says, “Before long, while crude homes sprouted on the rocks of cobalt at breathtaking speed (many without proper sanitation), elegant mansions began to rise at a slower pace along the green shores of Haileybury.” (pg 35) The attempts to cram a lot of history into the book make for a few awkward and clumsy sections like the one above. But for the most part, the book also contains a clearly told adventure tale along with well-crafted banter and dialogue.