BILL BERGSON AND THE WHITE ROSE RESCUE

These are the further adventures of 15-year-old Bill Bergson, now leading his Knights of the White Roses to rescue a young professor, his small son, and some strategic military papers from the clutches of a gang of international spies. In the course of the chase the children find themselves on a small island where the thugs have cached their prisoners. It is the usual thriller, in which the young adventurers escape from one hair-raising situation to another—a plot similar to the author's earlier Bill Bergson, Master Detective, but the style has unfortunately deteriorated: the suspense is forced; the characters, both children and adults, are never more than one-dimensional; the dialogue is stiff and marked by the heavy use of the sort of insulting exchange that often passes for humor at the middle point of this age level. Good triumphs and evil loses in the end, but that was telegraphed from the beginning.