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Beverly Gray


The Beverly Gray Mystery Stories, comprising 26 novels published between 1934 and 1955, were written by Clair Blank, pen name of Clarissa Mabel Blank Moyer. The series began as a series of school stories, and followed Beverly's progress through college, her various romances, and a career as a reporter before becoming strictly a mystery series.

Beverly is portrayed as an extraordinarily determined individual, with "a driving ambition in her heart that would not let her idle her life away." Across 26 books, she leads "such a life of adventure as would tax the resources of any soap opera heroine".

*This title was dropped from the series in 1938

Beverly Gray, Freshman is the first book in the Beverly Gray series. Published concurrently in 1934 with Sophomore, Junior, and Senior, it introduces Beverly as a freshman at Vernon College. College life and excitement fills up the majority of the work, but in between Beverly becomes lost in a snowstorm and is kidnapped.

Beverly makes her first appearance as she steps off the train carrying her to Vernon College from her hometown, Renville, accompanied by Anne White, her childhood friend. They attend Vernon to follow in their mothers' footsteps instead; Beverly's mother is described as "the patron saint of Vernon College".

The two girls settle into life at Vernon College, where Beverly's paternal surname affords her relative anonymity as she attempts to make good "on her own merits, not under another's colors." Three of the other four freshmen in Chadwick Hall—Lenora Whitehill, Rosalie Arnold, and Anne's roommate Lois Mason—prove friendly, while Beverly's roommate Shirley Parker is "aloof" and "patronizing." These girls variously join Beverly in the seven chapters preceding winter break, where they break curfew to view a movie (chapter 2); are caught (chapter 3); are "initiated" on Halloween when the sophomores and juniors put them through "various antics", then compel them though a haunted house (chapter 4); gain "revenge" by crashing the junior and sophomore "masquerade dance" and winning the costume contest (chapter 5); scrape through a geometry examination (Chapter 6); and beat the juniors in a basketball game (chapter 7).

Winter break sees Beverly and Anne reunite the "Lucky Circle," a collection of eight childhood friends, but Beverly is kidnapped while returning from a camping spot. As the group returns home, they become disoriented by a blizzard and take a wrong turn. The boys try to find the right way, with Beverly leading them. She sprains her ankle, falls down a hill, and awakes to the sight of a tall and disheveled-looking woman. The "hermit woman of Dunnsville," as she is generally known, or "Big Bertha," as she calls herself, has a homicidal bent, and one of the guards of the mental institution she was in. She has been on the lam for years. Bertha believes Beverly to be the daughter for whose death she was responsible, and starts treating her ankle. During the second night of her captivity she sneaks out while Bertha sleeps, but falls through snow and earth into a bear trap, climbing out to find herself face to face with a black bear. Bertha arrives with hunting knife in hand and fights the bear. Back at the cabin, Beverly's father and Jim show up and rescue her; Bertha escapes.


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