Saturdays in the Cemetery with Stine

by Nelson

Reader Beware; You’re in for a Scare!

Join us as DoubtFire ventures into the terrifying world of zombies, werewolves, egg monsters, and annoying siblings that is GOOSEBUMPS. 

Goosebumps #19 – Deep Trouble

Deep Trouble reminds me a lot of The Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb. The cover art suggests a story that the book doesn’t really deliver on. In the case of Mummy’s Tomb, I wasn’t too bothered. If the mummy in question isn’t The Yeti, then I’m not going to get depressed if I miss out. But when I’m going in expecting a killer shark story in Goosebumps form, and I don’t get one? Well, I’m sorry, but color me disappointed, R.L. Stine. I didn’t like it then, and, while it managed to give me a few laughs, I can’t say that I like it all too much now. 

Let’s just get this out of the way right up front. An angry hammerhead shows up early in the book, but he’s just a means of kicking off the main story. Once he’s gone; he’s gone, and this book desperately misses him. Anyway, Billy Deep is our narrator this time out. He and his younger sister, Sheena, are hanging out on the ocean aboard the Cassandra – their Uncle George’s ship. George Deep is a super important marine biologist with a PhD who insists on being called Dr. D cause he’s an adult who’s cool like that. Dr. D is only comfortable when he’s at sea. When he visited Billy’s family for Christmas, he spent “a good part of Christmas day” sitting in the family’s bathtub playing with toy boats. In other words, this guy is probably the last person you’d want to send your kids to spend the summer with, but, hey, Goosebumps parents are the best. So Billy and Sheena are all set to spend a summer full of swimming and eating the terrible food that Alexander, Dr. D’s assistant, makes for them. 

Initially, the story focuses on the sea monster that grabs Billy when he’s out snorkeling one morning. In a shocking twist for this series, no one believes his story, and he’s obsessed with proving it. But, then things take a turn when a team of scientists show up and inform Dr. D that they’d like to pay him one million dollars to go out and catch a mermaid, and that’s when it becomes clear what this book really is. It’s not the Goosebumps version of Jaws. It’s not even Stine’s take on The Beast. It’s a story all about saving a mermaid from scientists and kidnappers. Billy discovers the mythical she-fish when she saves him from the hammerhead attack on the book cover. Soon after, she’s in a tank aboard Dr. D’s ship eating soggy cookies and waiting for the scientists to show up and ship her off. Billy has grown really attached to the mermaid and wants to free her, but, before he gets a chance to do much of anything, Alexander turns evil. He and his merry band of thieves highjack the boat and load the mermaid onto their boat. Then, they stuff Dr. D and the kids into an aquarium and clamp the lid shut. Finally, they toss the aquarium into the ocean and leave the family, kids and all, to drown. 

Fortunately, a whole band of mermaids show up to save the day. Then, Dr. D takes two pre-teens with him to rescue the stolen mermaid from a gang of homicidal thieves. On a dinghy. In an unexpected twist, the rescue mission goes terribly. The bad guys show up and, without any fuss whatsoever, set the dinghy on fire. As luck would have it, Dr. D soaked the boat in turpentine that morning, so we’ve got another one of those Ghost Next Door insta-fires on our hands. The totally ineffective heroes are facing certain death, so the mermaid cavalry shows up and fixes everything. Afterwards, Dr. D decides to pay the aquatic folks back by telling the scientists that mermaids just plain don’t exist. The next day, Billy sets out on another morning swim, and the sea monster that the story pretended to be about for a few chapters pops out of the water. The End!

All in all, it’s not fair for me to say that this book is any different from any other Goosebumps book. We get all of the series trademarks – the first-person narrator, the sibling duo, the incredibly irresponsible adults….everything you’ve grown to expect and crave from these stories. But it’s just not nice to tease me with a shark story, ask me to settle for a sea monster story, and then hit me square in the face with a mermaid story that takes a few cues from Free Willy. Bait and switch, Mr. Stine. Bait and switch. 

“Give us back the mermaid!” Dr. D. demanded.

“Finders, keepers,” the kidnapper muttered. “You’ve made a long trip for nothing. And now look—your boat is on fire.”

He lowered the torch to the dinghy and set it aflame.