The Sign of the Twisted Candles

It's Drews-day and time to visit The Sign of the Twisted Candles!

OT Nancy on the left looks very 40s to me with the hairdo (similar to her depiction on The Secret of Red Gate Farm) and that dark eyebrow.  This cover depicts a scene in the book when Nancy watches the bad guy bury something out by the shed but this is not my favorite cover.

The RT on the right is my childhood book and it was one of my favorites as a kid, so for me this cover definitely wins over the OT version.  I love the giant twisted candle and Asa Sidney looking vaguely sinister in the background.  Rudy Nappi did keep the greens from Nancy's OT outfit too.

Case file:
Nancy, Bess, and George are are tooling around in the roadster when a giant storm forces them to take shelter at an inn called  The Sign of the Twisted Candles.  Once inside, they're freshening up when they hear a man yell at Sadie Wipple, a waitress at the inn, berating her for wanting to take a tray of food up to the tower room for Mr. Asa Sidney's 100th birthday.  Nancy quickly intervenes, offering to pay for the food herself, and soon after meeting Mr. Sidney she's arranged an impromptu birthday party along with Bess, George, and Sadie.  Mr. Sidney tells them his rather sad life story:  he was a chandler and an inventor, and his daughter was killed in an accident in his laboratory so his wife and two sons left him.  His wife's family and Asa's extended family have been feuding ever since.

Nancy, Bess, and George are about to leave when the cousins' great-uncle Peter shows up; he's the nephew of Asa's dead wife (and hence part of the feud), and the cousins had been unaware of their connection to Asa.  Nancy goes home and talks to Carson and Hannah, where Hannah is able to fill in some of the blanks on the family feud situation but basically Peter Boonton and Jacob Sidney want all of Asa's money once he kicks the bucket.  Classy.

Late that night, Sadie calls the Drews and asks Mr. Drew to come the next morning to draw up a new will for Asa.  Nancy goes with Carson the next morning so she can spend more time with Sadie, and finds out that the Semitts, her foster parents who run the inn and tearoom, are abusive (it was Mr. Semitt yelling at Sadie at the beginning of the book, and Mrs. Semitt beats Sadie with a hairbrush).  She also sees Frank Semitt bury a chest near the storage shed, and she's sure that chest was one she had seen in Asa's room the day before.  Carson comes out and asks Nancy to go to a nearby town to fetch Mr. Raymond Hill to witness the will; Nancy first runs over to the shed and grabs the chest and then dashes off in her roadster with Frank Semitt in hot pursuit.  She's able to evade him, put the rescued chest in a vault at the bank, and collect Mr. Hill and take him back to the inn.

While Carson and Mr. Hill are finishing the will in the tower room, Nancy and Sadie work together to keep Peter Boonton and Jacob Sidney downstairs until everything is signed.  The two men burst into the tower room just as Mr. Hill has finished signing the document as witness; Peter and Jacob argue with Asa until he throws them out.  They open the door to discover Frank Semitt dropping eaves right outside the door.  Once Peter and Jacob are gone, Carson questions Frank about the inn and its finances; Nancy sees Frank pass his wife Emma an envelope on the sly.  She discovers that it was addressed to Asa and held stock dividends which the Semitts were planning to keep for themselves.

Back in River Heights, Nancy goes over to Bess's house only to have Bess give her the cold shoulder:  Bess and George have been dragged into the feud and they think the Drews are on the Sidneys' side, which hurts Nancy's feelings.  The next morning, Sadie calls again and tells them to come over immediately, and they find that Asa had died during the night.  Carson immediately takes over as executor of the will, locking the tower room and instructing the Semitts not to let anyone (namely Peter and Jacob) in there.  Two days later the will is read, and everyone is astounded and angry to find that Asa has left the vast majority of his fortune to the orphan Sadie Wipple.  Both the Sidneys and the Boontons vow to fight the will in court, while the Semitts are suddenly saccharine sweet to Sadie since she now has all the money.

After the reading of the will, Nancy stays at the inn to keep Sadie company, and the girls see Frank Semitt taking large boxes to an old tenant farmer house on the property (things he's stolen from the inn).  They go inside the house to see what was in the boxes, and hide when they hear someone coming--it's Mr. Hill, who had also seen Frank acting suspiciously.  Frank turns back up and a brawl ensues; Frank escapes, and Mr. Hill volunteers to keep watch at the house while the girls keep watch at the inn.  The Semitts disappear from the inn, and Mr. Hill and the girls scare them away from the cottage where they were trying to get more stolen property.

The next day, Carson brings two security guards to watch the inn and the house while Sadie and Nancy go back to River Heights.  Nancy takes Sadie shopping since she owns almost nothing; they run into Bess and George at a department store and the cousins make up with Nancy, helping her outfit Sadie with an entirely new wardrobe.  Sadie tells Nancy what she knows about how she came to be in the orphanage, and Nancy promises to try to trace Sadie's biological parents.  Ned drops by for a visit; he's working at an inn 40 miles away and wouldn't you know, the Semitts were just hired on there.  So at least the girls know that the Semitts are gone (or think they are).

Nancy and Sadie go back to the inn and Nancy snoops around the tower room, quickly discovering that the twisted candles mark hiding places for valuable items.  She finds a secret compartment in Asa's desk but she leaves the papers there for Carson to examine later.  Nancy and Sadie hear a loud bang and then we switch perspectives.  Meanwhile, Carson is at work when Mr. Cochran (the lawyer for the Boontons and Sidneys) arrives to discuss the case.  Jacob and Peter barge in because Peter followed Jacob who followed Mr. Cochran and they cause such an uproar that Mr. Cochran quits the case.  Just then, Carson gets a phone call from Hannah that Nancy and Sadie are missing.  We switch perspectives again and the girls see a man on the roof of the porch pinned underneath a ladder:  it's Frank Semitt, who appears to be semiconscious.  Nancy isn't buying his act at all but Frank overpowers the girls, drugging Nancy and leaving her in the inn.

Nancy comes to and finds the guard has been drugged as well, and Frank, Sadie, and Nancy's car are all missing.  Carson and Mr. Hill arrive, thoroughly relieved to find Nancy, but of course they immediately search for Sadie, going to the inn Ned had said they were now working at, then to their boarding house, but no dice.  Nancy suggests they return to The Sign of the Twisted Candles, where they find Jacob and Peter but once again no watchman.  Nancy kinda chews Jacob and Peter out about the way they've been acting and they deserve it.  The all start looking around for signs of Sadie and the Semitts.  Nancy notices a faint light in the tower and uses the ladder Frank had earlier to climb up and try to peek in the window.  Sure enough, Frank and Emma are inside, threatening Sadie.

Nancy tries to get Sadie's attention and she screams, so Frank tries to push Nancy out the window and off the ladder.  The four men below hear Sadie's scream and rush inside and up the stairs; Carson attacks Frank while Mr. Hill grabs Nancy with Jacob's help and Peter keeps Emma from escaping (about time Jacob and Peter started being helpful).  They call the police and let the watchman out from the closet where the Semitts had locked him.  Nancy shows Carson and Mr. Hill the papers she found in the desk and they're written in invisible ink, but naturally Nancy figures out how to make the words appear.  It's revealed that Sadie is the daughter of Helen Sidney and John Boonton, both of whom had been disowned by their families for daring to ignore the silly feud and are now deceased.  Asa kept her identity a secret because he wanted to keep Sadie close to him; Mr. Hill was able to get information from the orphanage to confirm.

As we wrap up the book, Nancy and Sadie come back to the inn with Bess and George to find all the hiding places.  Sadie plans to buy the inn and the Sidney-Boonton family can use it for a giant Thanksgiving reunion.

Notes:  
This book was initially published in 1933, so if we think that it's the same year in the story, that means that Asa Sidney was born in 1833.  When Nancy and the girls are first talking to Mr. Sidney on his birthday, they talk about how he was alive when slavery was still a thing and how his career revolved around making candles and inventions to do with candles, and that whole discussion was pretty fascinating from a 2025 standpoint.

At a couple of points in the book, Frank is almost flirty with Nancy and it is very, very creepy.  The squick factor is HIGH even if he hadn't turned out to be the bad guy.  Also there's no question that he's the bad guy because he brings Sadie and Nancy jellied chicken broth after Asa dies and Sadie's in shock.  As if that would make anyone feel better, ewwwwwww.

When Carson and Mr. Hill are witnessing the will, Jacob and Peter show up and the ensuing farcical conversation is my very favorite part of the book.  The two men are mad at each other and say they're not on speaking terms, so Nancy offers to get them some paper and a pen so they can write messages instead, and she draws them into a conversation on the correct feminine form of the word chauffeur.  I find the whole thing hysterically funny.

Carson is described at the beginning as "well-to-do, although by no means wealthy" and I beg to differ with the author on that score, because Nancy's adventures ain't cheap.  Carson is in this one quite a bit more than previous adventures, and I think he needs to fire the security firm since those "guards" are never where they're supposed to be and the Semitts get the drop on them several times.  Also, Carson was suspicious of the Semitts from the jump, so why did he put them in charge of making sure no one entered the tower room until after the will was read?  Why not discharge them and hire guards??  You can do better, Carson.

I quite like Mr. Hill the feisty banker, and I wish he was in more books.  Ned's role in this seems very shoehorned in just to get a mention of him.

Nancy's Knockout Tally, OT Edition:
Blunt force trauma:  2
Near suffocation:  1
Drugged:  1

Nancy's Skills:
At the beginning of the book, Nancy's engine gets waterlogged, but she's able to fix it herself.

Nancy Drew, Fashion Model:
When Nancy goes to see Bess and gets snubbed, she's wearing "a simple and inexpensive dress of white silk" with a blue flowered scarf, white stockings and kid slippers.  Umm, I don't think I've ever owned a silk dress, inexpensive or otherwise.

Cooking with Hannah:
Hannah gives Nancy some rice chicken broth and that's the only specific mention I can find of things Hannah made in this book.  Sadie made a big tray of sandwiches after the will was finished, including crabapple jelly with chopped dates and walnuts on brown bread and I want to try that.

Next up, the RT version.

Case file:  
The RT follows the OT pretty closely, but right at the beginning we have Nancy, Bess, and George going to the inn at the behest of Bess and George's parents, who heard a rumor that Asa was practically being held a prisoner in his own home.  Hannah says later she bets that the parents didn't expect the girls to uncover the family feud, but they invite the world's most famous amateur detective to investigate?

Some names are changed; Sadie turns into Carol Wipple (though the orphanage had originally named her Sadie, Asa asked her name to be changed to Carol after his deceased daughter), and her foster parents are Frank and Emma Jemitt.  The story of Asa's life is the same, though now the Boontons are angry that he neglected his family and it's not stated how the little girl died.  The Sidneys are angry that Asa's wife left him with their sons; both boys died without having children so the family feud is between the wife's relatives and Asa's brother's descendants.

Asa tells Nancy that he and his wife had camouflaged cupboards built into the mansion (it's described sometimes as a mansion and sometimes as an inn) to hide their valuables, but he's forgotten where most of them are.  He asks Nancy, Bess, George, and Carol to look for them without letting the Jemitts know what they're doing, and he says they're all marked with the sign of the twisted candles.  Carol finds a diamond bracelet, and Nancy finds a music box.  After Asa's death, Hannah comes to stay at the inn along with Nancy so that she, Nancy, and Carol can keep watch on the Jemitts.

Ned shows up to take Nancy on a date, and she takes him back to the inn to hunt for more hidden treasures, where they find the phone line cut.  She sends Ned off to the phone company and she finds a bound and gagged Jacob Sidney in one of the bedrooms; he thinks Ned is a plainclothes detective when he comes back to the inn.  Ned finds a stash of six jewel-encrusted swords and then we have the whole ruse of the man on the roof with the ladder, only this time it's a henchman and not Frank.  Nancy sends Ned off to call an ambulance, and then the henchman drugs Nancy and hides her under a bed so when Ned comes back he thinks she's been kidnapped.  Once Nancy comes to, she and Ned start to go back to River Heights but she sees the man who knocked her out and they manage to get him arrested.

Nancy goes back to snoop in the tower room while Carson has an appraiser at the inn, and that's when she finds the papers in the hidden desk compartment.  This time Carol was kidnapped from the Drew home, and Nancy visits the henchman in jail to figure out where the Jemitts might have taken her.  Nancy and Carson investigate a cottage on the river, where they find some stolen items from Asa's house, along with a copper-colored snake left in one of the boxes to attack anyone who opened it.  Then Nancy, Carson, and Mr. Hill go back to the inn and find Carol much like they did in the OT, but this time Mr. Hill grabs Frank while Carson gets Nancy in through the window.

Nancy has Carson call all of the beneficiaries of the will together and reads a letter from Asa saying that Carol is the daughter of the only two people who had ignored the feud.  It's decided that Carol will go to boarding school and spend time with the Marvins and the Faynes on breaks since she's cousins with Bess and George; all of a sudden everyone on both sides of the feud are very nice to her.  I would still be suspicious of them if I were Carol, they only started being nice when they found out she was related to them.

Notes:
The RT was one of my favorite Nancy Drews when I was a child, I love the cover and I think what interested me was how Nancy had to look for all the hiding places marked by the twisted candles.  For the OT, the only hiding places are in Asa's tower room, but we do have that awesome farcical conversation with Jacob and Peter, which might be my favorite bit of any Nancy Drew book to date, I love it.

I'm not sure I buy the part where Bess and George suddenly give Nancy the cold shoulder over the family feud business, because even as a teen I don't think I would have let that stop me being friends with whoever I wanted to, but I'll let it slide.  I do like that Hannah has a bigger role in the RT version, and we also get brief mentions of Chief McGinnis and Miss Hanson, Carson's secretary.

This is the second book in a row where we know who the bad guy is pretty much from the jump, but I think this one is far more successful than Nancy's Mysterious Letter.

Nancy's Knockout Tally, RT Edition:
Blunt force trauma:  3
Drugged:  2

Nancy Drew, Fashion Model:
Unusually, no specific outfits are mentioned in this one.

Cooking with Hannah:
Hannah serves cocoa and homemade cookies to Nancy (coffee for herself and Carson) when she spills the tea on the Sidney-Boonton feud.  Later she makes waffles for breakfast but both Nancy and Carson are too distracted by the case to do them justice and Hannah, I'm telling you, I will always appreciate your cooking if you come live with me.  Hannah also makes some breakfasts and dinners without specifics being listed.  Later she makes roast beef for dinner and Carol makes Butterfly Pie for dessert (lemon chiffon pie with decorations that look like butterflies, sounds great).

Rating:
Five stars for both versions, I love them both.

Nancy's Mysterious Letter

Happy Drews-day and it's time to check the mail for Nancy's Mysterious Letter.

The OTs continue the trend of illustrating a scene from the book on the cover, while the RTs have started to move toward a collage effect showing Nancy with an item or two from the story.

For the OT, Nancy is once again practicing her shocked face as she reads the mysterious letter, and we have a nice snowy scene behind her.  I wonder if that's supposed to be the Drew house behind her, because I thought from reading the book that it has more of a porch.  Anyway, we have some very bright colors here, especially Nancy's definitely-not-natural blonde hair.

The RT cover is considerably darker, with the damaged mail behind Nancy in a smart pink skirt suit.  I guess Nancy missed the memo from Anne Shirley that redheads shouldn't wear pink, but it's still a stylish suit and I still like Nancy's 60s hair.

Let's take a look inside.

Case file:
Nancy, Bess, and George are just returning to Nancy's house from an overnight trip to Red Gate Farm and this time Nancy is driving a new maroon roadster.  The girls see Nancy's mailman, Mr. Ira Dixon, an elderly man who is soon to retire to raise guinea pigs; he is struggling in the cold November weather, so Nancy invites him inside for cocoa.  He gives Nancy a letter from England and leaves his mail pouch on the porch while he has his cocoa, and tells her about his half-brother Edgar who is pestering him to share a small inheritance.  When Ira goes back outside, the mail pouch has been stolen.  Nancy's neighbor, 5-year-old Tommy, saw a man in a yellow overcoat take it.

Nancy takes Ira to the post office to report the theft to the postmaster, Mr. Cutter, who is bombastic and prone to very tiresome lectures about the youth of today (which turns into a theme in this book, unfortunately).  Ira is suspended and Secret Service detectives are on the case.  Ira refuses to believe that Edgar might steal the mail, but of course he is Nancy's prime (only) suspect.  Later, Carson theorizes that the theft wasn't to make Ira look bad, but to attack the Drews; Carson has just been appointed a special state's attorney for a high-profile case.  Nancy says that there are lots of ways to attack Carson's reputation, but only one way to attack Ira's, so she still thinks the crime was aimed at Ira.

And then we start the football talk (ugh).  Ned comes over and invites Nancy to go to Emerson with his parents for The Big Game the following week, and while the men discuss football, Nancy finally gets to open the letter from England.  A London law firm is searching for Nancy Smith Drew, who has inherited a small fortune, and Nancy is the first one by that name that they've found.  She writes a letter back and says she's not the Nancy Drew for whom they are searching, but offers her services to find the heiress.

Nancy goes to visit Ira, who is ill after the shock of the theft but steadfastly refuses to believe that Edgar has anything to do with it.  Back at her house, Nancy and Bess's lunch is interrupted by Mrs. Sheets, who is hopping mad that her mail was stolen and insists that Nancy pay her the $10 that was in her stolen mail.  Nancy initially refuses and Mrs. Sheets says that "you Nancy Drews are all alike" so of course Nancy wants info on the other Nancy Drew, and that afternoon she goes to the bank to withdraw $10 (accidentally bumping into Mr. Cutter and receiving yet another lecture).  She gives the money to Mrs. Sheets and then finds out that her information on the other Nancy is 8 years out of date, but she knows that she worked as a governess for the Hutchinson family at that time.

George comes over for dinner that night and Nancy asks her if she knows anything about the Hutchinson family because George reads the society pages in the New York papers (really?  That seems like more of a Bess thing but whatever).  George remembers a small item and promises to find the article later.  The next day Nancy goes out shopping for new clothes to wear on the Emerson trip, and she finds a bit more information on the Hutchinsons in the paper so she writes a letter to them.  Mrs. Sheets shows up again, delivers another lecture, and informs Nancy that the missing mail turned up so she returns the $10 to Nancy by dropping it on the floor, right after she talked so much about how young people today are so rude.  Nancy informs Ira and Mr. Cutter that the mail was returned.

The next day the Nickersons come to pick Nancy up and they all drive to Emerson; they are supposedly in their mid-40s but have iron gray hair (Mr. Nickerson) or prematurely white hair (Mrs. Nickerson) and as someone in my mid-40s I am wondering at that description...perhaps my husband and I are behind the power curve when it comes to gray hair?  I only have a few.  But anyway, they drive to Emerson and everyone is going bananas for the big game, including Nancy's friend Helen Corning, who is apparently dating Buck Rodman (she's not engaged or married to Jim Archer in the OT books).  At the big game, Nancy happens to meet Marion Hutchinson, who is part of the New York family that she's been trying to contact, and then there's a whole lot more very boring football stuff.  Snore.

That evening, they all attend a Shakespearean play and Nancy sees Nancy Smith Drew's name listed as assistant director in the program.  She and Marion try to find NSD, but accidentally get locked in the building so they miss her.  The next day, Nancy asks for Mr. Nickerson's help with the mystery and they visit Edgar's boarding house.  The landlady says that Edgar just moved out, but he told her that he had just come into a fortune and was getting married.  She gives Nancy a big stack of mail that was left there for Edgar because he didn't leave a forwarding address; back outside, Nancy immediately gets hit by two boys sledding and the letters get damaged.  Nancy "happens" to read one or two of the open ones and discovers that Edgar has been running a Lonely Hearts Club scam.  She theorizes that Edgar is now trying to get Nancy Smith Drew to marry him so he can grab her inheritance.

Back at Emerson, heavy snow means that everyone has to stay an extra night, so Nancy suggests that the people staying in her hotel have a masquerade that night, making costumes from things found in the hotel (this whole scene is just kind of bizarre).  The next day, Nancy enlists Ned's help to find Nancy Smith Drew's boarding house and she overhears NSD and Edgar having a heated discussion (because of course her two cases are connected).  Edgar leaves and Nancy takes the opportunity to tell NSD about her inheritance and that Edgar is a con man.  NSD decides to ditch Edgar and go to England alone to collect her inheritance; Nancy and the Nickersons take her to a river steamboat and get her on her way.  Meanwhile, Edgar shows up at the steamer just as the Secret Service agents catch up to him and arrest him, but he gets away and dives into the river and is never seen again.  Very dramatic.  The Nickersons take Nancy back home to River Heights, where Ira is exonerated and free to enjoy his retirement and guinea pigs.

Notes:
This is the first book not written by Mildred Wirt Benson; it was written by Walter Karig and in my opinion it *feels* like it was written by a man.  First there is all the extended and technical talk about football (snore), and then at least four long and repetitive lectures delivered by Mr. Cutter and Mrs. Sheets about the proper behavior for young women (ugh).  Then there are long scenes of Nancy shopping for clothes to take to Emerson which kind of feel like they were added because the author was guessing girls would be interested in that (or, perhaps more likely, because those scenes were in the outline provided to the author by the Stratemeyer Syndicate).  Can you tell this is not my favorite book in the series?  Oh, and the football thing--Ned is not the star quarterback, he is second string, and yet he still has newspaper articles written about him and he basically wins the game for Emerson.  I don't do sportsball at all and even I know that the second string quarterback wouldn't be doing all that.

We do have some fun moments though, like Hannah threatening to swat Mrs. Sheets with a broom if she doesn't leave, George struggling to carve a roast duck, and of course my favorite the repeated mentions of Ira's post-retirement plan to raise guinea pigs.  That detail just makes me laugh every time.  It was also interesting to get some screen time with Ned's parents, James and Edith, who never figure much into the RT books that I remember.  Nancy acts like she hasn't met them in this book, though in The Clue in the Diary she goes to Ned's house and leaves a note for him with his mom so that's a continuity error.  One more thing I liked is that Nancy sends the letter to the law firm in England and there's a detailed description of how the letter will be sent via ship-to-shore post, which was particularly interesting to me.

The only non-white characters we have are "colored porters" at the bank and the hotel in Emerson; their parts are much smaller than the Black characters in earlier books, but at least here they're just mentioned as working at those places and they're not described as degenerates like in The Secret of the Old Clock or The Hidden Staircase.  During the masquerade scene, Nancy dresses as a "Hindu prince" and other characters dress in blackface so we still get some pretty terrible moments here.  Yow.

Nancy's Knockout Tally, OT Edition:
Nancy has managed to stay conscious for two books in a row, so the tally remains:
Blunt force trauma:  2
Near suffocation:  1

Nancy's Skills:
Mr. Nickerson lets Nancy drive his car.  Uh, dude, MY dad rarely lets me drive his car unless we're on a long road trip and switching out drivers, no way have I ever driven any cars belonging to my friends' parents!  But Nancy seems to be really tight with Mr. Nickerson, maybe Ned and his mom should be nervous about that.

Nancy Drew, Fashion Model:
Nancy wears a raccoon fur coat several times in the book.  She debates whether she should wear her lavender evening dress or a deep yellow one with a corsage of violets for her Emerson trip (she wants to match the school colors, purple and orange).  It's not really clear if she's choosing this evening dress to wear TO the football game?  She buys a felt hat in a deep rusty brown and accents it with burnt orange feathers and a fluff of violet down to show her Emerson school spirit, retaining the plain pheasant feathers to put back on the hat when she doesn't want to be Emersonian.  For the masquerade, Nancy fashions baggy pants out of a tablecloth and wears a turban, sash, and a short suit jacket for her Hindu prince costume.

Cooking with Hannah:
Hannah has made cocoa and fancy cakes when Ira stops in at the beginning of the book.  She makes soup, roast, and apple turnover for dinner one night; Nancy brings Ira soup that Hannah made while he's recuperating.  Hannah makes bouillon and toasted cheese sandwiches for the lunch that is interrupted by Mrs. Sheets.  She later makes roast ducks stuffed with apples that Nancy brought back from Red Gate Farm, and clear tomato soup (uhh, every tomato soup I've ever had was red?).

On to the RT!

Case file:  
The basic case in this one is the same as the OT, but sadly all mentions of guinea pigs are edited out.  Ira and Edgar's last name is changed from Dixon to Nixon; Nancy is titian again, and Bess has dimples (I don't know why, but I like that detail).  This time, Nancy's letter from England is stolen with the other mail, but Ira remembers one of the names on the envelope and Carson is able to track down the London law firm and get another copy of the letter sent.  Carson's client Mrs. Quigley regularly sends him cash in the mail even though he tells her not to, and that is part of the stolen mail.  The next day, Nancy talks to some of Ira's neighbors and they find the missing mail, which was blowing around the neighborhood after it fell out of Edgar's car and the neighbors are indignant that they had to clean up after him.

In this version, Nancy confers with Chief McGinnis several times, giving him a description of Edgar and partial license plate of his car (thank you Tommy).  Mrs. Sheets' name is changed to Mrs. Skeets, though her abrasive personality remains the same.  Carson's secretary Miss Hanson gets a small mention (still waiting for Chief McGinnis and Miss Hanson to show up in the OT books), and the family that Nancy Smith Drew works for as a governess is changed from Hutchinson to Wilson (and Marion to Marian). 

This time, Nancy, Bess, and George visit Edgar's former boarding house before they leave for Emerson, and this time Bess and George go along to Emerson for the football game and Helen isn't in the book at all.  They spend a lot of time trying to find out if Edgar has gotten a marriage license anywhere because Nancy decides pretty quickly that Edgar is trying to get Nancy Smith Drew to marry him so he can get her inheritance.  Mrs. Skeets shows up to tell Nancy the mail was returned to her and her neighbors, which is a bit of a plot hole since Nancy had found the damaged mail outside of Ira's house...unless it was returned to the post office and sent out again?  Hmm.

At Emerson, a man throws a rock at Nancy and Ned pulls her down so she doesn't get hit.  They keep trying to track down Nancy Smith Drew and/or Edgar, and by calling all the overseas airlines in New York Nancy finds out that they're planning to fly to London.  We still have all the boring football talk, but this time Ned is the starting quarterback (which makes more narrative sense); he gets tackled in the first half and collapses on the field, but he's able to come in at the last minute and kick the winning whatever.  That night, on the way to a dance, Nancy and Ned are almost run over by a red car (supposedly driven by one of Edgar's henchmen) and then two fake detectives try to lure Nancy away from the dance.  Where is Edgar getting all these henchmen??

Nancy goes to NSD's boarding house and finds that she's left a cryptic note of Shakespearean quotations, and then Nancy, Bess, and George decide to fly to New York in an attempt to intercept NSD and Edgar before they leave for London.  Nancy gets drugged by a woman at the River Heights airport (another Edgar hench...person), but they find NSD at Kennedy Airport just in time for Edgar to be arrested and confess to everything.  The whole mystery started when Mrs. Quigley joined Edgar's Lonely Hearts Club and blabbed about how she sent money to Carson in the mail, which is why Edgar was trying to steal the Drews' mail specifically.  He also got the letter from the London lawyers and then saw an article in the Emerson paper about NSD working with the university's drama club, which is when he decided to woo her for the money.  Nancy tells NSD to go to London on her own to claim her inheritance, and NSD has to leave us with yet another Shakespearean quote to close out the book.

Notes:
In this version, instead of Ira telling Nancy about his ne'er-do-well brother, it's Hannah who spills all the tea and seems to be up to date on all the hot gossip in River Heights.  This time it's mentioned that Edgar and Ira have the same mother but they're 30 years apart in age; the OT implies that they have the same father instead, which makes more sense just from a biological standpoint.  In both books, Ira's inheritance that Edgar wants to help himself to came to Ira from a relative on the side that Edgar isn't related to, so he has zero claim to that money, he just feels entitled to it because he stinks.

This book has the first mentions of Burt Eddleton and Dave Evans, Emerson students who turn into regular dates for George and Bess respectively; now we have three boys and three girls who will work on a lot of the mysteries from here on out.  Near the end of the book the plan is for the girls to stay overnight with Nancy's aunt Eloise in New York, which is the first mention of her as well.  Nancy talks to Aunt Eloise on the phone, but the book closes out at the airport in New York so we don't actually meet her.

Several things have been added to up the excitement level, with the various attempts to harm Nancy and the race to New York, but again I wonder where Edgar gets all these henchpeople.  In both versions, Nancy Smith Drew had been studying to be a Shakespearean actor, but only in the RT do we get several Shakespearean quotes from her.  As a child I found that part tiresome and pretentious and I have to say, my opinion of that has not changed now that I'm an adult.

Nancy's Knockout Tally, RT Edition:
Blunt force trauma:  3
Drugged:  1

Nancy's Skills:
She has zero compunction about making a zillion long-distance phone calls to track down the Wilson family and later calling all the airlines about Edgar and NSD's travel itinerary.  Okay, so that's not really a skill, except for her patience in making all those phone calls.  She is able to decode the Shakespearean quotations left by NSD at the boarding house when the quotes just confuse everyone else.

Nancy Drew, Fashion Model:
Nancy puts on a pale blue evening dress that Hannah has to hem before the Emerson trip; later Nancy trips on it in stocking feet so Hannah has to redo a seam to fix the damage.  Hannah deserves a raise.  Here's another instance when we have more discussion of Nancy's fashion choices in the OT than the RT.

Cooking with Hannah:
Hannah has cocoa and cookies ready for Ira and the girls at the beginning of the book.  She sends Ira a jar of homemade stew when Nancy visits him and I think Ira is sweet on Hannah, not that I blame him.  Hannah broils steak for dinner and Nancy makes a salad of cottage cheese and tomatoes (I like those things separately, but it doesn't sound appealing together).  Hannah makes fresh vegetable soup to send to Ira, and later makes mashed potatoes and roast beef for Nancy and Carson.  (Hannah, can I hire you?)  For another dinner, she serves chicken and lettuce sandwiches, cut fruit, and chocolate cake.  (Seriously, Hannah, I have a guest room all ready for you.)

Rating:
Two stars for both.  This is my least favorite ND book up to this point; the football stuff is seriously boring and takes up a lot of space in both versions.  The OT has SO many tiresome lectures in it, but at least that's offset with some amusing episodes (guinea pigs!); the RT has fewer lectures but also fewer amusing episodes.  Glad I'm done with this one.

The Clue in the Diary

Happy Drews-day, it's time to search for The Clue in the Diary!

Like last week's Red Gate Farm, this book only has one cover for both the OT and RT, but it does have *some* copies of the OT with a picture cover (so no dust jacket), which made searching for the OT a little more difficult in this case.  That is exactly why I have the book in the middle--based on the photos of the drawings on the end papers, I thought it might be an OT so I bought it, but it's still the RT.  Still, I like the picture covers without the yellow bar on the top so I'm okay with that.

We have an action-packed cover with Nancy chasing after a man fleeing a house fire, and you can see the titular diary falling in the very bottom left corner.  This artwork is by Bill Gillies (I don't have anything with the original Russell Tandy artwork) and I read somewhere that he used his wife as a model for Nancy.  Can't remember where I read that though as I've read through so many Nancy Drew-related things in the past few months.

Anyway, the covers are the same and the RT follows the OT pretty closely, let's take a look.

My OT book once belonged to Jean Hoover.  (I like seeing other people's names and sometimes dates in my vintage books--it's a piece of history for that particular book.)

Case file:
Nancy, Bess, and George are having a picnic after attending a carnival in Sandy Creek; they talk about a mother/daughter duo they met at the carnival and how they adopted them and paid for them to enjoy the carnival rides.  They pack up and continue the drive through the country, and when Nancy points at a particularly large estate, the house promptly explodes in a raging fire.  The girls immediately rush over there and honk the horn to attract more attention in case someone is trapped in the house.  There's a lot of chaos, Nancy gets separated from the other girls and she sees a man fleeing the scene; she also picks up a diary that was dropped at the back hedge.

Nancy heads back for her car and sees a young man get in and start driving the car off; she wonders if he's trying to steal it but he's just moving it out of the way of flying embers from the fire and that is how she meets Ned Nickerson, her main man for many many more books after this one.  Bess and George turn back up and they try to leave, but there's a massive traffic jam and a nervous driver runs into the back of Nancy's car.  Ned directs traffic to get the snarl ironed out, and then he gives Nancy directions to a garage in his home town of Mapleton and follows her there to make sure she doesn't break down on the way.  They hear a lot of speculation about the cause of the fire and Nancy finds out the house's owner, Felix Raybolt (Foxy Felix), is unpopular to say the least--he made his money by less that scrupulous business dealings and people are ready to believe he burned down his own house to collect the insurance money.

Once back at home, Nancy tries to read the diary but soon realizes most of it is in Swedish and she thinks, "I wish now that I had kept that Swedish maid,  She couldn't cook but she might have been able to read this for me."  No Nancy, we love Hannah.  Ned calls early the next morning and says he poked around the ruins and found a ring, so he brings it over to her that night and meets her dad (who is relieved it's not a diamond ring, ha!).  The next day, Nancy, Bess, and George go out to visit Honey and Mrs. Swenson, the two they "adopted" at the carnival; they're pretty much destitute because Mr. Swenson left to find work and they haven't heard from him for a week.  Nancy buys them groceries and they make a feast for dinner that night; she happens to see Ned on the way back to the Swenson cottage and just invites him to dinner at someone else's house.  Bit presumptuous there, Nancy.  She questions Mrs. Swenson and comes to the conclusion that she saw the missing Mr. Swenson fleeing the Raybolt mansion after the explosion as he was one of Foxy Felix's victims.

Carson is unable to locate Foxy Felix, but he does track down Mrs. Raybolt who seems surprised and upset at the news that her husband may have perished in the fire.  She's staying at the Maplecroft Inn because it's the closest to the estate, so Nancy, Bess, and George go there to see if they can meet Mrs. Raybolt.  They do talk to her and she's convinced that Felix is dead.  The girls then go to Mr. Weston's factory in Stanford since he's the nervous driver who damaged Nancy's car; he willingly pays the bill and says he should get himself a chauffeur.  Nancy spots Joe Swenson among the factory workers but can't catch him.  That night, the girls go to a country club dinner dance and Nancy wishes her new beau Ned was there.  A few days go by and the girls buy Honey a new outfit for her birthday and mail it to her.

They finally return to Stanford and find Joe Swenson during his lunch break.  Nancy speaks to him alone and is quickly convinced that Joe had nothing to do with the explosion and Foxy Felix's subsequent disappearance despite having a motive.  He tells her that if he had his diary (and money for a lawyer), he could prove his case in court that Felix cheated him, but Nancy doesn't tell him she has it yet, though she does offer Carson's services pro bono.  Nancy, Bess, and George meet Joe at the factory at the end of the workday but so do a couple of detectives, who arrest Joe for arson and take the girls in for questioning as well.  The four of them face a tribunal (that seems extreme) and they're starting to convince the tribunal of Joe's innocence when Mrs. Raybolt sweeps in and points the finger at Joe as being the last person Felix talked to even though Nancy can tell from her facial expression that she'd never seen Joe before and she was making up the accusations.  So Foxy Felix isn't the only shady member of the Raybolt family and Joe has to stay in jail.

The following night, Nancy decides to stake out the ruins of the Raybolt mansion with Bess and George, thinking Felix might return there.  Bess and George get tired and fall asleep, but Nancy keeps watch and confronts Felix when he shows up.  She screams to alert Bess and George, and Carson and Ned charge up the driveway at "the psychological moment" to nab Felix.  Our heroes take Felix to the Maplecroft Inn since it's so late at night, and the next day force him to go to the jail to exonerate Joe Swenson for arson (and murder, since Felix was presumed dead in the explosion but they never say murder).  Felix admits that the fire started because there was a gas leak in the house and he lit a cigar, but since that was an accident and there's no hard proof that Felix cheated all those people out of vast sums of money, he's not under arrest.  Nancy tells Carson that she has the diary, and other people start coming out of the woodwork saying that Felix had swindled them too.  Nancy goes back to the Maplecroft Inn to confront Felix and tells him that now she *does* have proof of his unscrupulous business dealings and she convinces him to repay everyone or else they'd bring a court case against him.  He writes out all the checks while his wife shrieks in the background; they move to a tiny house in California, can't make any friends, and are never heard from again.

Meanwhile, Nancy holds a "creditors party" at her house and passes out all the checks to the people Felix had swindled.  Joe Swenson not only retained his job at Mr. Weston's factory, he got a big promotion.  The Swensons gift Nancy, Bess, and George with new purses and Ned gets a new wallet; Nancy also gets the signet ring that Ned had found.

Notes:
So at the very beginning of the book, Nancy witnesses Joe Swenson literally fleeing from the scene of a possible crime but decides from a split-second look at his face that he's not guilty.  Two minutes later, she sees Ned hopping in her car and immediately thinks he's stealing it despite how nice he looks.  Come on, Nancy, if you're going to make snap judgments at least be consistent!  Ned is described as 18 or 19 (remember, in the OTs Nancy is 16), with dark slightly curly hair and "whimsical and friendly" eyes.  I remember liking Ned as a kid, so I'm interested to see what I think of him on this read-through.  He keeps turning up wherever Nancy is in this book which could edge into stalker behavior, but this is a kids' book.  Nancy likes him even if she doesn't want to show it; when Ned comes over the first time to give her the ring he found, she wheedles Hannah into serving cake and ice cream and asks her to put on a pretty apron and cap.  Bess, George, and even Carson tease Nancy about her new beau which is kinda cute.

Nancy had planned to ask a Swedish baker, Oscar Peterson, to translate the diary, but that never happens in this book.  Joe himself tells her what he had written down, and she uses the diary as leverage against Foxy Felix at the end of the book.  Nancy decides not to give the diary to the police because she thinks they're high-handed and that she can do the investigation better than they can; she even tries to get Joe away from the detectives when she knows they're out to arrest him, so she could have been arrested for obstruction.  Nancy does crime but never gets in trouble for it.  Also they have to face a tribunal right after Joe is arrested??  I know this is well before Miranda rights but Nancy knows that they can refuse to speak until they have a lawyer present AND the girls are all underage, they should not even be questioned without a parent there!

Near the end of the book, when the Raybolts are both staying at the inn, they're in suite 305.  That's the same number of the office that was mentioned over and over in The Secret of Red Gate Farm.  I'm on the lookout for more 305 references.

Nancy's Knockout Tally, OT Edition:
Nancy stays conscious for the whole book, so the cumulative tally remains:
Blunt force trauma:  2
Near suffocation:  1

Nancy Drew, Fashion Model:
Nancy is wearing a "sports frock" when the mansion explodes, so I am imagining a tennis skirt but that's probably not right for 1932.  Back at home, she wears a dressing robe and dainty black and gold slippers that she kicks off in glee after talking to Ned on the phone for the first time (aww cute).  When Ned comes over to the house the first time, she puts on a flowered crepe gown and heels so clearly she wants to look extra pretty.  While she's running around town, she wears a beret, and for the country club dance she dons a flame-colored chiffon gown with black slippers.  When it's rainy, she wears a red slicker and a "knock-about" hat and I need to look up what that means.

Cooking with Hannah:
Hannah packed the picnic that the girls eat at the beginning of the book but we don't get to find out specifics of what she made.  Hannah makes a cake at Nancy's request for cake and ice cream when Ned comes over.  Nancy spends a lot of time driving back and forth between River Heights, Mapleton, Sandy Creek (where the Swensons live), and Stanford so she eats at a lot of tearooms and inns instead of home cooking by Hannah.

The book on the left was given to Maxine by her parents, and sometime later came into the possession of Brenda and now it's mine.  The other one only has my name in it.

Case file/Notes:
Like Red Gate Farm, this RT follows the OT pretty closely, with some things a bit condensed and one subplot added.  At the start, Nancy speculates that Mrs. Swenson's letters from her husband might have been stolen, particularly if he was sending her money orders and he's been gone for a month.  Later, instead of going to a country club dance with Bess and George, she attends a dinner party with Ned and meets his fraternity brother Phil Roberts, whose father happens to be the Stanford postmaster.  She goes to talk to the postmaster the next day and devises a sting operation to see if a money order actually goes out or if it's stolen.  Sure enough, the money order clerk was stealing and had accomplices cashing the money orders in other towns.

In the RT, Carson has a client who was swindled by Foxy Felix, so he has a more vested interest in finding Felix so his client can sue.  When Ned brings Nancy the ring he found, it has a D in it, which they later learn is for Dahl, which was Joe's mother's maiden name (and also Mrs. Swenson's maiden name, which seems like a really weird detail to include and makes me think of a Gilmore Girls episode).  Joe is working at Mr. Weston's factory under the last name Dahl.  In this version, Nancy recognizes the language in the diary as Swedish because she had a Swedish schoolmate.  Hannah is the one who reminds Nancy of Oscar Peterson the Swedish baker, and in this version Nancy does have him translate the diary for her (after he infodumps about famous people who kept diaries in the past).  The clue in the diary is that Joe wrote about how Foxy Felix had a secret hiding place in his house, and that's why Nancy thinks Felix going to return to the ruins of the mansion.

Happily for Felix, the hiding place was in the cellar and thus not destroyed in the explosion, so when he returns to the mansion late at night he's able to open the safe and starts to burn papers until Nancy stops him.  She later hands those papers over to the police and in this version they do press charges against Felix.  The Raybolts in this book are in collusion to commit insurance fraud (OT Mrs. Raybolt thought Felix was actually dead, he was going to tell her later; RT Mrs. Raybolt was in on it from the jump) and Felix had intentionally rigged the explosion but had to detonate it sooner than he intended when Joe showed up for their appointment early.

Nancy's Knockout Tally, RT Edition:
She managed to stay conscious for two books in a row (way to go, Nancy!) so we're still at 3

Nancy's Skills:
In the OT, she practices piano and sews while she's waiting for the weather to clear so she can go back to Stanford to look for Joe.  In the RT, she's the one who devises the scheme to catch the thieves at the post office.

Nancy Drew, Fashion Model:
She still has her dressing robe and dainty black and gold slippers.  Nancy wears a flowered dress with high heels, and for the dinner party with Ned she dons a pale green chiffon dress with gold evening shoes and a white wrap.  The OT actually has more outfits described than this one, which I think is a first.

Cooking with Hannah:
Hannah makes blueberry muffins, and later makes tea that Nancy is too distracted to drink.

Nancy's Mysterious Souvenir:  
Nancy, Bess, and George all get purses, Ned gets a wallet, and Nancy gets the signet ring.

Rating:
Three and a half stars for both.  It's fine, just not my favorite, though now that Ned has arrived the main gang is all together.

The Secret of Red Gate Farm

Happy Drews-Day and let's uncover The Secret of Red Gate Farm!

The OT is on the left with a dust jacket (the OT was never produced with a picture cover) and the RT is on the right.  Wonder why they kept the same art for this book (and the next one) when they changed pretty much all of the other ones, sometimes more than once.  Anyway, we have a very 40s-looking Nancy peeking at some fake cult members going into a cave, nice action scene.

Let's have a look at the OT.

Case file:
Nancy, Bess, and George are out for a day of shopping and are heading to the train station when Bess insists on stopping in an Oriental shop to buy perfume.  The shopgirl seems oddly resistant to selling her the scent she wants, but Bess buys it despite an exorbitant price ($3 for a tiny bottle!).  They make it to their train and Nancy takes note of a pale, thin girl sitting across from them.  When gathering all their packages to get off the train, George accidentally spills the perfume all over Nancy, who then notices that the thin girl has fainted.  She goes to get some water for the girl and a mean-looking guy talks to Nancy, apparently because of the scent of the perfume.

The girl is revived and gets off at the River Heights stop with the other three girls.  Nancy insists that the girl, Millie Burd, should come back to her house for a snack before she goes off to interview for a job.  Hannah makes her a hot meal and then they discover that the ad was for a job in Riverside Heights, a nearby town, so Nancy drives Millie there.  She's nervous about the interview since she's spent her whole life working on her grandmother's farm, so Nancy goes in with her.  The man conducting the interview is abrupt and crude; he takes a phone call and writes down a weird string of numbers before taking Millie in for the interview.  Nancy copies down the numbers because she thinks it's a code, and then the man tells them both to leave.

After a few days, Millie still can't find a job (Great Depression and all), so Nancy comes up with a plan for her, Bess, and George to accompany Millie back to Red Gate Farm and become paying boarders at the farm.  Granny got a few other boarders too so things are starting to look up for them.  On the long drive there, Nancy sees three men (including the guy from the train) flashing huge wads of cash at a gas station; she happens to also use a $20 bill to pay for the girls' lunch.

Once at the farm, the girls help Millie and her grandmother get things spruced up for the two boarders who are soon to arrive (Bess took a course in interior design, and for some reason I find that detail funny).  Nancy, Bess, and George have fun doing all the farm things (honestly it sounds kinda like when my kiddo did a week of farm camp and I think I would enjoy it too) and Millie tells them that part of the farm has a cave on it, but it's leased to the Black Snake Colony, a supposed nature cult whose members like to dress up in bed sheets and dance around in the moonlight.  Nancy is intrigued by them and she's also still working without success on the coded message she copied at Millie's interview.

Nancy meets a member of the cult when she's out walking one day, and the woman is extremely insistent that Nancy cannot go anywhere near the cult so of course she plans to do so at the first opportunity.  She goes near the cave one day when she's searching for a wayward cow and a tough-looking guy stops her and tells her she can't be anywhere near the cave.  By now Nancy thinks the nature cult is a front for some kind of shady enterprise.

She decides to take the coded message to a cryptographer in the city, and on the way she stops at the same gas station as before.  The owners of the gas station are talking to Secret Service agents about a counterfeit bill they received, and the woman points to Nancy as the one who gave it to them.  It looks like the agents are going to arrest the girls until Karl Jr., son of one of the boarders, comes in and vouches for the girls.  Nancy tells the agents about the men she saw who had also paid with a $20, and she hands over the coded message and the girls go back to the farm instead of heading for the city.

Nancy buys some white muslin and the four girls make their own costumes, planning to join the cult members next time they have a "ceremonial" in the moonlight.  On the appointed night, they leave Millie as a guard while Nancy, Bess, and George dance around with the cult members and then follow them into the cave.  They soon find out that the cult is a cover for the counterfeiting ring that the Secret Service had been investigating, but the leader of the group discovers the girls before they can sneak out and inform the authorities, and Millie is captured too.  Members of the group include the shopgirl who sold Bess the perfume, the man on the train, the one who interviewed Millie, and the men Nancy saw flashing money around at the gas station.

The leader of the group, Maurice Hale, decides to leave the girls tied up in an isolated shack near the river while they destroy all the evidence and get out of town, leaving them to starve.  They're just leading the girls outside when who shows up but Karl Jr. with the Feds, who arrived at "the psychological moment".  Karl Jr. was driving near the farm when the Secret Service agents asked him how to get to the cave.  All the counterfeiters get arrested and Nancy gets a special thank you for passing along the coded message, which cryptographers finally cracked and it led them to the Black Snake Colony.

Millie and her grandmother are now once again worried about paying off the mortgage on the farm, but Nancy has a plan:  they market the counterfeiters' cave as a tourist attraction and advertise Red Gate Farm as a healthful place to rest and recuperate.  Carson has to drive down to Red Gate Farm himself because Nancy is having so much fun she doesn't want to leave.

Notes:
There are a few things I don't like about this book:  George is quite cruel to Bess on multiple occasions and the fat shaming is intense, and Nancy and the girls have to be rescued by Karl Jr. not once but twice.  But at least now we have Hannah back with the Drews, with zero explanation of what happened to the other lady Nancy hired in The Mystery at Lilac Inn (OT) when Hannah had to go take care of her ill sister.

Also the stuff with the perfume makes less and less sense the more you think about it.  Is the counterfeiting group using the perfume as an identifier for members?  What's wrong with facial recognition?  Then why did they even have it in the store where someone not in the group might buy it, however much the sales clerk might protest and jack up the price?  It's just such a weird plot element.

Third, I think this is the first book which mentions the number 305 (which is the office number where Millie has her interview), but I've noticed that it crops up in a couple of other books too, so I'm going to keep an eye out for it.  I don't know if it was someone's lucky number or what, but now it's a game to see where else it gets mentioned.

Nancy's Knockout Tally, OT Edition:
She stays conscious for the entire book, so the cumulative tally still stands at:
Blunt force trauma:  2
Near Suffocation:  1

Case file:
The revised version is very similar to the OT, with a few things added and several of the names changed.  Millie is now Joanne Byrd; their hired farmhand changes from Reuben Snodgrass to Reuben Ames; Karl Jr. and his dad's last name is changed from Auerbacher to Abbott; even the cow changes from Bossy to Primrose.

After getting off the train, Nancy sees the man who spoke to her on the train drive by George's house, and George receives a threatening phone call later warning them to stop snooping.  Another man comes to Red Gate Farm and offers to buy it for a very low price, which is what makes Joanne want to hurry back to the farm so she can convince her grandmother not to sell.  He comes back a second time and is very insistent and rude, but Granny refuses to sell.

Nancy works on the code and manages to crack it herself; she calls Chief McGinnis to tell him about the code and the suspicious characters she has observed, and he passes her information along to the Secret Service.  At the farm, Nancy gets a note supposedly from Carson instructing her to go back home, but she figures out that it's a fake when she goes into town and calls him the next morning (the phone line at the farm had been cut).  That's when she meets the Secret Service agents at the gas station, but this time it *was* Nancy's money that was counterfeit.  Carson had given it to her to use on her vacation and once again, she almost gets arrested until Karl Jr. intervenes for her and they name-drop Carson Drew, because no way would a famous attorney be mixed up in counterfeiting.

During the day before they join the cult dancing in the moonlight, Nancy, Bess, and George go swimming in a creek and George gets bitten by a snake when she climbs on some rocks (the snake wriggling away actually gives Nancy the inspiration to crack the second half of the code).  When the Feds bust up the gang at the very end, Karl Jr. is once again leading them, but this time it's because Mrs. Byrd had gotten worried about the girls and called him, and he then called the Secret Service agents.  The agents are extremely impressed with Nancy because they had thought the code was unbreakable.

Notes: 
I am still disappointed that Nancy required a man to come save her twice in this book, but at least in the RT she cracks the code by herself instead of just handing it off to the Feds.  I think the whole cult idea and them dancing around in the moonlight is very Scooby-Doo; it seems a bit counterproductive to me that they would put on such a show dancing in the moonlight if they're trying to keep their counterfeiting operations a secret.  It does give them a reason for living near the cave, but it also excites the curiosity (and sometimes animosity) of all the neighbors.  George is still extremely mean to Bess about her weight and George's mama should have taught her better manners.  That is the one trope that I wish wasn't a thing in the Nancy Drew books.

Nancy's Knockout Tally, RT Edition:
She stays conscious the whole time for this book, so we're still at 3

Nancy's Skills:
She's a cryptographer now and breaks a code that the government, which presumably has people trained in cryptanalysis, didn't crack.  She also hand-sews her costume for the cult ceremony, and performs minor surgery on George to treat the snake bite.

Nancy Drew, Fashion Model:
Unusually, none of Nancy's outfits are mentioned in any detail in this book aside from the disguise to infiltrate the cult, perhaps because the RT so closely follows the OT and fashion isn't usually described much in those.

Cooking with Hannah:
Hannah makes soup and sandwiches for Joanne at the beginning of the book.

Rating:
Three stars for both, because of George fat-shaming Bess and Karl Jr. having to rescue the girls twice.  I'd rather see Nancy figure out a way out on her own or with her friends.

The Secret of Shadow Ranch

Happy Drews-day and today is one of my personal favorites, The Secret of Shadow Ranch.  Or The Secret AT Shadow Ranch for the original text.

OT on the left, and my two RT copies on the right.  I just got the one in the middle a couple of months ago at a used book store in Old Colorado City.  I think it's interesting that the book's title changed slightly.

The Secret at Shadow Ranch is the first OT Nancy Drew that I ever read, though it's not the first one I purchased.  I love the cover of it with the bright colors and you can tell instantly that this mystery takes place away from River Heights.  Also this book has that awesome vintage book smell and I love it.

The RT cover is similar in composition but with a darker color palette and, of course, the phantom which isn't in the OT.  I find it interesting that Nancy's depicted riding a bay horse on the OT when it doesn't specify what color her horse is, while in the RT it specifically says bay and yet they show her on a black horse.

I give both covers five stars, I don't have a favorite between the two because they're both awesome.  Let's take a look at the contents.

Case file:
Elizabeth "Bess" Marvin and her cousin George Fayne (a girl who happens to have a boy's name) beg their friend Nancy to come spend the summer with them at Shadow Ranch in Arizona, which was recently acquired by their uncle Richard "Dick" Rawley as payment for a debt.  Aunt Nell is going to check out the ranch and put things in order to most likely sell it, and she's taking Bess, George, and their other cousin Alice Regor, who is Dick's niece (Bess and George are Nell's nieces).  They tell Nancy that Alice's dad disappeared 8 years ago when Alice was 7 and no one knows why.

Nancy gets permission from Carson to go on the trip (he wants to go fishing in Canada anyway) so then we have a chapter of the girls buying new clothes and packing for the trip, then taking the train to Chicago where they meet up with Aunt Nell and Alice.  They continue on together and Nancy makes the acquaintance of Ross Rogers, who lives in Mougarstown near Shadow Ranch.  They arrive at the Mougarstown station and are met by George Miller, the ranch foreman, who refuses to call girl George by her first name (this turns into a running bit throughout the book).  The ranch is run down and all five cowboys employed there are over 40, to Bess's dismay.

George Miller gives the girls riding lessons and then clears them to go riding on their own on the ranch and neighboring Shadow Mountain.  On a 15-mile trail ride with cowboy Jack Glenwell as a guide, a storm comes up and swells a creek which they have to ford.  Bess freezes in fear midstream so Nancy has to go back and grab her horse's bridle and lead her safely across.  They stop at a small cabin on the mountain for shelter, but the cabin's occupant, Martha Frank, is extremely unfriendly.  Nancy is intrigued by the 12-year-old girl living there with Martha who doesn't look like she's related to her.

Back at the ranch, they decide to do a round-up of all the cows on the ranch so Nell can sell them, which is a good distraction for Alice who's bummed about her missing dad.  Nancy is (of course) the best of the girls at helping with the round-up.  In Mougarstown the next day, Nancy sees Martha Frank argue with a junk shop owner with the singularly amazing name of Zany Shaw and wonders what they're arguing about.

A few days later, the girls decide to ride into the mountains and have a picnic; Aunt Nell insists they take a revolver with them, which Nancy carries because she's the best shot (of course).  After their picnic lunch, the girls fall asleep and then a lynx spooks their horses, who bolt.  Nancy shoots the lynx, but they have to walk 7 to 8 miles back to the ranch since the horses skedaddled.  George twists her ankle so once again they stop at Martha's cabin, who's probably wondering why she can't get rid of these four nosy girls.  A rescue party comes from the ranch to get them so they don't have to walk all the way back.  The next day, Ross Rogers visits but he's a bit awkward and Nancy realizes he's unsure of his own name, which makes her even more curious about him.

Days go by and the girls keep going on trail rides and have encounters with a rattlesnake and a bear, and try fishing but they stink at it.  They go into Mougarstown to attend a dance and all three attract local admirers, who suggest that they do a moonlight ride sometime soon.  The next day, Nancy is riding solo when another storm rolls in, so she stops again at Martha's cabin and this time gets to talk to Lucy, the girl who lives there.  They go through a trunk of items that Martha told Lucy to never mess with and Nancy finds a fancy doll and clothes with labels from Philadelphia.  She theorizes that Lucy was kidnapped and sends a telegram to Carson asking him to look into abduction cases in Philadelphia.

A few days later, George plans a trail ride but they get lost, so they end up taking shelter in a cave overnight.  The next morning they come across Lucy out picking berries and she helps them get back to the correct trail to return to Shadow Ranch.  Nancy wants to bring Lucy to stay at Shadow Ranch, but Martha won't allow it.

The girls' admirers from the dance come over on the night of a full moon for the moonlight ride and they happen to take the trail up by Martha's cabin.  They see Lucy run away from the cabin with Martha chasing her and threatening her; Lucy runs right off a small cliff, and she's knocked unconscious and has a broken arm.  Luckily Nancy's beau is a doctor, so he splints Lucy's arm and insists on taking her back to Shadow Ranch since Martha was clearly abusing her.  Nancy finally gets a response from Carson:  there was one kidnap case that matches Lucy--Louise Bowen, who was 3 1/2 and whose parents are now both deceased.

The next day, Martha demands Lucy's return and while she's camped out at the ranch, Nancy sneaks out the back and goes back to look through the trunk at Martha's cabin.  She finds a tiny child's ring with the initials LB on it and decides that's proof that Lucy Brown is Louise Bowen.  Zany catches her at the cabin, but she punches him under the chin (way to go, Nancy) and flees back to the ranch. 

Martha refuses to answer questions about Lucy until Nancy threatens her with the authorities.  Martha finally says that Zany, her brother (real name is Zeke Work which isn't as good as Zany Shaw), kidnapped Louise to get back at Louise's father, who had unfairly accused him of stealing.  A good Samaritan tried to stop them, but Zany hit him on the head; they thought he was dead so they ran with the child.  Turns out the good Samaritan was Ross Rogers, who lost his memory after the blow to the head.  Nancy decides that she won't press charges against Martha and Zany if they leave and never come back, which they do.

Nancy figures out somehow that Ross Rogers is actually Robert Ross Regor, Alice's long-lost dad (Aunt Nell had never met him, that's why she didn't recognize him); his identity is confirmed when Uncle Dick shows up.  Alice and Mr. Regor are excited to be reunited and also plan to adopt Lucy/Louise.  When the foreman George Miller takes Nancy and everyone else to the train station to leave, he finally calls girl George by her first name.  Uncle Dick and Aunt Nell decide to hold onto the ranch for now.

Notes:  I swear my "summaries" of the books are getting longer and longer.  Anyway, like I said, this is the very first original text Nancy Drew I ever read, and it was quite the experience.  There was a marked effort in the beginning to establish the personalities of Bess and George, who are introduced in this book, which was nice.  Bess is timid and loves food and boys, George is brash and frequently rude to Bess about her weight (the fat shaming starts here and goes on for decades, which I wish wasn't a thing).  If I recall correctly, George and Bess were the invention of Edward Stratemeyer's secretary to be Nancy's friends, and they pretty much pushed Helen out of the series (Helen getting married was added in the revised texts as a reason why she's no longer Nancy's mystery-solving BFF).  I recommend Melanie Rehak's book Girl Sleuth for more information on the behind-the-scenes of Nancy's creation.

The plotline with Alice and her missing dad is interesting but does have some holes.  If her dad disappeared when Alice was 7, I doubt she would still be so depressed about it 8 years later; after that much time, I think it would be normal to her for him not to be in her life.  In my opinion she acts more like he disappeared sometime in the last year, not more than half her life ago.  Finally we get someone who suffers some ill effects from being struck on the head since Mr. Regor loses his memory.  Also it's very convenient that the Regors decide to adopt Lucy/Louise without even discussing it with Alice's mom first.

I feel like this book is more of an adventure story than a mystery on the whole.  Most of the book is about Nancy, Bess, George, and Nancy riding around the ranch and having adventures in the mountains; the mysteries don't show up until pretty late in the book and the only detective work that Nancy does is rifle through the trunk in Martha's cabin and ask Carson to look into abduction cases in Philadelphia.  I was also surprised by Nancy using a pistol in this book, since I hadn't read the OT versions of the first four when I first read this one and she does handle a gun in a couple of other books.  Still, it's fun to read something written in the 1930s and read about things like Pullman cars on the train and how Aunt Nell doesn't like it when George uses slang like "Oh, man!"  I know I'm clutching my metaphorical pearls at that verbal outburst.

Nancy's Knockout Tally, OT Edition:  
She manages to stay conscious for this entire book, so the tally still stands at
Blunt force trauma:  2
Near suffocation:  1

Let's take a look at the RT.

Case file:  
Nancy Drew arrives in Arizona to be met by Bess and George for a vacation at Shadow Ranch, but they tell her that they'll all have to leave the following day as someone is trying to sabotage the ranch and Uncle Ed says it's not safe.  They tell her about a phantom horse appearing and a windmill being pulled down, and then Nancy notices a man eavesdropping on their conversation.  They find a note warning them away from the ranch when they get to the ranch wagon to start their 150-mile drive to the ranch.

On the way, they get stopped by a sandstorm and then the ranch wagon overheats; the girls discover that the water bottle that was supposed to be filled up by Shorty Steele (one of the ranch hands) is empty, so they have to be rescued by Dave Gregory, another of the ranch hands.  They finally arrive at the ranch and Uncle Ed and Aunt Bet agree to let the girls stay to investigate.  Nancy meets Alice Regor, Bess and George's cousin, whose father disappeared six months ago after a bank robbery.

The first night at the ranch, Nancy wakes up and sees a prowler go into the kitchen, but he disappears, and the next morning the water pump has been sabotaged.  Nancy goes to the town of Tumbleweed with Dave to report to the sheriff and get parts for the pump.  While in town, Nancy foils the attempted robbery of a shop belonging to Mary Deer, who gives Nancy a watch that once belonged to Frances Humber.  Frances lived on Shadow Ranch decades ago and was in love with the outlaw Dirk Valentine (excellent name), but her dad the sheriff shot Valentine dead and no one has found the outlaw's treasure.  Also, the phantom horse is supposed to belong to Dirk Valentine; he cursed Shadow Ranch when the sheriff shot him.  Nancy also buys a pastel drawing at the shop, which Alice later recognizes as the work of her missing father.

Later that evening, Nancy gets her first look at the phantom horse; the ranch dog Chief runs after the horse and disappears, and the girls' room is ransacked while everyone is out trying to chase the phantom.  The next day, the girls take a ride with Shorty as their guide to investigate a cabin on the mountain, but he takes a "shortcut" and keeps them from getting to the cabin.  He's really good at attracting suspicion.  Later Nancy finds a message inside Frances' watch that references a green bottle.  The girls go riding and check out a nearby ghost town, where they see a couple of men running away and find a crushed pastel crayon in the street.  Nancy goes inside a building and a rockslide takes it out but she's fine because she's mostly indestructible.  They find the cabin that Shorty tried to keep them away from, and Chief comes running out.  On the way back to the ranch, there's a big storm which swells a creek, and just like in the OT Bess freezes and has to be rescued by Nancy.

That night, Nancy wants to have her horse saddled and ready to chase the phantom, but someone locks her in the tack room.  She sees a light in the spring house but no one is there, so she deduces that there's a secret passage from the spring house to the cellar of the main house.  The next day, the girls and all the cowboys go to Tumbleweed to pick up some horses Uncle Ed bought, and Nancy meets Mr. Diamond at Mary's shop, who is very interested in the Dirk Valentine treasure.  That night, Nancy finds Dave digging up the floor of the cellar and he admits that he's looking for the treasure because he's one of Frances Humber's descendants.  Dave was the prowler in the kitchen on Nancy's first night at the ranch.  Pooling their knowledge of the legends about Dirk Valentine and Frances Humber, Nancy figures out that Frances hid something in an oil lamp which is conveniently still in a storage room--they find a letter about the treasure.

As they're reading the letter, the lights go out and the phone line is dead; Nancy heads for the stable and is ready to go when the phantom appears, but it runs through the herd of new horses and Nancy falls off her horse and gets knocked out.  The fences have been cut so now all the ranch hands are busy trying to round up the horses and fix the fences.  The next day while all the men are working, Nancy and her friends go to town and buy "squaw dresses" (ugh) to wear to a rodeo-barbecue-dance that they're going to with the ranch cowboys.

Nancy and Alice want to investigate the cabin where they found Chief; Shorty saddles the horses and puts a nettle under Nancy's saddle so the horse rears, but Nancy manages not to fall off this time and Shorty denies doing it.  They remove the nettle and go to the cabin, where they find a man named Bursey who claims to be the pastel artist despite the obvious fact that he doesn't know anything about art.  Nancy calls the sheriff who says he'll go arrest Bursey because Nancy thinks that he's keeping Alice's dad prisoner somewhere.  (If I was the sheriff, I would want more proof than what Nancy has.)

Nancy announces that the Dirk Valentine treasure has to be in the cliff houses which used to be a part of the ranch, because the letter said it was in the oldest house on the ranch.  The girls and cowboys all go to the rodeo-barbecue-dance thing and win a square dancing competition; Nancy announces to the entire crowd that she knows where the treasure is because she wants to pull a trick on the men who are sabotaging the ranch.

Back at the ranch the next day, Uncle Ed and some of the cowboys send out a diversion party with shovels to trick Bursey and his conspirators as to where they're looking for the treasure.  Nancy, Bess, George, and Alice ride around the mountain for most of the day and find the phantom horse's paddock near the cabin before they finally go to the cliff houses at dusk to look for the treasure.  They find Alice's dad immediately, who tells them that the bank robbers have kept him prisoner for six months and include Bursey, Diamond, and Shorty Steele.  Nancy finds the treasure in another cliff dwelling and lights a signal fire to notify Uncle Ed, but then she gets caught by the bank robber gang.  The villains monologue and argue about who gets what, and that gives Uncle Ed and the sheriff enough time to show up and capture them.  Nancy refuses to take any of the treasure despite being the one who found it.

Notes:
I was an incredibly horse crazy kid so this book was one of my childhood favorites.  It's also the debut for Bess and George, who are Nancy's ride-or-die friends for many many more books.  The glowing phantom horse is straight out of a Scooby-Doo episode, but I love Scooby-Doo so that's not really a criticism.  I love the Old West legends about Dirk Valentine (excellent outlaw name, five stars) and hidden treasure.

One thing that's funny when you read the books in order is that in the revised text, Nancy's boyfriend Ned is mentioned and she doesn't meet him for the first time until #7, The Clue in the Diary.  At the beginning of the book, Nancy is knitting a sweater and in the matte cover book, it's for Ned whereas in the flashlight version (the one I had as a kid), the sweater is for Carson.  They still left in another mention of Ned though:  in the middle of the book, when discussing the cute cowboys, Bess and George ask Nancy what Ned would think and she says he's in Europe so he wouldn't know anyway.

The original text had zero mention of indigenous people, so I thought the inclusion of Mary as a native character (and owner of her own business) and the cliff houses was an improvement.  However, Nancy and the girls buying "squaw dresses" for the dance is...not great.

Martha Frank and the abducted child are completely gone from the revised version, but I found it interesting how they still worked in the cabin on the mountain as the bank robbers' hideout.  I still have issues with the Ross Regor storyline though; this time he's been held prisoner of the bank robbers for six months.  No way would real criminals keep him alive that long and drag him all over the countryside--they would have gotten rid of him when he accidentally saw them robbing the bank!  Also, Shorty is a very obvious suspect from the jump.

Nancy's Knockout Tally, RT Edition:  3, she adds one this time thanks to falling off her horse

Nancy's Skills:
Nancy is an excellent rider and bakes excellent chocolate cakes.  She also stays calm when Chief growls at her on their first meeting and soon has the dog practically eating out of her hand, to the amazement of Uncle Ed and the cowboys.

Nancy Drew, Fashion Model:
When she arrives in Phoenix, Nancy is wearing an olive green knit dress with matching shoes and beige accessories; George wears a brown linen dress and Bess wears pale blue (which is usually Nancy's color).  Later, Nancy wears a yellow blouse and skirt with a matching pullover sweater.  After rescuing Bess from the flooded creek, the girls all clean up and Nancy wears a powder blue sweater and skirt; George wears a dark green linen dress, and Bess wears a yellow sweater and skirt (wonder if she and Nancy just switched clothes).  Finally Nancy wears jeans sometimes!  When they buy the dresses for the rodeo-barbecue-dance thing, Nancy's is turquoise blue with silver trim; George buys a bold red one, Bess a yellow skirt with a black bodice, and Alice chooses a pumpkin-colored dress.

Cooking with Hannah:
We only get a phone conversation with Hannah, but she has to be the one who taught Nancy how to bake chocolate cakes.

Rating:  
Five stars for both because horses.  Hey, I make the rules for the rating system!

The Mystery at Lilac Inn

Happy Drews-day, it's time for a look at The Mystery at Lilac Inn!

The one on the left is the OT, which is a blue tweed book with dust jacket because they didn't publish the OT with a picture cover (I just looked and I have five dust jacket books, not counting the Applewood editions).  The scene is from near the end of the book when Nancy breaks into a house to spy on the bad guys.

The one on the right is my childhood copy of the RT.  A mysterious ghostly figure has appeared at Lilac Inn, so Nancy dresses up as the ghost to confront her--Nancy is actually the brunette in the corner (she was wearing a wig).  They used tiny flashlights in their sleeves to achieve the ghostly effect.

I like both covers but I think the Scooby-Doo feel of the RT cover puts it over the top as my favorite from this pair.  So let's take a look at the OT:

Case file:
We begin with Nancy driving to Lilac Inn to have lunch; she happens to meet former schoolmate Emily Crandall, so they have lunch together.  Emily has just found out that she'll get an inheritance from her grandmother on her upcoming 18th birthday:  the famous Crandall jewel collection, which is mostly diamonds and worth at least $40,000 (in 1930s money).

When Nancy gets home, we find out that Hannah Gruen is leaving them (!!!) to care for her ill sister, so now Nancy is in charge of finding a new housekeeper for the Drews before a very important judge comes to stay with them.  Nancy interviews several housekeepers before meeting Mary Mason, whom she decides to hire despite getting a bad vibe off of her because Mary has excellent references.  However, when Mary finds out that she'd be working for famous attorney Carson Drew, she turns down the job and leaves.  Nancy finally employs the elderly Mrs. Sadie Carter.

Nancy goes to visit Emily, who tells her that she's engaged to Dick Farnham and plans to sell some of the Crandall jewels to help him get a business off the ground so they can support themselves when they get married.  Emily's guardian, Mrs. Jane Willoughby, goes to the bank with her friend Clara Potter to retrieve the diamonds; they stop at Lilac Inn to eat on the way back, but they act totally suspicious because they have a fortune with them.  There's a car crash just outside the inn, and when everyone rushes to look someone steals Mrs. Willoughby's handbag with the diamonds in it and she immediately has the vapors.  She insists that everyone at the inn be searched, but they don't find the jewels.  Mrs. Willoughby consults with Carson since the police suspect her of engineering the theft herself, and Emily asks Nancy to take the case.

Nancy interviews Mrs. Potter, who gets a bit uncooperative with Nancy's questions; then she goes to Lilac Inn to interview the manager and check out the scene of the crime.  She also visits the other patrons of the inn (no explanation as to how she knows who was there) but doesn't get any further information.  Helen Corning comes to visit Nancy while she's stumped, so she insists that Nancy accompany her on a dress shopping expedition as a distraction.  While at the high-end boutique, they see Mary Mason who seems to have suddenly come into a lot of money as she is wearing expensive clothes; she had been shabbily dressed when Nancy interviewed her for the housekeeping job.  Nancy decides to check on Mary's references, and discovers from her previous employer Mrs. Stonewell that Mary had forged the recommendation and lied about how long she worked for Mrs. Stonewell.  Nancy learns that Mary has a brother in Dockville; she drives there and finds evidence that Mary has been spending quite a lot of money lately despite living in a slum.

While out in town to check out the River Heights pawnbrokers for the jewels, Nancy notices a man with a hook nose and flashy clothes who drops an envelope with Mason's name and address on it, so she follows him.  They end up on a train to Winchester, 30 miles away, but she loses him in a neighborhood with a bunch of pawnshops.  Back at home, Nancy finds out from Carson that the police plan to arrest Mrs. Willoughby for stealing the jewels.  Nancy decides to go talk to Mary Mason again, so she drives to Dockville and sees Mary with two men in a motorboat.  They go into the house, so Nancy opens a window and sneaks inside to spy on the trio, who discuss the jewel theft and argue about how they're splitting the proceeds.  Mary Mason had gone to Lilac Inn the day of the theft to apply for a job, but she saw Mrs. Willoughby acting suspicious with her giant handbag and took advantage of the car crash distraction to snatch the purse without ever even going inside, so no one knew she'd been there.  Hook Nose (real name:  Tom Tozzle, which is pretty fantastic) had begun pawning the diamonds in Winchester, the third person is Mary's brother Bud.

The trio of crooks catch Nancy spying on them, so they tie her up, gag her, and drag her onto the motorboat in the middle of a storm so they can skip town.  Mary villain monologues to Nancy about the jewel theft until the boat crashes into another one on the river and starts to sink (hey look, another boating accident!); the crooks leave Nancy tied up to drown, but she's able to shout for help and a lot of convenient bystanders keep Mary and the two men from escaping.  Mary accuses Nancy of being the thief and dares her to produce the jewels she claims that Mary and the men stole; Nancy goes on the boat which was prevented from sinking and finds the diamonds hidden in a clock.  Nancy returns the jewels to Emily and she and Mrs. Willoughby throw a big party in Nancy's honor at Lilac Inn.  Emily gives Nancy a beautiful bracelet set with precious stones and asks Nancy to be her maid of honor.

Notes:
When I read that Hannah was leaving the Drews, I think I actually yelled WHAT?! out loud and then Hannah isn't mentioned for the remainder of the book.  The HECK.  Obviously she doesn't stay gone, but she's not mentioned again until #6, The Secret of Red Gate Farm.  Apparently Nancy tried out many other servants before SHE hired Hannah?!  I'm used to Hannah having been with the family since Mrs. Drew died when Nancy was 3 so that was jarring to read.  I thought the subplot about Nancy having to find a new housekeeper was a bit tiresome; the book goes into quite a bit of detail about several unsatisfactory housekeepers interviewed by Nancy before she meets Mary Mason.  

Once again,  Helen appears in this book but only for a short time; she gets a lot more to do in the RT, the same as what happened with The Hidden Staircase.  While on the shopping trip, Helen decides on a pale blue chiffon party dress, which is what Nancy bought in The Secret of the Old Clock.

This book is like The Bungalow Mystery in that it involves an inheritance of jewels and the attempted theft thereof.  Lots of people have expensive jewel collections in the Drew-niverse.  Guess that was less risky than having money in the bank after the stock market crash in 1929?  Also, the jewels are found behind a clock face on the boat, which calls back the end of The Secret of the Old Clock.

Nancy's Knockout Tally, OT Edition:
From blunt force trauma to the head: 2
From near suffocation:  1

Nancy's Skills:
She is an excellent runner and outruns Mary Mason at the end of the book when she tries to escape; Nancy trips her up so she can be taken into custody.

Nancy's Mysterious Souvenir:
A bracelet set with precious jewels

Case file:  
Nancy and Helen canoe down the river (as you do) to Lilac Inn, which their friend Emily Willoughby and her fiance are renovating and plan to open soon after their wedding; on the way their canoe hits something underwater and capsizes.  At the inn, they learn from Emily that strange things have been happening and she thinks the inn is jinxed.  They also meet John McBride, best friend to Emily's fiance; Hazel Willoughby, Emily's aunt and guardian; and Maud Potter, Aunt Hazel's friend and the inn's social director.  Emily tells Nancy that a waitress named Mary Mason recently quit because she said the inn was haunted.

Hannah calls Nancy at the inn and says they had a break-in at the Drew house, so Aunt Hazel offers to drive Nancy back to River Heights.  Aunt Hazel is going to the bank to retrieve Emily's inheritance of 20 unset diamonds worth over $50,000, which Emily plans to use to finance renovations on the inn.  Maud invites herself along on the trip and Nancy doesn't like her, not least because Maud wants to put the moves on Carson (which made me chortle a bit).  At home, Nancy finds that her charge plate (credit card) for a specific department store has been stolen; she goes to the store and the manager accuses her of stealing $2,000 of merchandise earlier that morning--Nancy has a doppelganger.

That evening, they have a festive dinner for Emily's birthday and Aunt Hazel presents the diamonds.  Immediately after, there's a crash and the lights go out, and when they come back on the diamonds are gone.  Noticing some crushed lilac petals on the floor, Nancy soon discovers a secret panel that leads from the private dining room through a closet and out to the lobby.  They search the inn and Nancy finds her stolen charge plate, which she reports to Chief McGinnis.  The next day, John finds a jewel case under one of the lobby windows with the diamonds inside; Emily decides to take the diamonds to a jeweler immediately who tells them that the stones are fakes.

Back at the inn, Nancy gets a phone message from John inviting her to go skin diving in the river to try to find out what made the canoe capsize at the start of the book.  She doesn't see John, but goes diving anyway and sees something mysterious and shark-shaped, but someone throws a spear at her and she bugs out.  At the inn, John says he saw Nancy earlier and she told him to meet her somewhere else (so the doppelganger was at the inn).  That night, Helen can't sleep so she goes out for a walk in the middle of the night and sees a black-haired girl in a glowing dress before she gets knocked unconscious.  Nancy wakes up, sees that Helen is gone and goes to look for her along with John.  Right after they find Helen, the girls' cottage explodes!

Carson stops by the next day and is inexplicably okay with Nancy continuing to investigate the diamond theft even after someone tried to blow her up.  She goes back to River Heights to get more clothes for herself and Helen since theirs were lost in the explosion, and she doesn't even tell Helen's mother what happened.  The HECK, Nancy!  She then decides to investigate Mary Mason, the waitress who quit, and finds her in Dockville, or thinks she does.  Back at the inn, Nancy dresses up as the ghost but before she can confront the other ghost, she's caught by the guard Emily hired.  Nancy continues to investigate for the next couple of days and notices that Gil the gardener, Jean Holmes the new waitress, and Maud Potter all act suspiciously.  Then Maud gets in a fight with Aunt Hazel and quits, but no one is sad to see her go because she had been so unpleasant.

On the inn's grounds, Nancy finds a note in a tree addressed to Lillie Merriweather, an actress, and signed by Gay; Nancy and Helen go to visit Lillie and find out Gay Moreau is an actress who had been sent to prison for check forgery.  They see a photo of Gay and deduce that she is Nancy's doppelganger; Nancy suspects that Gay is also Mary Mason and that the one she'd met in Dockville was a fake.  Back at the inn, Nancy sees Jean acting oddly so she follows her to the river, where she's caught by Jean, Gil, and another man and forced into the shark-shaped mini submarine.  The sub has to resurface and so the criminals transfer Nancy to a boat and hitch the sub to it.  Jean is actually Gay Moreau, Mary Mason, AND Nancy's doppelganger; she villain monologues at Nancy and shows her how she makes herself look like Nancy until the boat hits a log and starts to sink (like in the OT, only then they hit another boat).  Again, Nancy is left tied up in the cabin but gets rescued by River Police Patrol.  Gay and the men get arrested; Nancy and John go skin diving later and find Emily's stolen diamonds in Gay's makeup kit.  Turns out John, an Army major, had been tracking stolen electronics, and Gay's confederates had been behind those thefts.  Nancy gets a Distinguished Civilian Service Medal for helping John crack that case, and Emily gives Nancy a diamond pin shaped like a spray of lilacs.

Notes:
Wow, there is a lot going on in this one and I even skipped over many of the more minor details.  We still have the jewel theft from the first book, but this time most of the action takes place at Lilac Inn whereas in the OT it was just where the theft happened to take place.  I like that the inn is featured more in the RT, there is a lot of talk about lilacs, their history, and how they're sometimes called blue pipes.  This version is similar to the upcoming Password to Larkspur Lane, which is also floral themed.  Emily Crandall has changed to Emily Willoughby, and her guardian Jane Willoughby changes to guardian/aunt Hazel Willoughby (side note:  I really like the name Hazel).  Clara Potter becomes Maud Potter and is much more unpleasant in the RT.  Usually everyone adores Nancy except for the criminals, but Maud doesn't like her at all which is what makes her an effective red herring in the RT.  I like it.

Once again the shorter RT adds many more complicated details to the mystery.  The OT focused on the jewel theft, and in the RT we have a shark-shaped submarine (where does one even acquire a shark-shaped submarine???  Do James Bond style villains have their own shopping catalog?), skin diving, the stolen credit card, and Nancy's doppelganger.  I do like how Gay's motivation for impersonating Nancy was that Carson had helped to put her in prison for check forgery, so she wanted revenge on him.  Gay even tries to convince Carson that she's the real Nancy at the end of the book, until Nancy trips her and then rubs off her makeup.

The shark sub and the ghost subplot definitely lean into Scooby-Doo territory, and the John McBride/Army tech subplot feels shoehorned in a bit.  I could have done without those elements and more focus on the inn and the jewel theft like in the original.  Seems like a trend where the OTs are more straightforward and there are a lot more complicated subplots in the RTs even though they're shorter.

Nancy's Knockout Tally, RT Edition: 2 (she doesn't get knocked out in this one, way to go Nancy!)

Nancy's Skills:
Nancy is so good at skin diving that she had her picture in the paper with an accompanying story.  Must have been a slow news day in River Heights.

Nancy Drew, Fashion Model:
Nancy and Helen change into pastel cotton dresses when they arrive at the inn; they're supposed to wear "lilac pink" bridesmaid dresses for Emily's wedding.  At Emily's birthday dinner, Nancy wears a pink sheath dress and pumps (later "borrowed" by her doppelganger when she impersonates Nancy at the inn) while Helen wears an aqua organdy dress.  The next day Nancy puts on a casual sweater, skirt, and loafers to search for clues on the grounds, and later wears a green cotton dress.

Cooking with Hannah:
Hannah makes lunch for Nancy but there are no specifics.  At least in this version there's no question of Hannah leaving the Drews, which is a relief.  Unless Hannah comes to live with me, I'd like that.  She could teach me how to make apple pudding.

Nancy's Mysterious Souvenir:
A diamond pin shaped like a spray of lilacs

Rating:
4 stars for the OT, I didn't like the Hannah leaving/hiring a new housekeeper subplot in that one because it went on for so long.  4 stars for the RT, because I like how Lilac Inn is much more developed as a setting and there's a secret passage.  I'm a sucker for secret passages.  But I knocked off a star for the complicated subplots.