The Hidden Staircase

Happy Drews-day, and let's dive right into The Hidden Staircase.

The top two books are the original text (Applewood edition on the right), and the bottom two are the revised text.  I was curious so I compared the two OT texts and the reprint is a page-for-page reproduction, including a couple of typos.  So let's talk covers.

The Bill Gillies cover is the two books on the left.  In the OT, the mansion that Nancy is investigating has never been wired for electricity, hence the candles, and she does show two old ladies a hidden passage in the house.  I believe the top right is the Russell Tandy artwork, and bottom right is Rudy Nappi's.  Interesting how Nancy is wearing blue on all of the covers, just the style of her clothing and hair changes somewhat.

The Rudy Nappi cover is used for a lot of other Nancy Drew related merchandise, it's an absolute classic, but I quite like the Gillies cover as well.  So let's take a look at the texts.

Case file:
Nancy is alone at her house when a man named Nathan Gombet from Cliffwood rings the bell and pushes past her into the house, claiming that Carson Drew cheated him out of money in relation to land bought by a railroad to build a bridge.  He even lays hands on Nancy but leaves when she gets a hand on the phone and threatens to call the police.  Soon after, Allie Horner (from The Secret of the Old Clock) drops by; she knows Gombet and doesn't like him.  When Carson gets home, he's unconcerned about Gombet's threats.

Nancy goes to visit Abigail Rowen (also from Old Clock) and meets Rosemary Turnbull, who says her house in Cliffwood is haunted and asks Nancy to investigate.  She and her twin sister Floretta (both spinsters) have experienced sinister shadows, mysterious music, and purloined possessions, but the police don't believe them.  I like alliteration.  Carson gives Nancy permission to investigate The Mansion while he's in Chicago, and he gives Nancy his revolver for protection while he's gone.  Before she leaves for Cliffwood, Nancy gets a threatening letter even though she hadn't told anyone she was going except for Carson.

The Mansion is dates back to at least the Civil War, made of white stone but it's dark and crumbling now; it has never been wired for electricity and has no phone.  The sisters are described as elderly but at one point the book says they're "nearly 30 years older than Nancy" and on behalf of all mid-40s people everywhere I say HEY, I am not elderly.  RUDE.  Nancy and the two ladies search from attic to basement but find nothing, and the first night Nancy hears a scream but can't find where it came from.  More items are stolen, including a silver urn and black silk dresses.  The Turnbulls tell Nancy that Gombet wants to buy The Mansion for a low-ball price (even though he owns the house near them which is a duplicate of The Mansion) and even threatened them, so she thinks he's behind the ghostly behavior and that it's a way to scare the Turnbulls into selling The Mansion to him.

Nancy worries that she hasn't heard from her father in several days, but doesn't yet know that Gombet intercepted Carson at the Cliffwood train station and tricked him into believing that Nancy was seriously injured; Gombet takes Carson to his house and takes Carson prisoner.  Late at night, she takes Carson's revolver and sneaks into Gombet's house and looks around while he's gone.  She has to sneak by Gombet's servant who is referred to only as "the colored woman".  She hides in a closet in an upstairs room to evade the servant and that's when she finds a hidden passage at the back of the closet; she falls down a flight of stairs and is knocked out from hitting her head so here's her first head trauma.

Nancy follows the long and twisty secret passage and this whole section is very descriptive and creepy and well written and I loved it.  She eventually finds several staircases leading back up and opens a secret panel into the attic at The Mansion.  The next morning, Nancy and the Turnbull sisters explore the passage more and they notify the police that they think Gombet is using the passageways to scare them into selling.  The sheriff is initially unimpressed until Nancy name-drops her dear old Dad, and then he agrees to investigate.

They all go back to Gombet's mansion and the sheriff's blundering leads them to a standoff with the servant woman in the kitchen armed with a shotgun.  Nancy takes the sheriff and a deputy back to The Mansion and they use the secret passage to get into Gombet's house and break the standoff with the servant woman, who finally tells them that Gombet is upstairs with "the prisoner".  Nancy and the sheriff race upstairs and hear Gombet threatening Carson, but they burst in and save the day.  To thank Nancy for solving their ghost mystery, the Turnbull sisters give Nancy the silver urn that Gombet had stolen, which is a very valuable family heirloom.

Notes:
This one is significantly different from the RT so it was like reading a totally new Nancy Drew mystery.  I like the connections with the side characters from The Secret of the Old Clock at the beginning, and the part where Nancy is exploring the secret passageways by herself is absolutely fantastic.  So creepy and atmospheric, it's awesome.  Then we get to Gombet's servant, "the colored woman" who is never given a name and is described as old, fat, and slovenly, and she speaks in an uneducated manner (just like Jeff Turner, the caretaker from The Secret of the Old Clock).  That part definitely deserved revision.

At the beginning, Nancy is at her house by herself and has a scary encounter with Nathan Gombet, who actually does physically grab her before she gets him to leave.  And yet a few days later when she is once again home alone, she feels scared when the doorbell rings and she still OPENS THE DOOR, which had me yelling at her in the book.  (That's when she finds the threatening note.)  Just because the doorbell rings that doesn't mean you have to open the door, especially if you're already a little wigged out and home alone.  Come on, Nancy.

I was also thinking how differently the part with the sheriff would have been written now.  Obviously this book was written decades before Miranda rights came into being, but they all just barge on into Gombet's house with basically just Nancy's word that he's guilty of something and the sheriff even suggests firing through the door into the kitchen when the servant woman won't let them in (one of the deputies is like nah boss, we can't do that and why isn't THIS guy the sheriff?).  When they do find Gombet and Carson, Gombet is trying to coerce Carson into signing a contract to give him $20K and the sheriff confiscates this evidence and puts it in his pocket.  I found that pretty funny considering how many police procedural shows I've watched : ) No evidence bags here.  What forensics?

Nancy's Knockout Tally, OT Edition: 1

Nancy's Mysterious Souvenirs:  
The Turnbulls' silver urn

Now to the RT version.

Revised case file:
A man named Nathan Gomber (not Gombet) delivers a vague warning that Carson is in danger because of a case he was working on involving a railroad buying some land.  Then Nancy's friend Helen Corning (also featured in The Secret of the Old Clock) introduces Nancy to her great aunt Rosemary Hayes, who lives in the "old family mansion" called Twin Elms with her mother, Flora Turnbull, who is Helen's great-grandmother.  They've been experiencing odd things and say the mansion is haunted, so they invite Nancy to come investigate.  Nancy talks everything over with Carson when he gets home, and he tells her to work on the haunted house thing while he goes to Chicago in relation to Gomber's railroad case.

Nancy and Helen go to Twin Elms, which is a Colonial-era home flanked by giant elms, made of red brick and covered with ivy (different from how The Mansion is described, but still a giant old place).  Some jewelry has just been stolen, so Nancy investigates immediately but they can't figure out how the thief/ghost is getting in and out.  Nathan Gomber shows up because he wants to buy Twin Elms, but he offers the women a low price and they tell him to leave.  Nancy, Helen, Aunt Rosemary, and Miss Flora experience a few weird things so they ask the police to have a guard there at night.  Despite several investigations, Nancy and Helen can't figure out how someone is getting in and around the mansion.

Nancy gets worried when she doesn't hear from Carson when he said he would stop by Twin Elms upon returning from Chicago, and confirms with Hannah that he should be there by now.  It turns out Carson was abducted from a taxicab by three men.  Nancy reports to the Cliffwood police (who mention River Heights' Captain McGinnis, who will feature later in many stories as Chief McGinnis) and she goes back to Twin Elms, where the ceiling in the hall suddenly falls in on Nancy and Helen.  Nancy is knocked unconscious for a few minutes but says she doesn't need a doctor (yes you do, Nancy).  That wasn't the ghost though, the house is run down and there's been a leak in the ceiling.

Nancy finally finds a secret passage in the parlor and they discover that someone has been using it to eavesdrop on all their conversations in the kitchen.  Nancy decides to investigate nearby Riverview Manor, which is a twin estate to Twin Elms (they were built by brothers), which she finds out has just been sold to Nathan Gomber.  The realtor gives her the key to Riverview anyway, so she and Helen go over there to investigate and they find a secret passage.  Underground, they meet up with Willie Wharton, who is part of Carson's case with the railroad; he's been hiding out and pretending to be the ghost under Gomber's orders, but he wants out so he confesses everything to Nancy.  She then calls the police and they all explore the passage again, finding Carson hidden and drugged in an underground room.  Carson is rescued and Gomber gets arrested; he wanted to buy Twin Elms for a low price because he planned to turn it and Riverview into a housing development, so at least we know his motivation.

Notes:
In the OT, Helen has a short scene with Nancy and says she wishes she could have helped out on the previous mystery; Nancy decides not to tell her about the haunted mansion case she has now because Helen is "a natural born gossip", so it's kind of nice that in the RT Helen is the one who brings Nancy the mystery and she's around to help investigate the whole time.  Twin sisters Rosemary and Floretta Turnbull have morphed into Miss Flora Turnbull and her daughter Rosemary Hayes, Helen's relatives, and the The Mansion has been updated slightly so at least now it has electricity and a phone.  Also, Helen is described as being three years older than Nancy and in this book she gets engaged to Jim Archer, which will give her a reason not to be involved as much in Nancy's mysteries in the future.

In the OT, Nancy goes to investigate the neighboring estate late at night by herself and ends up traversing the whole secret passage alone, as I said before that part of the book is absolutely amazing.  In the RT, it's watered down a lot--it's daytime (I guess that doesn't matter in an underground passage but still), Nancy has Helen and then later the police with her, and it's just not as exciting.  I can see why the secret passage parts of the OT make it a fan favorite.  Carson has a couple of scenes with Gombet in the OT version where he refuses to do what Gombet wants, so Gombet threatens Nancy and the stakes are higher.  In the RT, all we find out is that Carson has been kept drugged underground for two days, so the OT is definitely more thrilling.  Instead of one woman servant, Nathan Gomber has three henchmen who help him in the RT, and two of them plus the cab driver sing like canaries as soon as Nancy starts asking them questions.  This happens a lot in future books too, Nancy is apparently a master interrogator.  And in the RT, she calls the police quite a few times vs. just once in the OT when they kinda bungle things; the RT police seem much more competent even if they're initially skeptical of the old ladies' tales of a ghost.

Nancy's Knockout Tally, RT Edition:  1

Nancy's Skills:  
Perseverance? She doesn't give up even though she looks several times for secret passages before she finds something.  Also interrogation, she gets answers from several people when the police were unable to.

Nancy Drew, Fashion Model:  
Actually this book doesn't mention Nancy's outfits except in passing.  To investigate the outbuildings on the Twin Elms estate, Nancy and Helen change into sport shirts and jeans, and another time it's mentioned that she's wearing a skirt, but no descriptions.

Cooking with Hannah:  
Most of the action takes place at Twin Elms, but before that Hannah makes tea and dainty sandwiches for Nancy, Helen, and Aunt Rosemary, then later serves a dinner of sliced oranges and grapefruit (ick, grapefruit), spring lamb, rice and mushrooms, fresh peas, and chocolate angel cake with vanilla ice cream.  I don't think I've ever heard of chocolate angel cake anywhere else, I'll have to look that up.  We still get mentions of food after the action moves to Twin Elms, but Hannah is only available by phone so we don't know what she's cooking for herself (but I'm sure it's tasty).  While at Twin Elms, they have floating island for dessert one night and now I need to look that up too.

Nancy's Mysterious Souvenir:  
Actually she doesn't get one in the RT.

Rating:  
Five stars for the OT because the underground stuff is SO GOOD, though the stuff with the servant woman makes me want to knock it down a star.  Four and a half stars for the RT because who doesn't love a haunted house mystery?  Though it would have been better if the underground passage stuff had NOT been revised.

The Secret of the Old Clock

Welcome to my new Nancy Drew blog, where I plan to talk a whole lot about Nancy Drew books : )  And today, I'm starting with the very first Nancy Drew, The Secret of the Old Clock.

Let's take a look at the book covers first, or at least the ones currently in my collection.  The one on the left is the Applewood Books edition of the original text (OT), published in 1991, and it has several charcoal illustrations by Russell H. Tandy.  The cover scene is from the book's climax, where Nancy has snatched the clock out of the thieves' moving van and is taking it into the woods to examine it.  Not sure those shoes are the ones I'd choose for such an adventure, but they are cute and you gotta love the cloche hat.

The middle one is the revised text (RT) with a cover illustration by Bill Gillies and the scene is shortly after the Tandy cover, as she's already got the front off the clock.  I love that deep royal blue dress with her blonde hair, but Nancy's facial expression makes her look like a Kewpie doll.  You'll notice that sometimes her hair is very, very blonde, sometimes it's red, and sometimes it's in between on the book covers. 

The one on the right looks the most beat up but it was published last and it's been in my collection for probably something like 35 years, I hope I'm not the one who beat it up but I don't remember if I got it new or used.  Anyway, this is the Rudy Nappi cover; you can see the identifying moon on top of the clock the best on this one and I love Nancy's green dress and 60s hair.  Not gonna lie, when I cut my hair short and it suddenly decided to flip out on the ends like Nancy's, I was not displeased, though sadly mine is boring brown and not reddish like Nancy's on this cover.

I really like the middle cover as your eye can't help but go to Nancy first where I think she's a little too dark in the first one.  However I think the cover on the right wins this time just because it's my childhood book.

On to the two versions of the text, starting with the OT version.

Case File:
The book starts with Nancy discussing Josiah Crowley's recent death with her father, attorney Carson Drew; Nancy is indignant that Crowley's fortune is going to the snooty Topham family as the daughters Ada and Isabel were her nemeses in high school.  They go to lunch with Mr. Rolsted, another lawyer, who believes that Crowley made a second will.  Nancy soon meets Grace and Allie Horner, who tell her that Crowley had promised them money in his will and they also think he wrote a second one.

Nancy has a couple of unpleasant run-ins with Ada and Isabel Topham (who are basically Cinderella's stepsisters) where the other girls are rude to saleswomen in a department store.  Ada breaks an expensive vase and tries to blame it on the saleswoman but Nancy intervenes and Ada is made to pay $50 for it, so now she's big mad at Nancy.  Nancy happens to overhear the other girls talking about the possibility of a second will and they're worried about it.

After visiting the Horner sisters, Nancy goes to visit Matilda and Edna Turner (old maid sisters), William and Fred Mathews (farmer brothers), and Abigail Rowen (elderly widow), who all say that Crowley had promised them money too.  Abigail remembers that Crowley had told her about a notebook that had all the information about his will in it and she knows it was somehow connected to his clock, but can't remember how.  Nancy deduces that the notebook is hidden inside the clock.

Nancy sees her friend Helen Corning, who is selling charity dance tickets, so she takes four tickets to the Topham house as an excuse to go there and ask about the Crowley clock.  Mrs. Topham tells her the clock is in their bungalow at Moon Lake, so Nancy immediately plans to go to Moon Lake and stay at a girls camp with Helen and see if she can get a look at the clock.  En route to camp, Nancy's roadster gets a flat tire but she changes it herself, and once at the camp she takes the camp's boat to try to find the Topham bungalow but the engine cuts out.  She eventually fixes that too but it takes her all day out on the lake by herself.

The next day Nancy leaves the camp and drives over to the bungalow, hoping that the caretaker will let her in so she can look for the clock.  Instead she finds the house mostly empty as thieves are stealing everything.  The thieves catch her and lock her in a closet to starve; she almost gets out by herself when the caretaker finally arrives and lets her out, and they both go to the police to report the thieves.  She leads the police in the direction she thinks the thieves have gone but they split up at a crossroads; Nancy finds the thieves drinking at a roadhouse.  She sneaks into the van parked inside a barn, finds the clock, and almost gets caught again but then the thieves leave and Nancy takes the clock apart and finds the notebook before going back to find the police.

The police and Nancy find the thieves and after a short gun battle they're arrested.  Nancy goes home with the clock and notebook and finds out that Crowley had a $300K estate and his will is located in a safety deposit box under the name Josiah Harkston.  Carson gets a court order to have the box opened and later reads the new will for all the beneficiaries; all the nice poor people get lots of cash and the snooty Tophams get nothing.  They try to fight the will but they end up practically bankrupt.  Nancy goes to visit Grace and Allie, who have fixed up their house and bought lots of chickens with their inheritance; they want to reward Nancy so she tells them she wants to keep the Crowley clock.

Notes:
I read and reread the revised text versions of the Nancy Drew series many times as a child, so I noticed some differences between this and what I'm used to.  Nancy is 16 with curly golden hair cut in a bob, and she drives the roadster; Carson is a "criminal and mystery lawyer" and former DA.  What the heck is a mystery lawyer??  Hannah Gruen is described as their elderly maid and doesn't have much screen time in the book, whereas I'm used to her being their housekeeper and more like a part of the family.  Nancy is always a ball of energy--she never gets in or out of the roadster, she springs.  Also she's got some serious schadenfreude happening with the Tophams, she absolutely gloats when they lose the Crowley estate.  There wasn't nearly as much description of Nancy's wardrobe or tasty food made by Hannah, both of which are mentioned a lot in the RT versions (and food and clothes are frequently mentioned in modern cozy mysteries).

The caretaker, Jeff Turner, has pretty much an entire chapter with Nancy while he tells the story of what happened to him and that scene is 100% why the book was revised, it's terrible to say the least.  Jeff is described as the "negro caretaker" and he's an alcoholic.  The thieves lured him away from the bungalow, got him drunk, and stole the keys; he turns back up once he's sobered up somewhat.  He thinks Nancy might be one of the thieves while she's locked in the closet and so she screams to prove she's a girl, to which he says "Hold yo' siren!" which I think was the funniest line in the entire book and the only good part about this scene.  She takes him to a nearby town to notify the police (he knows the way to the jail because he's been a guest there before, wow) and then literally leaves him standing on the curb while she goes off to chase the bad guys.  Not very kind of her.

The other thing that got a lot of revision was Nancy's interaction with the police.  Once she grabs the clock and meets up with the police for the final chase, Nancy decides against mentioning the clock in her car at all.  The police (and the crooks) are more gun happy--one police officer instructs the men "Don't fire unless it's necessary, but if they resist, pepper them!" and they do get in a gun battle with the thieves.  I heard in a podcast recently that while racism was a big reason for the books to be revised, the publishers also wanted to change Nancy's interactions with the police so the police would be shown in a more positive light.  Both of those happened here.

On to the revised text (RT).

Revised Case File:
This version is similar to the OT, but each of the beneficiaries of the will is given a particular reason for wanting the money (and the names are changed a bit).  Edna and Mary Turner are raising their 5-year-old grandniece Judy and need the money for her; Nancy spends some time with them and plays badminton with Judy.  Grace and Allison Hoover need to fix up their house and Allison wants singing lessons; Nancy arranges for Allison to audition with a famous voice teacher in River Heights.  Fred and William Mathews want to travel; when Nancy first arrives at their farm, she sees an injured "police puppy" and when she picks it up, the mama dog knocks her down (guess they couldn't figure out a way to work traveling into the extended scenes with the Mathews brothers).  Abby Rowen is old and needs medical care, but her scenes with Nancy are pretty much the same as the OT.  Also, when Nancy meets the Turner sisters, they've just sold furniture to a group of men who they found out later had also stolen the Turners' silver, and these thieves end up being the same crew who rob the Topham bungalow in the end, which I thought was a nice extra.  The caretaker's role is greatly reduced and he's only described as being "very tall, thin, and elderly"; he was locked in a shed by the thieves this time and nobody has any alcohol or guns.  The thieves get names in this version (Sid, Jake, and Parky) whereas they were unnamed in the OT.  The scenes of getting the will from the bank are shortened quite a bit and oddly, the estate goes from $300K in the OT to $100K in the RT.

Notes:
In the OT, Nancy was reading about the Crowley case in the papers and discussing it with her dad, whereas here she gets a lot of information when pretty much every other character in the book spills their life story to her unprompted.  Nancy's roadster has been upgraded to a new dark blue convertible and she's now 18.  Hannah participates more in conversations with Nancy and Carson and she has more screen time than in the OT.  Nancy doesn't gloat quite so much about the Tophams not getting the estate, and the Hoovers give Nancy the clock as a memento rather than her asking for it.

Nancy's Skills:  
She is frequently described as a skillful driver and changes a flat tire on the way to Moon Lake with no trouble.  It takes her 8 hours, but she eventually fixes the boat so she can get back to the camp.  She almost got herself out of the closet before the caretaker showed up by using the clothing rod as a lever against the door hinges.

Nancy Drew, Fashion Model:  
In this book, Nancy wears a tan cotton suit (really Nancy, tan?  how boring), a yellow "sunback" dress (I'm guessing that means it's open on the back) with a jacket, a blue summer sweater suit, and a simple green linen sports dress with a matching sweater.  She buys a pale blue chiffon and lace evening gown after Ada rips it and she has it repaired.

Cooking with Hannah:  
Hannah makes apple pudding for dessert one night and now I'm looking up recipes because I want to know more about that.  She also makes waffles for breakfast one day, and sends Nancy with a jar of beef broth and a casserole of chicken and rice for Abby Rowen when Nancy goes to tell Abby about the disposition of the new will.

Nancy's Mysterious Souvenir:
She gets to keep the Crowley clock as a memento of her first solo detective case.

Rating:
Three stars for the OT because the stuff with the caretaker is so egregious.  Five stars for the RT because it's such a big piece of my childhood reading.