Secret of the Old Post Box

 Secret of the Old Post Box (1960) by Dorothy Sterling

It's the mid-1950s and Pat Harrison is excited that her family has moved from a cramped apartment in New York City to a country house in Haven. She's never climbed a tree or ridden a bike on a street without traffic or made friends with any boys (having attended an all-girls school). But all of these things are in her future...as well as solving an old mystery tied to the Revolutionary War.

Behind her new house is a deserted, Revolutionary-era house that looks like it ought to be haunted. It belongs to the Woodruff family who are about to lose it because they haven't been able to pay the back taxes or keep the house up after the father died in a plane crash during the Korean War. There have always been rumors that there was a treasure hidden in the Woodruff house, but no one's ever found it. When Pat and Barbara, one of her new friends, see a flashlight bobbing around in the house one night, they decide to get the boys (Nat, Johnny, and Sam Woodruff, and Jim) and investigate. It isn't long before the kids are on a treasure hunt hoping to find something valuable enough to save the Woodruff home from the tax auction block.

A very good juvenile mystery--one I know I would have loved had I discovered it when young. 

I love the fact that despite Nat's disgust at "Girls!" (he's at that age when boys either think girls are icky or begins to realize they are more interesting than ever), there isn't any "girls can't do that" going on here. And in fact Pat and Barbara each make huge contributions to the discovery of the treasure. It was fun to watch the kids work together to solve the mystery and it was also good to learn a bit of history (though fictionalized for the story--it was based on very real historical fact). ★★★★

First line: Even the rain couldn't spoil Pat's first day in Haven.

Last line:  That was because the note was in code, and only Pat and Barbara an Jim knew that the key to the code lay in the sixth grade's new green spelling book.

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Deaths = one plane crash

(picture cover at top left = the one that belongs with my copy [bottom right], but, sadly, my edition is missing the dust jacket)