Yes, even Annette Funicello had her own line of mysteries. The sweetly adorable television star appeared in five different mystery books between 1960 and 1965, playing her part in a forgotten era in American book publishing

Annette's march to the world of mysteries began with "The Mickey Mouse Club." Part of the show featured a 19-episode serial called "Annette" - in which the actress played a poor teenaged country girl who moves to the city. The plot concerned Annette's attempts to fit in with the sophisticated high school crowd, but there's also the mystery of a missing necklace. It was based on a novel named "Margaret" - but the title character was changed to "Annette" to cash in on the popularity of the mouseketeer.

The original novel had an interesting history. It was written by Janette Sebring Lowrey, who just a few years earlier wrote "The Poky Little Puppy." That book went on to become the best-selling children's book ever - selling over 15 million copies - so Walt Disney took an interest in her thoughtful story about the country girl. Ironically, Lowrey's book became a TV show, which then became - a series of books. All the characters in the Annette mysteries ultimately retained their names from the Disney television series!

The new Annette books were published by Wisconsin-based Whitman Publishing, who specialized in mystery books using television and movie stars. (Other star/mystery titles had featured Ginger Rogers, Judy Garland, and Shirley Temple.) Annette still lived with her aunt Lila and uncle Archie in their stories, but she would usually travel to visit other high school friends in an exotic location like Arizona, the California mountains, or a glamorous estate. Each book capitalized on the star's popularity by featuring a colorful picture of her face on the front cover - along with eight silhouettes of Annette on the inside covers. Each silhouette shows the star standing in a different pose - dancing, carrying a basket, dragging a horse's bridle, sniffing a rose...

The mysteries are tacked on to stories about Annette and her friends. In one a boy's father has been wrongly sent to prison, and in another her friend's parents will lose their inn unless they can discover hidden money. Annette is sympathetic (and polite), and eventually she and her friends stumble into a key discovery that invariably set things right. But the stories always begin with a leisurely and enthusiastic introduction of the characters and their settings. (Annette drives a white roadster nicknamed "The Monster," and is very excited about her upcoming vacation...) Ultimately the mystery plots are all wrapped up very suddenly at the end of each book, as though the writer or publisher wanted to limit the story to a certain number of pages.

The five titles in Annette's series were:

Sierra Summer (1960)
Desert Inn Mystery (1961)
Mystery of Moonstone Bay (1962)
Mystery at Smuggler's Cove (1963)
Mystery of Medicine Wheel (1964)

In 2003 Disney Press republished a box set of four mysteries - all but "Mystery of Medicine Wheel."

But regardless of the quality of the mysteries or the stories, the books themselves represent a fun collector's item for fans of Annette, capturing a moment when she'd achieved full icon status. (The eight silhouettes inside the book's cover surround two enormous silhouette's of Annette's face which fill the whole page...) Jimmie Dodd captured the mania for memorabilia about the star in one song, suggesting that you'd even get a fan-ish response if you asked the birds and the bees to identify their favorite brunette. "You know each one confesses..."

"Annette, Annette, Annette."

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