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.

The Bungalow Mystery

Happy Drews-day and welcome to The Bungalow Mystery!

Top row are the OT versions with the Applewood OT edition on the right; bottom row are my two RT versions, with the one on the bottom right being the one I've had since childhood.

The Bill Gillies cover is on the two books on the left side, and I like it because it's the only one where Nancy is actually inside the house watching a criminal steal things from the wall safe, and it feels more high stakes than the other two since she's so close to the action.  Nancy's got a nice gold-and-green outfit happening here though I'd rather her top be a different color than her hair.  The OT book once belonged to Linda Thomas and was dated Christmas 1964.

On the Applewood cover (Russell Tandy, I think, or maybe he just did the interior illustrations), Nancy is once again wearing a cloche hat so we can't actually see what color her hair is.  This is the third Applewood cover in a row where Nancy is wearing blue, I think that was actually a note established in the Stratemeyer Syndicate that blue is Nancy's favorite color.

For the bottom right Nappi cover, Nancy is observing the bungalow from a distance and she's wearing the forest green dress mentioned in the RT, which is a nice detail.  Also her hair is definitely red here instead of blonde.

My favorite cover is the Gillies one, I like that it's an action scene.  Also if I got to choose, I would have moved the title over to the right a bit on the Nappi cover so it's all against the sky and not somewhat obscured by the tree.

So let's take a look at the OT version.

Case file:
Nancy and Helen Corning are staying at a camp on Moon Lake (just like in The Secret of the Old Clock) and take the camp motorboat out on the lake when a vicious storm rolls in.  They accidentally hit a log and sink the boat (I wonder if this is the same boat that gave Nancy such trouble in Old Clock?); Helen is not a good swimmer so Nancy has to help her stay afloat, but they get rescued by 16-year-old Laura Pendleton in a rowboat.  They take shelter in a boathouse and Laura tells them that her mother recently died, so she's waiting at the Lakeside Hotel to meet her new guardian, Jacob Aborn.

The next day, Nancy and Helen go to visit Laura at the hotel and meet Mr. Aborn, who says that they are leaving immediately for his bungalow on Melrose Lake.  The girls instinctively dislike Mr. Aborn because he seems to want to get Laura away from them immediately and they hear him yell at her.  They go back to camp for a few more days and Nancy teaches Helen how to swim.  Nancy leaves for River Heights and gets caught in another storm; a pine tree gets struck by lightning and falls right in front of her car, and who shows up then but Laura Pendleton, who has run away from her guardian.  Together they move the tree and go to Nancy's house.

Laura tells Nancy that Mr. Aborn is dictatorial and mean.  They have no servants at the bungalow (gasp!!), he expects Laura to keep the house and tells her that she's got less than $15,000 in her inheritance when she thought it was closer to $50-60,000 (and that's in 1930s money).  He took her fur coat and tried to take her mother's jewels, but Laura has them with her.  Nancy asks Laura to write a letter to Aborn saying that she refuses to accept his guardianship, and Nancy goes back to Melrose Lake.  She sees Aborn taking a small parcel to a dilapidated bungalow; he sees her trying to look in the window (cover scene) and says he's looking for Laura because she's mentally unbalanced.

Nancy pretends to leave, but follows Aborn back to his house and spies on him.  He conveniently talks to himself about what he's doing and calls himself Stumpy.  She goes back to the dilapidated bungalow, breaks in through a window and discovers the real Jacob Aborn held prisoner in the cellar, unconscious and ill.  Nancy revives him and he tells her how Stumpy took him prisoner, but then Stumpy shows up and pistol-whips Nancy into unconsciousness.  She wakes up as he's tying her up; she remembers that a detective once showed her a trick to how to hold her hands when being tied up that will make it possible to slip out of the bonds later so she tries to do that.  Stumpy has a villain monologue moment and then leaves Nancy and Jacob to starve in the cellar.

Despite being dizzy from the blow to the head, Nancy eventually manages to get out of her bindings and unlocks Aborn.  They get back to Nancy's roadster and check out Aborn's house, but Stumpy is gone.  Nancy leaves Aborn there since he's so ill and weak, and she goes to a nearby hotel to call the police and a doctor.  She tries to call her house to check on Laura and Hannah but gets no response; the hotel clerk agrees to spread the word to the police and radio stations to be on the lookout for Stumpy.

Meanwhile back in River Heights, Laura is worried about Nancy, so when Carson gets home she tells him what's happened and they hop in his car to go find Nancy.  They happen to meet up with Nancy on the road and she says she's trying to figure out where Stumpy went.  They choose the road leading to the town of Hamilton and catch up to his racing car and there's a protracted car chase.  Carson even fires his revolver trying to get Stumpy to stop, but at a sharp curve Stumpy's car goes over a cliff.  Carson, Nancy, and Laura climb down to rescue the unconscious Stumpy, and Nancy grabs his suitcase with Laura's bank securities just before the car explodes.

Carson and Laura take Stumpy to the hospital in Carson's car (a brown sedan), while Nancy follows in her blue roadster with the suitcase.  They talk to the Hamilton police chief who says that Stumpy is in emergency surgery.  Nancy insists that they take Laura back to Melrose Lake immediately so she can meet the real Jacob Aborn.  Once there, they open the suitcase and find Laura's fortune, which is over $100,000 in bank securities.  They go to visit Laura again a few days later; she and the real Jacob are very happy together and Stumpy is recovering in jail, where he belongs.  Laura gives Nancy "a beautiful pendant of precious stones" as a thank you.

Notes:
I wrote down this quote:  "To think was to act with Nancy Drew" and yep, true.  I've noticed that the author (hi Mildred) frequently calls Nancy by her full name.  It's mentioned that Carson smokes cigars, and I don't think I've come across anyone smoking in the RTs yet.  Like in the previous two OTs, this version features guns--Stumpy beats Nancy over the head with his gun, and Carson shoots at Stumpy's car during the car chase, which surprised me since I grew up with the gun-free RTs.

Nancy's Knockout Tally, OT Edition:  2

Cooking with Hannah:
She makes waffles for Nancy and Laura.

Nancy's Mysterious Souvenir:
A pendant of precious stones that belonged to Laura's mother.

Revised case file:
Nancy and Helen are tooling around Twin Lakes on a motorboat when a wicked storm blows up and their boat sinks; they get rescued by a girl named Laura Pendleton, and the trio immediately break into a ramshackle bungalow to take shelter until the storm passes.  Laura becomes insta-buddies with Nancy and Helen, and she confides that her mother recently died and she's supposed to meet her new guardians the next day at a hotel.  Nancy and Helen go to Laura's hotel the next afternoon to see how she's getting on and meet her new guardians, the Aborns, but get a weird vibe off them.  Helen splits off with her Aunt June to go work on wedding stuff and she's gone for the rest of the book.

When she finds out that Hannah has sprained her ankle, Nancy leaves Twin Lakes and has to take a detour road towards Melrose Lake when she gets caught in another storm.  A tree falls down, but soon thereafter teenagers Jim and Cathy Donnell drive up and help her move the tree; it turns out they know the Aborns and are looking forward to making friends with Laura.  When Nancy gets home, Hannah tells her that Carson wants her help on an embezzlement case in which it's suspected that some bank employees have been stealing securities from several branches of the bank.  Carson asks Nancy to interview four people whose bearer bonds were stolen and suss out if they could have been complicit in the theft.  She goes out to interview people and runs into Don Cameron, who had been her prom date in high school, and he invites her to a barbecue.

Nancy returns home and finds Laura there; she's run away from the Aborns because they keep asking her for her mother's jewels and they lock her in her room.  Laura grabbed the jewels and ran to Nancy's house; she shows Nancy and Hannah the jewelry collection before they lock it in Carson's safe.  Nancy goes back to sleuth around Melrose Lake; she checks into a hotel so she can sneak around after dark.  She climbs a rose trellis into Laura's bedroom and spies on the Aborns, who empty a safe of a whole lot of bank notes and stock certificates.  Nancy goes to the dilapidated bungalow and breaks in through a window; she finds the real Jacob Aborn like in the OT.

Nancy and Jacob spend too much time talking and he says the fake Aborn's name is really Stumpy Dowd; a Stephen Dowd had been on the list of people Nancy was supposed to interview but he wasn't home.  She now realizes that her mystery is related to Carson's embezzlement case.  Stumpy shows up and this time whacks Nancy over the head with a cane because no one has guns in the revised versions.  Meanwhile, Carson is concerned about Nancy when he finds out she went back to the Aborn house, so he, Laura, and Don Cameron pile in the car and go to find her (Nancy had pawned Laura off on Don for the barbecue while she went sleuthing).

Nancy uses the same detective trick from the OT to get out of her bonds; she unlocks Jacob and they go to her car, but Stumpy has sabotaged it so it won't run.  They go to the Aborn house and the Donnells show up because they're friends with the real Aborns and Mrs. Aborn had called them when she couldn't reach Jacob.  They call the police and then Carson, Nancy, and Don go to the ramshackle bungalow that Nancy, Helen, and Laura broke into at the start of the book because that's where the rest of Stumpy's gang has been hiding out.  This time Carson gets knocked on the head and passes out for a while, but once he's revived they still chase after Stumpy and his gang, there's a car accident, and Nancy grabs the suitcases full of cash just before the car explodes.  Laura is glad to be with her real guardians who are much nicer than the impostors, and she gives Nancy an aquamarine ring that had belonged to her mother as a thank you.

Notes:
This one is somewhere in between The Secret of the Old Clock and The Hidden Staircase in regards to how much of the plot is changed between the versions, and this time the RT is much more convoluted even though it's five chapters shorter.  There are a lot more characters too.  In the OT, it's just Stumpy by himself; in the RT, we get Stumpy, his wife, and their two co-conspirators, plus Don Cameron, the Donnell family, and the people that Nancy interviews on Carson's behalf, and also Jacob Aborn's wife even though she only shows up at the end of the book.  They do a good job of connecting the bank embezzlement case to Laura's case though--her mother had put all their money in the bank that the criminals were stealing from.  It's a bit less clear which bungalow is the titular one, since there's the one the girls break into at the start, the Aborn house is a bungalow, and the place where the real Aborn was held prisoner is also a bungalow.  I remember as a kid wondering what the heck a bungalow was as this was the first place I'd ever read the word.

I admit, when I read this a couple of months ago I wondered why on earth a 16-year-old was staying in a hotel by herself for days on end waiting for her guardians to show up because that seems very negligent on someone's part, but it does specifically say at the end of the book that the Dowds had arranged for Laura to leave her boarding school early so they could get to her.  They do spell out a lot of complicated stuff with how the embezzlement scheme worked, how the criminals found out about Laura and her fortune, etc.

When Laura goes to the Drew home, Nancy shows her the Crowley clock from her first case and a silver urn, but until I read the OT Hidden Staircase I didn't know where the urn came from because it's not mentioned in the RT.

I'm listening to a couple of Nancy Drew podcasts; the host of one of them says there are an awful lot of boating accidents in the Drew-niverse and she's not wrong.  Nancy and Helen sink their motorboat in both versions of this book; Laura's dad perished in a boating accident in the RT.  I'm going to be on the lookout for future boating accidents.

Near the end, when Carson and Nancy are discussing the connections between the embezzlement case and Laura's fake guardians, Carson talks about his old friend Chief McGinnis.  He hasn't shown up yet in the OTs so I'm watching for that; he was just name-dropped in The Hidden Staircase RT and this book.  Also Carson's secretary, Miss Hanson, gets a mention in the RT for the first time.

Nancy's Knockout Tally, RT Edition:  2
Carson's Knockout Tally, RT Edition:  1

Nancy's Skills:
Nancy is an excellent swimmer and saves Helen in both versions; in the OT she then teaches Helen how to swim but that was cut out of the RT.  Also she has some talents at breaking and entering, which she does at the first bungalow, the Aborn house, and the prison bungalow.  Such a criminal, Nancy.

Nancy Drew, Fashion Model:
When interviewing people for Carson, Nancy wears what is described as a two-piece navy blue dress (um, I think that would be classified as a skirt and top, not a dress) that makes her look older, along with low-heeled pumps and tiny pearl earrings.  She wears a forest green cotton dress and flat-heeled shoes to go to Melrose Lake, which is pictured on the last cover.  She puts on a simple black cotton dress and pumps for dinner at the hotel, and then changes into a sweater, skirt, and walking shoes to go tramping through the woods.  Where are your jeans, Nancy?!

Cooking with Hannah:  The Drews have a "modern pink-and-white kitchen" which I find pretty funny for some reason.  After injuring herself, Hannah refuses to stay off her feet and makes pancakes and sausages with fresh orange juice for breakfast and a fresh fruit salad and rolls for lunch.  She makes tea and toast when Laura is distraught, and at the end when Laura comes over to get her jewels, she makes iced tea and open-faced sandwiches.

Nancy's Mysterious Souvenir:
An aquamarine ring that matches Nancy's eyes and used to belong to Laura's mother.

Rating:  Five stars for the OT, four for the RT because they made things so much more complicated.

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.