The Mystery of the Ivory Charm

Happy Drews-day once again and this week we are trying to solve the Mystery of the Ivory Charm.

For the OT, this is one of the few times that one of the bad guys is depicted on the cover even larger than Nancy is.  Rather than her signature blue, Nancy has on a quite lovely green suit with a matching handbag and I like George in yellow too; Bess, pick an actual color please.

The RT continues the collage style and it's all monochrome except for Nancy, which I think is a rather nice design choice.  I don't much care for how Rishi is depicted...well, it looks more like Rishi to me than Rai, do you think the male character is a 12-year-old boy or a grown adult?  Hard to tell.

I kinda think that the OT is edging out the RT for my favorite cover this round.  Let's take a look at the contents.

Case file:
Nancy, Bess, and George are waiting for their train back to River Heights from a month-long vacation at a mountain camp (these girls exist in a state of perpetual vacation) when a special freight train arrives at the station carrying a traveling circus.  The girls watch as the animals are unloaded and see a 12-year-old Indian boy named Coya tending to an elephant until an older Indian man named Rai shows up, yells at the boy and beats him with a whip.  Nancy intercedes and tells the man off, and he leaves, only to return a few minutes later to try to make nice with Nancy by offering to tell the girls' fortunes.  He predicts great danger for Nancy and just then an escaped circus snake drops down from a tree and tries to squeeze her to death!  Coya gets the snake wrangler who saves Nancy, and Rai then says that Nancy must have supernatural powers and gives her an ivory elephant charm (as depicted on the cover).

The girls finally board their own train, only to discover that Coya has stowed away on the train because he wants to escape from the abusive Rai.  Nancy pays his fare and takes him to her home, because that's legal, and Hannah is not best pleased with this situation.  Carson agrees to keep Coya and let him do work around the house for him (also not legal, Carson!) and writes a letter to the circus telling them where Coya is, but Coya secretly tears it up instead of putting it in the mailbox.  A few days later, Miss Anita Allison comes to the Drew residence to see Carson regarding a real estate deal, but she passes out when she sees Nancy's elephant charm and her companion takes her away.

Two days later, Nancy plans a picnic with Bess, George, and Coya and decides to take them to the property that Miss Allison is thinking about selling.  Coya sneaks into the abandoned house and doesn't come back, so Nancy goes in after him.  Then Nancy doesn't come back, so George goes in after them both and apparently these girls have never seen a horror movie.  Bess panics, but she's still the smart one because she goes to the car to get help, only to see Coya emerge from the side of a giant boulder.  Coya tells her the house has "no insides" and he found a tunnel that led to the boulder, so they go back to the house and Nancy rejoins them, having found the same tunnel, but George is still missing.  They hear a crashing sound from inside the house--George had tried to get back to the window but slipped on the steep steps and fell.  Nancy goes back inside and turns on the lights (why is the electricity turned on in an abandoned property?!) and finds George, and they see that as Coya said, the house has no insides--all the walls and stuff have been removed and it's set up with a bunch of ropes and trapezes as if to be a training place for acrobats.

It starts raining outside so Bess and Coya also come into the house and Nancy wants to investigate the tunnels.  The girls find an unconscious man, Jasper Batt, in another tunnel; when he comes to, he says that someone hit him on the head and stole some important papers that Rai had given him to pass on to Miss Allison.  The girls go back to the main area of the house and find that Coya was playing in the ropes and got tangled up, so he's now suffocating to death.  Nancy climbs up after him, frees him from the ropes, and administers a stimulant (what kind of OTC medication helps with near suffocation, I would like to know), and they all leave when Batt gets increasingly upset and confused about what happened to him, even accusing Coya of having knocked him out.

Nancy decides to get a tutor for Coya, and Ned suggests Professor Lowell Stackpole because he's made many trips to India and has studied the country extensively.  Carson decides that Coya should maybe have a new outfit since he's been there for over a week but they want to make a good impression on Professor Stackpole.  The professor interviews Coya and says he's unusually bright and must be from a high-caste family, and he tells Nancy some information about ivory charms and how some of them contain "a life-giving balm".  Because that sounds real.

Nancy, Bess, and George return to the weird house and see Miss Allison talking with the man who wants to buy the property, but she acts strangely and the man gets tired of her antics and leaves.  Nancy goes to talk to her but Miss Allison goes into a trance and starts talking about reincarnation, and then tells a story about a kidnapped Indian prince.  Nancy of course connects this with Coya.  The next day, Nancy reads in the newspaper that the weird house burned down.

Nancy, Bess, George, and Carson go back to the ruins of the weird house and Miss Allison is there, frantically trying to get into the tunnels to get her treasure, which is hidden in a cavity in a wall.  Nancy, Carson, and Miss Allison go in to get the boxes but are trapped when the tunnel collapses.  Miss Allison has hysterics (that's helpful) while Nancy and everyone else helps dig them out, and then Ned shows up too and the men take the boxes containing jewels to a bank vault because Miss Allison is still not keeping up with the plot.  Even Carson thinks to himself that she just enjoys creating emotional scenes.

With that done, Nancy and company go to the circus which is apparently just wild because the monkeys escape before the show and cause an uproar, and then afterwards an elephant spots Rai and stampedes to try to squish him.  In between, Nancy talks to a circus official (I want that to be on my next resume) who says that Rai had left the circus, but he showed back up that day to ask for his job back and asks Nancy to give him back the charm because he's had nothing but bad luck since he gave it to her.  Nancy says she will, only if Rai tells her the truth about Coya's parentage because she's sure he's not Coya's biological father.  That's when the elephants stampede and Nancy, of course, saves a little girl from being trampled and Rai disappears.

A few days later, Coya gets kidnapped from the Drew garage (because Hannah wouldn't let him stay in the house, they had him live in a room above their garage).  Instead of calling the police, Nancy grabs Bess and George to go question Jasper Batt, who is still confused about...everything...and he tells Nancy that his papers were stolen by Peter Putnam, who used to be the watchman at the Allison property before him.  So the girls go to Putnam's place and Nancy offers to pay him $25 for the papers.  He's thinking about it when there's a commotion outside involving a dog menacing Bess and George, and Nancy happens to find the papers in a coffeepot so she straight-up steals them and the girls leave.

The girls stop a few miles away to check out the papers and Nancy reads that Coya was the direct heir to the ruler of an unnamed small but wealthy Indian province, and Anita Allison and Rai colluded to kidnap Coya and install some other guy as the ruler there, for which Miss Allison was paid a fortune in jewels.  Meanwhile they told the people of the province that Coya was eaten by a tiger.  Ned, who is quite whiny in this book, is tired of the mystery stuff and invites Nancy to a dance at Emerson College to distract her from the kidnapped child (not Ned's shining moment here), and on that trip the ivory charm is stolen from Nancy.

Next, Nancy hatches a plan with Professor Stackpole, who agrees to invite Miss Allison to his house and try to get her to talk about India and admit her part in Coya's kidnapping so they can have her arrested.  Nancy pretends she has psychic powers and Allison does pretty much admit everything, but when Nancy goes to answer a phone call, Miss Allison bashes poor Professor Stackpole over the head and escapes.  Ned runs in and they administer first aid to the professor, and then Coya shows up because he's escaped from Rai and went to the professor's house since he didn't think the Drew home would be safe.  Smart.  The professor refuses to call a doctor (not smart) and goes upstairs to sleep (really not smart with a head injury) but insists that Coya should stay with him, which turns out to be not smart because the next morning Coya has been kidnapped again.

So now Carson is tired of fooling around with this nonsense and he takes Nancy to Washington D.C. to talk to his friend Mr. George, and they get the FBI and the British government involved in the search for Coya (remember, the original book was written when India was still part of the British Empire, but I admit it made me go wait, what? when I first read that bit).  And while they're in town the First Lady invites Nancy to a lunch in her honor at the White House.  Really none of this makes any difference in the mystery.

Once back in River Heights, Nancy goes for a walk and sees Miss Allison acting oddly on top of a bridge.  She calls the police, but when Miss Allison sees the officers, she jumps off the bridge and Nancy dives in after her.  Miss Allison is taken into custody and says that Coya was being held at the ruins of the weird house, but he's not there.  The next morning, Nancy and George go to the weird house and find Peter Putnam chained up inside the secret tunnel; he tells them that Rai has Coya at his barn house.  Instead of calling the police, Nancy and George decide to go straight there (not smart).

Rai catches the girls and ties them up while and Putnam runs off.  Rai says he's going to murder Coya and it's not clear what he does (he goes up in the loft and the girls just hear noises), but Rai says only the charm can save him, which Rai has because he stole it from Nancy earlier.  At that point, plainclothes detectives arrive and capture Rai.  Nancy grabs the charm, twists off the elephant's tusk and pours the liquid inside the charm into Coya's mouth, which saves his life somehow.  Rai is arrested and he and Miss Allison are tried and found guilty of all kinds of criminal acts.  Coya spends a month at the Drew house (this time he's allowed to stay in the actual house, not the garage) and a guardian takes him to India for his coronation.  Coya gives Nancy the repaired ivory charm in thanks for restoring him to his throne.

Notes:
Okay let me say right up front and you probably already figured this out but this is my least favorite Nancy Drew book thus far and by a wide, wide margin.  According to Melanie Rehak's book Girl Sleuth, Harriet Stratemeyer Adams was thrilled with it, but not me.  I don't like the mysticism elements, I don't like the racist Indian stereotypes, I don't like the magical drug inside the charm, I don't like any of it.  Nancy and Professor Stackpole are convinced that Coya is royalty just because of his posture and the way he acts, so how old was Coya when he was kidnapped the first time?  This poor child is a serial kidnap victim.

I really dislike how both Hannah and Ned are portrayed in this book.  Hannah complains mightily about having to take care of a "little brown boy" and she and the Drews put him to work doing things like gardening, washing windows, cleaning the car, etc.  Ned is very whiny in this book and jealous that a mystery is taking Nancy's attention away from him.  I do find it interesting that Ned just "happened' to show up at the burned-out ruins of the Allison house; he liked to poke around the ruins of the Raybolt mansion in #7, The Clue in the Diary.  I'd worry that he's going to grow up to be a firebug himself one day.

Nancy's Knockout Tally, OT Edition:
Another new record, Nancy has stayed conscious for four books in a row, so the tally stands:
Blunt force trauma:  2
Near suffocation:  1
Drugs:  1

Nancy's Skills:
She's cool as a cucumber in stressful situations.  I would not be calm if a giant snake tried to squeeze me to death.

Nancy Drew, Fashion Model:
At the very start of the book, Nancy is wearing a blue traveling suit with a "modish" little hat.  Do not ask me what constitutes a modish little hat for I do not know.

Cooking with Hannah:
Hannah serves tea and cakes when the professor comes to interview Coya.  She accidentally burns the bacon when Nancy tells her and Carson about the weird house burning down, but really that was Nancy's fault for interrupting when Hannah was cooking.

Nancy's Mysterious Souvenir:
Nancy gets a $5000 reward because she is the person who found Coya (take that, FBI), and she also gets to keep the titular ivory charm.

And now for a look at the RT:

Case file:
This one sticks pretty closely to the OT version, but instead of stumbling upon the mystery herself, Carson sends Nancy to the wild animal show (not a circus) on behalf of the show's owner Stanley Strong, who thinks there's something off about Rai and his supposed son Rishi (name change from the OT).  It's mentioned that the mystery starts in May and Nancy drives a teal convertible.  She, Bess, and George take Nancy's neighbor 5-year-old Tommy to the show and Tommy causes a ruckus when he climbs up on an elephant's trunk; Rishi calms the elephant down but Rai still gets mad about it.  They still watch the show and Rishi is the star, performing acrobatics on top of the elephant's back.  Nancy talks to Mr. Strong and he asks her to find out what she can about Rai's background.  

Once back in River Heights, Nancy discovers that Rishi has stowed away in the trunk of her car.  According to Rishi, he had two mothers, his biological mother and then Rai's wife, who told him that his father was in River Heights and that if he should ever get there, he should say the code word Manohar to his father.  Nancy takes this information to Chief McGinnis, who points her to apparently the only Indian man in River Heights, Vivek Tilak, a prosperous importer (isn't that what James Bond's cover job is too?).  Tilak is away on a trip to India for the next few weeks, but Nancy is convinced based on zero evidence that Mr. Tilak is Rishi's real father.

Carson says that Rishi has to be returned to the wild animal show, so he calls Mr. Strong who says that Rai quit and left, so he guesses that he's Rishi's guardian now (pretty sure that's not how it works).  Mr. Strong asks the Drews to keep Rishi and how is any of this legal?!  Carson is a lawyer for Pete's sake, he should know better.  Anyway, Rishi is the one who gives Nancy the charm; he saw Rai put it down and he swiped it.  In this version, the Drews give Rishi a room on the third floor of the house so at least he's not staying in the garage.

The story pretty much follows the OT from there; when the girls go to investigate the Allison house, Bess says that the house must be in use since it has electricity (which at least addresses the plot hole from the OT).  When Nancy gets the incriminating papers from Putnam, she helpfully explains to Bess and George that Rai had been using the papers to blackmail Mrs. Allison (she's a Mrs. in this one but we never see or hear of her husband); Rai eventually sold the papers to her and gave them to Batt to deliver, but Putnam stole them first, so Mrs. Allison had no chance to destroy incriminating evidence.  How she knows this is not explained, though.

After Rishi is abducted from the professor's house, Nancy and Carson go to Mr. Tilak's house and he greatly resembles Rishi, plus he recognizes the code word.  They tell him about Mrs. Allison and Rai's plot to depose him and how they had kidnapped Rishi and told him that Rishi was eaten by a tiger.  At the climax of the book, when the detectives free Nancy and George, Bess conveniently shows up with Mr. Tilak, who tells them that the ivory charm contains an antidote to certain drugs, and he administers it to Rishi.  Nancy gets not only the repaired ivory charm, Mr. Tilak gives all three girls jewels from the collection that had been stolen by Mrs. Allison.

Notes:
So in the OT, they never explain why this very strange house is set up the way it is, but in this one it is stated that the house was used for years by a circus troupe.  That still doesn't explain the tunnels under it, or the secret exit out of the boulder.

Hannah is a bit more sympathetic to Rishi in this version and Ned's role is reduced so he's not so much of a whiny presence, thank goodness.  He started out so strong in The Clue in the Diary, too.  It's interesting that they took out the trip to DC and lunch with the First Lady, but left in all the racial stereotypes about Indians being extremely superstitious and all that.

This is the first Nancy Drew book to heavily feature political intrigue, but I don't think it works.  Maybe I just hate everything about this book and have no patience with it.

Nancy's Knockout Tally, OT Edition:
Nancy stays conscious for the entire book for the third time in a row, so the tally remains:
Blunt force trauma:  4
Drugs:  2

Nancy's Skills:
She's able to climb up to where Rishi is tangled in all the ropes and free him even though the safety net has a huge hole in it right under her.  She does it in the OT too, but I was focused more on the snake attack for that one.

Nancy Drew, Fashion Model:
We get nothing in this book.  Nothing, I tell you!

Cooking with Hannah:
Hannah makes griddle cakes and orange juice for breakfast, and she gives Rishi hot broth after he almost suffocates in the weird house.  She also still serves tea and cakes for the professor and later burns some bacon, like in the OT.

Nancy's Mysterious Souvenir:
Nancy gets to keep the titular ivory charm, and she, Bess, and George get unspecified jewels from the collection Mrs. Allison stole.

Rating:
Zero stars across the board.  It's terrible, in my opinion at least.  Total misfire.

The Message in the Hollow Oak

Happy Drews-day and let's search for The Message in the Hollow Oak, Nancy Drew's 12th adventure.

Like her previous outing, The Clue of the Broken Locket, this book changed completely between the OT and the RT version.  The OT involves Nancy traipsing through the woods in a remote part of Canada on the trail of unscrupulous gold miners and can I say I *adore* the horse peeking out of the bushes next to Nancy's hip on the OT cover?  I didn't notice him at first and now he's the first thing I look at because he makes me giggle.

The RT involves Nancy traipsing through the woods of rural Illinois on the trail of a French missionary who supposedly left a treasure hidden in a hollow oak tree.  Nancy spends most of the book staying with an archaeological expedition that is digging into a First Nations burial mound, which begs the question how long a person has to be buried before digging them up changes from grave robbing to archaeology.  I think this time the RT has more issues with its treatment of non-white cultures than the OT.

Anyway, I think the peek-a-boo horse makes me like the OT cover better than the RT, but the RT is definitely an attention-getter with the skull.  Let's take a look at what the books have to say.

Case file:
Nancy has won a radio contest to suggest a title for a new mystery story by author Ann Chapelle, and the prize is a deed to some land in a remote part of Canada near Lake Wellington, which could be valuable for its timber and mineral rights.  She goes to Carson's office to tell him about it and meets Carson's client Mr. Taylor, who is looking to sue a Canadian company for infringing on his property rights.  Carson suggests that Nancy go view the property in person if she can find a chaperone, and Mr. Taylor suggests his friend Mrs. Donnelly.

Nancy leaves the office and kindly helps an old lady cross a busy street with her suitcase, only to have the suitcase stolen when a man drives up claiming to be the old lady's grandson while she's in the bank.  The old lady turns out to be Mrs. Donnelly (because of course she is) and Nancy immediately drives off in pursuit of the baggage bandit, and she recovers the pilfered possessions from one Tom Stripe, also from Canada.  Mrs. Donnelly quickly agrees to chaperone Nancy and her chums Bess and George for a trip to Lake Wellington, and tells Nancy that it's possible that there's GOLD on the land she won so Nancy is immediately stricken with gold fever.  That explains why the super persistent Raymond Niles offers to buy Nancy's land and won't take no for an answer.

Nancy, Bess, and George prepare for the trip to the wilds of Canada, and on the train Nancy strikes up a conversation with a woman who turns out to be Ann Chapelle, the author, and then there's a serious train crash.  Bess is a bit dazed but Nancy and George are uninjured and so they help recover other victims of the crash until the wreckage catches fire.  Mrs. Donnelly and Ann Chapelle are both injured severely enough to require hospitalization, so the girls find a hotel in town and telegraph their parents who are all inexplicably fine with them continuing the trip when Mrs. Donnelly recovers.  That night, Nancy wakes up to see Bess sleepwalking with the land deed in her hand; Bess goes out on the fire escape, but Nancy grabs a handy rope and lassoes her before she can fall (a trick she learned at Shadow Ranch, love the callback), but Bess drops the deed and a man picks it up and walks off.

The next day, Nancy goes to place an ad in the local paper for her missing deed, and she's given a message to pick it up at the Ranny farm, which they do after checking on Mrs. Donnelly and Miss Chapelle.  While Mrs. Donnelly is fine and soon to be released, Miss Chapelle sustained more serious injuries and requires surgery; since she has no family, she asks Nancy to deliver a message to her estranged grandfather if she should not survive the surgery.  Ann Chapelle is a nom de plume for Annette Chap, who was raised by her grandfather Pierre near Lake Wellington; she wanted to elope with her beau Norman Ranny, with whom she communicated by leaving notes in a hollow oak tree, but Norman didn't meet her as promised so she just ran away to America and became an author and screenwriter.

Nancy connects the dots to the Ranny family she just met, so she asks them if Norman is their son and he is.  He had fought in World War I and hasn't been the same since.  Mrs. Donnelly is sufficiently recovered to continue their trip (mighty brave to be getting on another train so quickly) and they finally arrive in Canada.  The girls hire Pete Atkins to guide them to Pierre Chap's property so Nancy can tell him what's happened to Annette, and from there to her new land which is near the Chap homestead.  On the way, the group is waylaid by Niles and Stripe, who are still after the deed to Nancy's land.  After coming off the worse from a scuffle with Nancy's group, the two men meet Norman Ranny and convince him to take them to Pierre's cabin as quickly as possible, and then they jump Ranny and leave him tied up in the cabin basement (this cabin has a basement??).  

Nancy and her group arrive looking for Pierre Chap, but he's nowhere to be found, and Nancy spies Niles and Stripe in the woods nearby and tricks them into thinking the girls have left so they leave thinking they're in pursuit.  It appears that their guide Pete has disappeared, and Nancy finds Norman Ranny tied up in the basement fruit closet and tells him about Annette; Ranny said he had gotten a note from Annette that she refused to elope with him and that's why he hadn't shown up 19 years ago, and after fighting in WWI he's become a drifter and sometime gold prospector.  Since they can't find Pierre at his cabin, Ranny offers to take the girls to another family's cabin near her land so she can still inspect it the next day.  That evening at the Dawsons' cabin, one of the sons comes in with Pete whom he found unconscious on a trail--he had been attacked and hit on the head with a blunt object. 

The next day, Ranny takes the girls to Nancy's land where they find a whole mining operation happening without her permission.  The leader of the mining operation, Buck Sawtice, tells her the land belongs to the Yellow Dawn mining company.  Nancy convinces the pilot who brought Sawtice there to fly her and her companions back to Lake Wellington so she can telegraph Carson.  Then they fly back to Windham, where they had left Annette Chap in the hospital, and Norman and Annette are happily reunited.  Carson immediately meets up with them because he's working on the lawsuit for Mr. Taylor which also leads back to Lake Wellington; Sawtice and his accomplices Niles and Stripe were also behind Mr. Taylor's issues.  Also Annette is very concerned that her grandfather seems to be missing.

They all return to Canada, and Carson gets a surveyor to establish Nancy's claim to the land, taking an entire posse with them.  Carson worries for the girls' safety but Nancy suggests they use the hollow oak as a message drop if they get separated (this helps how?!) and he lets them go along.  While the surveyor works, Nancy wanders around and overhears a conversation in French that seems to indicate that Sawtice has abducted Pierre Chap; she and Norman Ranny go to the hollow oak tree and discover  a note from Pierre and that he had buried a chest full of money there, so they relocate it to keep the bad guys from finding it.  Tom Stripe follows them and finds Nancy's bracelet near the oak, that's the scene on the cover.  They capture Stripe but still can't find Pierre, and basically the posse gets bored and disbands, leaving Nancy, Bess, George, Carson, and Ranny to figure it out on their own.

Finally Nancy strikes a deal with Buck Sawtice that he can have the deed to her land if he produces Pierre Chap unharmed.  Sawtice and his group keep mining in the meantime, though both the surveyor and Ranny have told Nancy that there isn't much gold on her land.  Pierre is turned over to the group in pretty sorry shape as Sawtice and his group had been torturing him for his chest o' money.  Nancy snoops around the mining operation and finds where the gold they've dug up so far is being kept, and with the help of Bess and George she grabs it and gives it to Carson.  Then she runs back and lights a stick of dynamite to destroy a dam, which causes the entire area where the mining company is working to flood while Nancy and company skedaddle on horseback and return to Lake Wellington.

Annette travels up to Lake Wellington as soon as she is able to and reunites with her grandfather, while Carson has warrants issued for Sawtice and his co-conspirators, since he has solid proof of their perfidy after their sylvan adventure.  Pierre gets his money chest back and Norman Ranny and Annette are planning to get married the following week.  After Nancy returns to River Heights, Annette mails her a picture of the hollow oak tree.

Notes:
I asked the Google and apparently there is a real Wellington Lake in Ontario.  This book immediately sparks some questions:  why is Canada giving away land in radio contests in America?  And why is Mr. Taylor engaging the services of an American lawyer if he's suing a company in Canada?  Bit weird, he would need a Canadian lawyer for that.  And I seriously doubt that Canada would just be handing out land willy-nilly even if there wasn't gold on it.

This whole case is pretty bananas from start to finish:  a massive train wreck, a gold rush, a broken engagement, kidnapping and elder abuse, not to mention Nancy's solving the problem with dynamite.  Not going to lie, I loved that part!  It was fun to follow along as Nancy traveled all over the woods and outsmarted a whole lot of men on the way who underestimated her.

Nancy's Knockout Tally, OT Edition:
Nancy stays conscious for the entire book for the third time in a row, a new record!  So we remain at:
Blunt force trauma:  2
Near suffocation:  1
Drugs:  1

Nancy's Skills:
Thanks to her training at Shadow Ranch, Nancy is able to lasso Bess before she can fall off a fire escape, and all three girls ride horses all over northern Canada with no issues.  She can understand spoken French well enough to figure out that Sawtice's men abducted Pierre Chap (I studied French for 7 years and I am fairly certain I never learned any vocabulary words related to any type of crime).  Apparently Nancy is a demolition expert in her spare time, as she uses one stick of dynamite to ruin all of the miners' chances to use her land.  Way to go, Nancy.

Cooking with Hannah:
Nancy makes a chocolate cake; Hannah says that Nancy can do it better than she can and Nancy points out that Hannah's the one who taught her.  Aww.

Nancy's Mysterious Souvenir:
Nancy finishes this mystery with a bag of gold nuggets that Carson arranges to have converted into cash, and Annette sends Nancy a photograph of the hollow oak tree.

Now let's look at the RT:

Case file:
Aunt Eloise calls Nancy from New York City and invites her to visit; her friend detective Boyce "Boycey" Osborne has a mystery for her.  Boycey and his friends like to get together on vacation and attempt to solve mysteries, but their most recent one left them stumped (pun totally intended since this is a tree-related mystery).  He tells Nancy that they were following the legend of Père François, a French Canadian missionary who worked to convert the Algonquins to Christianity in the late 17th century and supposedly left behind a treasure in a hollow oak tree.  They found one hollow oak with a lead plate on it; it had Père François' name and an arrow, but they all had to return home before they could follow up that clue.  He also warns Nancy about Kit Kadle, who is also looking for the treasure.

Luckily for Nancy, Ned's cousin Julie Anne is part of a university archaeological dig near where the detective club was working in Illinois, and the girls on the dig are all staying at a big farmhouse so Nancy can stay there too (the boys have their own farmhouse nearby, no shenanigans allowed).  On the way to meet up with Julie Anne, Nancy is harassed by a male passenger on the plane who is later identified as Kit Kadle.  She meets Julie Anne in St. Louis and they take a helicopter from there to the dig site near the Ohio River.  Soon Nancy meets farmer Clem Rucker who agrees to drive Nancy around the area while she searches for clues.  The very first day, she finds the first oak that the detective club had seen and also finds a second one due east of the first.  Someone in a helicopter spies on them at the second oak.

The next day, Nancy accepts a ride from Art, one of the archaeology students, to the town of Walmsley to ask about the helicopter at the local airfield.  Pilot Roscoe Thompson tells her that the spy was a passenger named Tom Wilson who has gray hair and a limp, but Nancy immediately suspects he's Kit Kadle in disguise.  Back at the dig site, Nancy helps out with the excavation and finds an infant finger bone.  That night is the first of a couple of instances of men trying to break into the dig site, so Nancy gets in touch with the State Police.  An "elderly Indian" man tells Nancy that Père François had a treasure but it was stolen by river pirates, who killed Père François and hid the treasure in a cave.  Theresa, the dig supervisor, suggests that Nancy take a river trip on a towboat.

Nancy arranges a towboat trip out of the town of Cairo, and then returns to the dig site where she finds an anonymous note that the treasure has been found--it's taunting, but not really particularly threatening.  That night, she finds men trying to steal a skeleton that the group had assembled and discovers that Bob Snell, a student who was on guard duty that night, is missing.  She also finds out from Carson that one of Boycey's detective friends has gone missing as well.  One of the students, Claire, is unhappy that all this danger and disruption of the dig site started happening after Nancy arrived (justifiable objections, to be honest) but nobody likes Claire and they do like Nancy so they tell Claire to shut up and color.

Even with Bob missing, Nancy embarks on the tugboat trip along with Ned, Bess, George, Burt, and Dave, as well as Art and Julie Anne from the dig.  Art is kind of a turd because he's got a crush on Nancy and is jealous that Ned is there.  The next day, the tugboat captain points out a cave, so the kids go ashore to check it out and Nancy finds a note from Boycey's missing friend which says that he's been taken prisoner by Kit Kadle and is being moved to Elizabethtown.  The whole group hitches a ride to Elizabethtown and Nancy finds the missing detective in an abandoned house; the local deputy puts out a BOLO for Kit Kadle.  Then the kids go back to the tugboat, finish their cruise, and they all return to the dig site where there's still no sign of Bob Snell.

Nancy borrows a truck from Clem, and then she takes Bess, George, Ned, Burt, and Dave (hereafter referred to as the Drew Crew) to the hollow oaks she's found so far.  That night, two men claiming to be from a museum attempt to take all of the dig's finds but the students chase them off.  The next day, Nancy goes out again with Ned, Art, and Julie Anne to look for the next hollow oak and/or Bob, and they find an abandoned quarry which Nancy gets knocked into by a random dog.  Art finds a lead plate with Père François' name on it but no idea which direction the arrow might have pointed originally, and he finally starts acting okay with Ned.

That night, while listening to the radio, they hear a report of a ham radio operator with a message that Bob Snell is being held prisoner, and they find out that the message was sent from an open area in southern Illinois, so somewhere close to the dig site.  Nancy receives a ransom demand of $5000 and the hollow oak treasure in exchange for Bob, but Nancy doesn't mess around with kidnappers so they contact the State Police and plan to leave a dummy sack instead of real money at the drop site.

Nancy and the Drew Crew find Bob being held by the two fake museum guys, so they overpower the bad guys and turn them over to the police.  Nancy immediately finds another oak tree with a lead plate on it, and they follow the arrow from there north to a waterfall where there's yet another hollow oak tree which apparently just recently fell over and is lodged in the waterfall.  Inside the tree is a metal box which contains a copper hunting horn.  Kadle and another man with a gun tell Nancy and the Drew Crew to hand it over, but the police immediately (conveniently) arrest him and take him away.

Inside the hunting horn, Nancy finds a cross necklace, a signet ring, and a surveyor's kit so this hunting horn must be pretty large.  She also finds a paper with a letter written in 17th century French, which Nancy immediately translates.  It gives the location of another burial mount and says that Père François got hit with an arrow when the Iroquois attacked the Algonquins he was proselytizing to; he knew he was going to die so he put the treasure in the tree.  Theresa plans to excavate the other burial mound when she's done with the current dig, and Nancy is invited to dig the first shovelful of dirt at the next excavation.

Notes:
I seriously doubt that even one hollow oak tree would still be in place after over 250 years, much less a whole succession of them, so in my opinion the whole premise of this mystery is unbelievable.  Also why would a missionary have a fancy copper hunting horn with him while he's traipsing from one village to another trying to convert the indigenous peoples to his religion?  I can believe the cross necklace and the surveyor's kit would be useful at least.  Also it's amusing to me how much time Nancy has to spend going back and forth to town because there's no phone in the farmhouse at the dig site.

I find it difficult if not impossible to believe that Theresa would keep the dig going after one of the students was abducted.  Claire brings up very valid points about all the danger happening after Nancy comes to the dig *and* the fact that she's not affiliated with the university in any way, but she's told to hush because the other students (and apparently Theresa) don't like her and they refuse to listen to her.  You were right, Claire, and I support you.

Nancy's Knockout Tally, RT Edition:
Nancy stays conscious for the entire book for the second time in a row, so the tally remains:
Blunt force trauma:  4
Drugs:  2

Nancy's Skills:
Nancy tries her hand at archaeology and uncovers several bones at the dig site in her free time from working on the mystery, and she's fluent enough in French to seamlessly translate a document written in the late 1600s and hidden in a tree for 250ish years.  I was two classes away from having a minor in French at college and I can confidently say I could not have pulled off that feat.

Nancy Drew, Fashion Model:
Nancy wears a "smart beige suit" to go to New York and again I say yawn.  I wonder if it's the same as the tan cotton suit she wore in the RT Secret of the Old Clock.  Go for colors, Nancy.  She changes into a clean pants outfit after taking an unexpected swim in the quarry but we don't know what color, and that's all we get.

Cooking with Bess:
Since this mystery takes place away from River Heights, we get no cooking with Hannah, but Bess steps in to save the day.  Bess is squicked out by the archaeological dig (eww, bones?) so she makes dinner one night:  ham patties, macaroni and cheese, and banana ice cream topped with cherries and ground walnuts.

Rating:
Five stars for the OT because I thoroughly enjoyed the gold rush shenanigans.  Three and a half stars for the RT because I just can't get past the preposterousness of the premise but treasure hunts are always fun anyway.

The Clue of the Broken Locket

Happy Drews-day and it's time to search for The Clue of the Broken Locket.

This is one of the times when the OT and RT share a title, the main characters, and that's almost all.  Both covers are by Rudy Nappi and though the stories are wildly different, they do both have Nancy discovering the titular broken locket inside an old rowboat.

The OT cover is kind of dreamy with that yellow background, and I read or heard somewhere that the appearance of the man behind Nancy (character Enos Crinkle from the story) is a self-portrait by Nappi.  I can't remember where I heard that so I can't verify, but I like the idea anyway.

For the RT cover, we have a much darker and moodier background so the girls' brightly-colored shirts and hair pop and no power on this earth could make me trudge through a swamp barefoot.  Not sure I could pick a favorite between the two covers, I like them both.  Let's check out the contents.

Case file:
Carson has deep misgivings about handling an adoption case for two actors, Kitty and Johnny Blair, who are adopting 14-month-old twins Jay and Janet as a publicity stunt.  The babies had been found alone in a rowboat the previous year with nothing but their fancy clothes and a broken locket.  Nancy meets the Blairs and doesn't much like them, so she decides to investigate and try to trace the twins' biological parents.  Kitty throws a party at the Blair estate, Jolly Folly, in honor of the children's adoption; Nancy and Bess attend, where they are horrified at the negligent way the twins are treated and the incompetent maid, Colleen, who is supposed to take care of them.  Kitty wants to burn the clothes the twins were found in along with the locket, but Nancy substitutes doll clothes and an old locket of her own so she can preserve any clues in the twins' possessions.  She and Bess smuggle the twins' possessions out hidden under their berets.  The person in the Blair household who seems to have the most interest in the twins' welfare is the chauffeur, Rodney, a WWI veteran who's clearly suffering from PTSD.

Back at the Drew house, they receive a visit from Reverend Dr. Paul Stafford, who tells them an unnamed woman visited him and begged him to contact Carson and tell him not to let the Blairs adopt the twins; Nancy immediately theorizes the woman also sent them a telegram to the same effect, but the papers had already been signed when they received it.  Dr. Stafford is interested in twins and tells the story of the first baptism he performed, which was for twins Rodney and Ruth 30 years ago, and Nancy connects this with the chauffeur Rodney.  The next day, Colleen calls and begs for Nancy and Bess to help her with the twins; as they arrive, the Blairs are leaving for a day of golfing so clearly they're going to be great parents.  Colleen herself is more interested in spending time with her boyfriend Francis than in caring for the twins.  Nancy then meets theatrical producer Edwin McNeery, who has the Blairs under contract for his new show but he's angry that they never show up for rehearsals and says they need to get rid of the kids.  Nancy also finds out that the Blairs spend far beyond their means and owe a lot of money for basic things like food while Kitty has a huge wardrobe of designer dresses and French perfumes.

We have a few sightings of the mystery lady who didn't want the Blairs to adopt the twins, and Nancy figures she must have been a nurse at the Selkirk Home (orphanage) who cared for the babies.  A few days later, Nancy visits the orphanage and finds out the woman's name is Ruth Brown, and that Ruth was the one to find the twins in the boat and she got the job at the orphanage specifically to care for them.  At first Nancy thinks Ruth might be the twins' mother, but she's not, and Nancy next hopes to get the Blairs to hire Ruth as a nurse for the twins since Colleen is so useless.  Ruth, however, does not want anything to do with the Blairs.  Nancy asks her to come back to the Drew home the next day and asks Rodney the chauffeur to come over as well--they are the very same Rodney and Ruth that Dr. Stafford had baptized 30 years ago, and they had lost touch after Rodney fought in World War I so Nancy reunites them.  

While Ruth and Rodney are happily reconnecting, Nancy receives a frantic phone call from Colleen who says the twins have fallen and are injured, so Nancy, Ruth, and Rodney all run over to Jolly Folly to take care of them.  Colleen didn't call the doctor after the twins fell out of their cribs (they had the drop-side cribs that are illegal now); she had been too busy hanging out with her boyfriend and trying on Kitty's fancy clothes to pay attention to the twins, and hasn't even bothered to feed them.  Nancy, Ruth, and Rodney take care of the twins and Colleen storms out, sure that Nancy is going to try to get her fired.  The Blairs and McNeery arrive, arguing loudly, and Colleen takes advantage of the hubbub to steal a diamond locket from Kitty's purse and plant it in Nancy's car.  McNeery complains about the Blairs to Nancy and shows her a picture of his estranged wife Sylvia, who was a great actress but wanted to quit acting to raise a family so she left him.  Meanwhile, Kitty agrees to hire Ruth to take care of the twins, and the next morning Rodney reports that Kitty has fired Colleen.

The next day, Nancy, Bess, and George drive back out to Selkirk to ask more about how the twins were found.  Nancy tracks down Enos Crinkle, who still has the wrecked boat in which the twins were found, and she finds the missing half of the locket in the boat, and this half is engraved with the initials SMN.  As the girls are having a picnic lunch, Colleen and her boyfriend Francis show up; the girls eavesdrop on Colleen until George accidentally falls in the river, but they hear Colleen say the police are about to get Nancy for something.  Once back in River Heights, Kitty calls Nancy and Carson to come to her house and accuses Nancy of stealing the locket; she has hired the unscrupulous lawyer Abe Jacobs to sue Nancy, but Carson is ready to do battle in the courtroom, though worried that Abe is going to drag Nancy's reputation through the mud.

The newspapers have picked up the salacious story from Kitty Blair and Abe Jacobs, so Nancy leaves town with Bess and George to try to work more on tracing the twins' mother.  Abe and Francis follow them and when Nancy's car gets a flat tire, they accuse Nancy of fleeing with the diamond locket; Francis knows exactly where it is in the car.  Nancy calls a mechanic and gets his help in getting away from Francis and Abe, and the mechanic tells Nancy about how he had helped a lady the previous year when she was struck by lightning near the river.  Nancy gets directions to the woman's cottage, and it's Sylvia McNeery, who Nancy has figured out is the mother of the twins.

Nancy takes Sylvia back to River Heights and calls Ruth, who brings the twins over and they are reunited with their mother, but there's still the question of the adoption.  Carson and Edwin McNeery arrive and McNeery is overjoyed to be reunited with Sylvia; he didn't know about the lightning strike and he wants her back *and* the twins (the same ones he told the Blairs to return to the orphanage, yeah those ones).  Then the Blairs arrive but won't talk until McNeery leaves; he's fired them for breach of contract since they kept missing rehearsals.  Kitty is hysterical that her career is in a shambles due to her own actions and the Blairs sign paperwork relinquishing their rights to the twins without a thought, and Kitty tells Nancy that she figured out that Nancy didn't take the locket because Colleen and Francis eloped with it.  The Blairs run out of town to avoid their many creditors; the reunited McNeerys buy a huge house and hire Ruth and Rodney as their new chauffeur and nurse for the babies.  And all of the newspapers print retractions on the stories that Nancy was a thief, so her good reputation is restored.

Notes:
So Nancy has pretty much wandered into a reality TV show!  This book is different from the previous installments in that the first third of it is just Nancy and Bess working on the case; George comes into it later.  Nancy makes a lot of snap judgments about the Blairs and all their friends (or frenemies, more like) but she turns out to be right about them.  Hannah is not very sympathetic either, she spends a lot of the book worried that Nancy is going to bring the twins home for her to take care of since obviously no one is taking care of them at Jolly Folly.  I like it better when Hannah is more caring.

Nancy' Knockout Tally, OT Edition:
Nancy stays conscious for the entire book, that's two in a row!  Cumulative tally stands at:
Blunt force trauma:  2
Near suffocation:  1
Drugs:  1

Nancy Drew, Fashion Model:
Nancy and Bess are conveniently wearing berets when they attend the party at the Blairs' estate, Jolly Folly, and these berets are big enough to hide the baby clothes.  Other than that we don't have any outfit specifics.

Cooking with Hannah:
Hannah makes hotcakes for breakfast and is aggrieved that Carson is too involved in brooding about the adoption case to do them justice, and she makes creamed chicken for luncheon.  On the day that Nancy invites Ruth and Rodney over in the afternoon, Hannah makes a soufflé for lunch as well as fancy cakes, but Nancy is too distracted to eat them (Hannah, call me, my family will appreciate your efforts far more than Nancy and Carson do).  Nancy tells Hannah she can serve the cakes at teatime, and Hannah decides to make hot chocolate because people like that better than tea to which I say Hannah, you have pressed an incorrect key (as I drink my second cuppa today).  Hannah packs a picnic lunch for Nancy, Bess, and George when they go to investigate the boat.

Now let's take a look at the RT.

Case file:
Carson asks Nancy to take a trip to Misty Lake, Maryland, and find out why the caretaker of a friend's cabin is too scared to do his job, and to hand over the keys to the cabin to renter Cecily Curtis.  Nancy grabs her besties Bess and George for a road trip, and on the way there, they meet a redheaded girl arguing with her fiance.  Once they arrive at Misty Lake, Nancy finds out that a ghostly boat recently began appearing on the lake, supposedly the specter of a boat that sank at the turn of the century (the 20th century, not the turn of the millennium).  The locals are terrified but of course Nancy is not.  They go down to the cottage and see what appears to be the same girl from the restaurant, who yells that they can't stop her from getting the babies and then she runs away.

Late in the evening, they finally meet Cecily, who is the girl from the restaurant but NOT the girl who was looking for the babies, so Cecily has a doppelganger.  Cecily invites the girls to stay with her at the cottage, and in the middle of the night, Nancy wakes up to find Cecily gone.  She goes outside to look for her and finds Cecily unconscious on the path to a large stone house nearby.  The next day, Cecily tells them that she is staying at Misty Lake to try to solve a family mystery:  her great-great-grandfather hid the family fortune during the Civil War and the only clue she has is part of a broken locket with a note that says directions to the fortune are in an iron bird.  Cecily's research has led her to Misty Lake as her family owned the large house called Pudding Stone Lodge; she's hoping to find the family fortune so she can marry her fiance, pop star Niko Van Dyke, who is embroiled in a lawsuit with his record company over his royalty earnings.

The girls find out that Pudding Stone Lodge is currently being rented by the Driscoll brothers, but belongs to the Wayne family of Baltimore (sadly none of them are named Bruce that we know of).  Vince Driscoll is quite rude to the girls and tells them to go away, but Karl Driscoll says that they can look around the grounds for the iron bird.  That night, the girls see the phantom launch but of course Nancy believes it's not a ghost boat and sets out to investigate the next morning.  She doesn't find anything but she's suspicious of the happenings at Pudding Stone Lodge.  The girls listen to Niko's new record and Nancy deduces from the poor sound quality that the record she purchased is a pirated copy.

The Driscolls tell Cecily that they've found the iron bird, but when they go to see it, Nancy is sure that it's one they just purchased from a souvenir shop in town.  Nancy asks to go out on the roof to see if there's a bird cornice up there, and she gets locked out on the roof for a while.  Nancy suspects that the Driscolls locked her out on the roof on purpose, perhaps to hide something (or someone) they don't want her to find; she also meets the Driscolls' adopted 3-year-old twins.  Nancy thinks that the Driscolls are keeping Cecily's double prisoner for some reason.  Once back at their cabin, the girls find it ransacked and a lot of the furniture broken.  Nancy goes out hiking around the lake and finds an old rowboat near where the phantom launch appears, and she finds a broken locket inside that matches the broken locket owned by Cecily.  She also notices an odd humming noise coming from near Pudding Stone Lodge on several occasions.  Nancy reports to the local police chief, but he's not much help.

Niko comes to visit Cecily at the cabin and they make up their fight.  The girls all go to Baltimore where Cecily tries to contact the Wayne family to ask about Pudding Stone Lodge; they find out from a neighbor that Susan Wayne closely resembles Cecily, and Nancy is convinced that Susan and Cecily are cousins.  Ned, Burt, and Dave arrive in Baltimore to attend Niko's show with Nancy, Bess, George, and Cecily; after the show, Niko and Nancy get in a car and are nearly kidnapped but Nancy figures out what's happening and they escape.  The next day, they all return to Misty Lake and Nancy finds an iron flamingo near Pudding Stone Lodge; inside its foot, they find a note from Cecily's ancestors about where the family fortune is hidden.

Nancy is sure the Driscolls are holding Susan Wayne prisoner, but she calls the police and they find nothing.  Nancy and all her friends keep watch on Pudding Stone Lodge, and she has the boys follow a truck which contains pirated records, and the State Police arrest the truck drivers.  Meanwhile, Nancy and Cecily sneak into the cellar of Pudding Stone Lodge and find Susan tied up.  Susan thought Nancy and her friends were helping the Driscolls, so anytime she escaped from them she was too scared to ask them for help.  Susan is the mother of the twins.  The Driscoll brothers catch Nancy, Cecily, and Susan and tie them up, but their other friends immediately rescue them and call the police.  The Driscolls are already in trouble for the record piracy, but now they get charged with kidnapping Susan.  A year ago, Susan and her husband were out camping when they were struck by a hit and run driver; Susan's husband was killed and she was taken to a hospital, but somehow whoever found Susan didn't find the twins because the Driscolls found them unattended, so they just decided to keep them.  After Susan recovered from her injuries, she tracked down the twins, but the Driscolls took her prisoner after she found out about the record piracy.  Once the Driscolls are arrested, Nancy follows the directions they found in the flamingo and find Cecily's half of the family treasure.  Cecily and Susan plan to have the broken locket repaired so they can give it to Nancy as a memento.

Notes:
This adventure was pretty wild and I'm not sure that my synopsis makes sense, there's so much going on in this one and I think the different plot elements are rather disjointed. I do find it interesting what elements from the OT were used in the RT since the stories are so different:
- Nancy finds part of the broken locket in a rowboat
- George falls in the river in the OT, and tumbles down an embankment towards the lake and hits her head in the RT
- Twin children are adopted by performers who treat them poorly; in the RT, the Driscolls had an acrobatic act and they wanted to teach the children to be a part of that, and they claim they just found the children and "informally adopted them"
- There's a mysterious woman who is interested in the welfare of adopted twins

I wonder if they got the identical cousin idea from the Patty Duke Show, I used to watch that on Nick at Nite when I was a kid.

Nancy's Knockout Tally, RT Edition:
Nancy stays conscious for the entire book, so the cumulative tally remains:
Blunt force trauma:  4
Drugs:  2

Nancy Drew, Fashion Model:
Nothing!  There was zero detail in this book about what Nancy wore.  We were too busy with identical cousins and record piracy and kidnapping to talk about clothes.

Nancy's Mysterious Souvenir:
Cecily and Susan have the two halves of the locket put back together and give it to Nancy in thanks for reuniting the cousins.

Rating:  Three stars for both.  I think they're middle-of-the-road Nancy Drew mysteries, not super fantastic but not terrible either.

Password to Larkspur Lane

Happy Drews-day and let's figure out The Password to Larkspur Lane!

I love the OT cover on the left, we have the beautiful larkspur of course and I really like Nancy's outfit, whether it's a color block dress situation or a skirt and blouse combo, it's great (though not for tramping through the woods, which is what Nancy had been doing before this scene happens in the book).  Then there's Mrs. Eldridge warning Nancy about the approaching villains.  Great cover, love the colors and the action.

The RT is on the right and we have the same scene, though the colors are darker and moodier.  Nancy's dress on this one is also great, if not quite as good as the pink-and-navy combo on the RT, but very 60s.  I quite like both covers, but I think the brighter colors on the OT make it my favorite of the two.

Let's take a look inside.

Case file:  
Nancy and Hannah are gardening when a wounded homing pigeon is struck by a low-flying plane and literally lands in their yard.  The message it's carrying is strange and includes the sentence "Blue bells are now singing horses", so of course Nancy senses a mystery.  She telegraphs the bird's registration number to the American Pigeon Club (that's a thing?), and then takes the larkspur she had been picking to the Blenheim estate for a flower exhibition (I think the Blenheim estate shows up in the Nancy Drew PC games, but I have never played them).  On the way back, she sees her friend Dr. Spires get pulled into another car, perhaps not of his own volition, and driven off in a hurry.

Back at the Drew home, Hannah has fallen in the cellar (she slipped on a potato, which might be the only time in history that a potato was evil) and hurt her back, so Nancy rushes her to Dr. Spires' office as he's a noted bone specialist.  The doctor hasn't returned from wherever he was going earlier, so they settle down to wait and Nancy takes an odd phone message for the doctor.  When he arrives, he praises Nancy's first aid skills for the bandage she put on Hannah, and tells Hannah she hasn't broken anything but she needs to rest.  Nancy gives Spires the odd message:  "If you say blue bells, you will get into trouble" so naturally she thinks this is connected to the mystery bird.

Spires asks Nancy and Carson to come to his office later that evening so he can tell them a strange story.  He was called out to that country road to see a patient of his, but then got yanked into the car, blindfolded, and driven for an hour.  Upon arriving at a large estate with a gate guard and giving a password (blue bells), he sees a patient who's practically comatose from a heart attack and has a dislocated shoulder; they're not allowed to speak to each other so he slips a bracelet off her arm and takes it because he thinks she's being held against her will.  Then he gets blindfolded again and taken back to his car.  Nancy and Carson volunteer to report the incident to the police, and Nancy notices a car following them.  After talking to Inspector Mulligan, Nancy and Carson get back in the car and are followed again until Nancy turns the tables on their pursuer and Carson recognizes Adam Thorne, a disbarred lawyer who had embezzled money from an estate for which he was the executor.  Thorne's car is the same one that Dr. Spires was abducted in earlier.

The next morning, Nancy goes to pick up Hannah's niece Effie, who is going to help out while Hannah is recuperating; Effie is obsessed with movies and boys, kind of flighty, but she does a good job making lunch.  Nancy is visited by Mr. Jordan from the American Pigeon Club, who says that homing pigeons are sometimes used by crooks to communicate because they're harder to trace than phone calls or mail.  Nancy asks to keep the bird so she can follow it back to its home coop when it's ready to fly again.  The next day, she goes to the jewelers Argent, Cutter, and Stone to ask about the bracelet Dr. Spires gave her; it has a coat of arms on it so she hopes to trace the design.  As soon as she leaves the shop, a woman steals her purse, so Nancy chases her into a department store and manages to get the purse and bracelet back, though the woman gets away.

Helen Corning, newly returned from a trip to Europe, sees Nancy and invites her to her parents' cottage on Sylvan Lake.  The girls go for a three-hour drive to look for the estate where the woman is being held, but no luck.  Later that day, she and Carson discuss the case and Nancy figures out that the code message has to do with flowers and that singing horses means larkspur, and perhaps the place she's looking for has a lot of those flowers.  Someone (most likely Adam Thorne) comes to the door to give them a threatening message, so Carson has the police put a watchman on the house.

The next day, Bess and George accompany Nancy back to the jewelers' and learn that the crest belongs to the Eldridge family.  Nancy puts the bracelet into Carson's safe at the house, and then Bess and George leave to go on vacation.  Meanwhile, Effie had put the box with the pigeon in it out in the yard so it can get some sun, but neighbor kid Tommy lets the bird out and then we get an amusing slow-speed car chase of Nancy driving while Effie chatters incessantly and watches the bird until they see where it lands 20 miles away.  When they get near the place, Effie gets nervous about who they might meet, so Nancy has her hide in the rumble seat, then drives up to a huge mansion with a bunch of outbuildings.  A man comes out of one of the buildings cracking a whip and he is super creepy.  Nancy says she wants to buy a breeding pair of homing pigeons and he behaves in a predatory manner, then tries to reach in and grab her car keys.  Luckily Effie distracts him by doing a weird-sounding laugh from the rumble seat and he's startled enough that Nancy is able to get the heck outta Dodge.  She drives five miles away to West Granby to make sure they're not being followed before she lets Effie out, and they stop at a hotel for lunch, where Nancy learns from the proprietor that the mansion is owned by a man named Tooker and the other people in town don't like his noisy airplane.

Once back at home, Hannah is feeling better so Nancy takes her to Dr. Spires for a checkup and uses the opportunity to ask if the Tooker estate could be where he was taken, but he's not as observant as Nancy and there were no flowers there.  Nancy theorizes that the people she's after have another hideout that would be to the northwest of River Heights since the Tooker estate is to the southeast and she keeps seeing this plane.  Effie calls Nancy at the doctor's office to report that a man tried to get in the Drew house, so Nancy tells her to barricade the door.  When Nancy and Hannah return, there is a man trying to get in, but it's Carson, who tells them he has to go on a business trip and he doesn't want Nancy staying at the house with just Hannah and Effie, so Nancy volunteers to go to Sylvan Lake with Helen.  Carson surprises Nancy with a new car, asks his law office's building superintendent Jim Durkin to watch the house, and they plan a fake-out to get away in Nancy's new car and hopefully trick whoever is watching the Drew house.

Nancy and Helen relax at Sylvan Lake and Nancy gets involved in an impromptu diving competition which of course she wins.  Ned canoes over with two other guys; he is conveniently working as a summer camp counselor elsewhere on the lake.  A five-year-old girl bumps into Nancy and then falls off the diving platform into the water, right in the path of a speedboat, so Nancy dives in to save her (hey look, a boating accident was averted this time!) and finds out that the girls name is Marie Eldridge, so she asks Marie's mom about the bracelet, which she says belongs to her husband's aunt Mary, who has been missing for several months and also has a necklace to match the bracelet (which you can see on both of the cover illustrations).

Nancy thinks Mrs. Eldridge is being held at a place that's pretending to be a sanatorium, so she and Helen continue looking for the place in Nancy's car and finally find a tiny path labeled L.S. Lane.  They get out of the car to look around and see a huge house surrounded by larkspur, and there's a guard shack and a gate, so this must be the place where Dr. Spires was taken.  It's getting late so Helen insists they leave, and they go back to her parents' house and go to a yacht club dance with Ned and Buck Rodman (who was Helen's date in the OT Nancy's Mysterious Letter).

The next day, Nancy and Helen go back out to Larkspur Lane to do some recon; the place is surrounded by an electrified fence and there's a Great Dane keeping watch at the guard house.  Helen hurts her ankle while they're hiking through the woods, so Nancy gives her a full medical exam and snaps a wayward tendon back into place so Helen can walk again.  They see some old ladies in wheelchairs, and Nancy recognizes the nurse as the woman who tried to steal her purse.  Luckily Mrs. Eldridge is close enough to the fence that Nancy is able to talk to her before a man named Dr. Bull appears and tries to get Mrs. Eldridge to sign paperwork giving him a lot more money, but she refuses.

Nancy and Helen leave and Nancy hatches a plan to infiltrate the estate:  she has Helen dress up as a nurse, while she dresses up as an old lady as they know a new patient is supposed to arrive that evening.  They give the password at the gate and successfully enter the grounds, so Nancy leaves Helen with the car and sneaks in to get Mrs. Eldridge out.  She tells Helen to get Mrs. Eldridge off the grounds, but Nancy's staying to try to save all the other ladies.  Of course she gets caught, and the bad guys lock her in an underground cistern, but Nancy wastes no time in climbing right back out of it.  She uses the pigeons to send an SOS message, sabotages two cars, and then wonders how to sabotage the plane, and just twists a pipe that looks important.

Three men run up and try to start the plane, but it conveniently catches on fire and explodes.  Once again all the baddies are searching for Nancy, but another plane lands and it's Ned, Carson, and the police coming to the rescue.  Ned was waiting at the Tooker estate for her message to fly to the fake sanatorium with the police.  Back at the Corning house, Mrs. Eldridge has been reunited with her family and she explains how Dr. Bull and Adam Thorne were in cahoots with Adolf von Hopwitz, a.k.a. Tooker, to cheat wealthy old women out of their money, keeping them at the fake sanatorium and drugging them to keep them compliant.  Mrs. Corning gives Nancy a silver loving cup, which was her prize for winning the flower show.

Notes:
This is quite an exciting case and deals with elder abuse, which we haven't seen before in a Nancy Drew mystery.  I do wonder how widely homing pigeons were actually used, even back in the late 1930s/early 40s when this was written, because it seems like such a silly plot device now but maybe it didn't used to be that way.  We do have a funny part where Tommy is looking at the pigeon and Carson tells him the story of Icarus, so Tommy thinks the bird's name is Ike Harris, which made me giggle.  Also, Effie is bananas and I love her, she's very entertaining while she's vexing Nancy.

Still no mention of Chief McGinnis in the OTs; this time we get Inspector Mulligan, who is a stereotypical Irish cop complete with brogue.  He's not interested in the bracelet that Nancy thinks is such a good clue, and at the end of the mystery she's glad it's the State Police who will get credit for breaking up the gang rather than Mulligan.

When Nancy goes to the jewelry store (Argent, Cutter, and Stone is such a clever joke name for a jewelry store, I like it), they talk about how the motto "Esse quom videre" is on the crest, which I had to look up and it means "to be, rather than to seem" and is the state motto of North Carolina.  I learned something.  Also, the expert that Mr. Stone sends a picture of the crest to is named Abelard de Gotha which is just a fantastic name.

It's interesting to me that Nancy gets involved in a diving competition with Helen's friends, because this book was NOT written by Mildred Wirt Benson, who was an avid swimmer and diver.  This one as well as the previous two were written by Walter Karig; I think Nancy's Mysterious Letter was a dud but I quite like The Sign of the Twisted Candles and this one.

It's nice to have Helen back as Nancy's ride or die, though she gets sycophantic about praising Nancy for being so smart and brave working on this mystery, to a point that it's weird.  Also, when Nancy first arrives at Sylvan Lake, she unpacks and the girls spend time admiring each other's dainty lingerie and I can say for a fact that I have never once admired a friend's lingerie, dainty or otherwise.  Helen gets scared and blubbery when Nancy tells her to leave with Mrs. Eldridge so Nancy kisses her, it doesn't say whether it's on the cheek or what, but there does seem to be some queer subtext in this book.  I'm just saying.

Nancy's Knockout Tally, OT Edition:
Nancy stays conscious for the entire book, so her tally stands at:
Blunt force trauma:  2
Near suffocation:  1
Drugs:  1

Nancy's Skills:
Nancy is a skilled gardener and wins the flower show with her larkspur.  She is also basically an EMT, bandaging up Hannah at the start and then fixing Helen's ankle in the woods.

Nancy Drew, Fashion Model:
When packing to go to Sylvan Lake, Nancy packs "neatly folded sports clothes, afternoon dresses, and two dainty evening frocks".  Really, the word "dainty" is used a LOT in this book.  Nancy wears a blue and white bathing suit at Sylvan Lake, while brunette Helen wears red.  After admiring each other's dainty lingerie (still weird), Nancy puts on a powder blue evening gown while Helen wears a rose-colored dress with lace.  Nancy has worn pale blue evening gowns on several occasions, so I wonder if she just has one that she likes a lot or if she's got a closet full of different ones (I'm betting on the latter).  Nancy later wears orthopedic shoes, a veiled hat, and a huge black coat when masquerading as an old lady to get into the fake sanatorium.

Nancy's Mysterious Souvenir:
She gets a silver loving cup for her larkspur winning the flower show.

Let's look at the RT:

Case file:  
This book follows the OT fairly closely for the main mystery, with a connected mystery added.  The (fictional?) group Nancy contacts about the injured bird is now American Homing Pigeon Fanciers, and Dr. Spires is changed to Dr. Spire (why?).  This time, when Dr. Spire is tending to Mrs. Eldridge, she has more agency and intentionally passes her bracelet to him.  The jewelry store that Nancy goes to in this edition is Butler & Stone's, so not quite as jokey as the OT name, though I kinda wish it was the same jewelry store from the RT Nancy's Mysterious Letter.  Nancy wins the flower show with her larkspur in the first third of the book, and the bad guys sic a Great Dane on her at the flower show, which was new.

For the other mystery, the now-married Helen Corning Archer invites Nancy to her grandparents' house on Sylvan Lake to investigate a strange circle of blue fire every evening, coming closer to their house.  It seems to have something to do with the Cornings' houseman, Morgan, who disappears that evening after they see the ring of fire.  The Cornings ask Nancy to stay and investigate, and she even brings Bess and George along, but Helen should stay with her husband (what?!).  This time, Ned is working as a camp counselor at nearby Camp Hiawatha with Burt and Dave, and the diving competition is moved to after Nancy saves Marie Eldridge and it's with the boys at camp.

Nancy finds bits of burned paper near the Cornings' house from the ring of fire, and Ned the chemistry expert tells her it's from fireworks.  Morgan returns to the Cornings' but doesn't want to talk to Nancy; he passes out when a package is delivered for him containing a stalk of larkspur, which makes Nancy think the two cases are linked.  From the Cornings' tale, Nancy knows that Morgan started acting differently after Thorne broke out of prison, and she theorizes that Thorne wants to rob the Cornings' house because they own a large collection of French crystal pieces set with precious jewels.

Nancy, Bess, and George go to a bonfire at Camp Hiawatha and Bess gets pushed, falling down a hill and nearly landing in the fire; the bad guys mistook her for Nancy because they were wearing the boys' coats.  They pretend that it was Nancy who was pushed and that she's hurt and out of commission for a few days.  Nancy hatches a plan to catch the thieves at the Corning house and finds Morgan in the crystal room; he tells her that Thorne is forcing him to rob the Cornings but then he runs out and yells that he won't steal.  Morgan gets in a fight with two men while Nancy gets knocked out.

In this version, Nancy finds the estate at Larkspur Lane with Bess and George, and it's George who injures her ankle but RT Nancy isn't a medical expert and so George stays injured.  Bess masquerades as the nurse and driver of the car to infiltrate the fake sanatorium, and she gets Mrs. Eldridge out with far less blubbering than OT Helen did.  While Nancy is running about the house and grounds, she finds Morgan in the attic before getting caught by the bad guys, who this time are led by Dr. Bell, not Dr. Bull (more of the henchmen are given names, too).  Nancy escapes the cistern and sends pigeon SOS notes as in the OT.

This time, she finds two cars and Morgan is bound and gagged in one of them; Morgan tells her that Thorne said he's going to "finish him off" and that Tooker has given the signal to clear out, so Nancy flattens all the car tires.  Morgan tells her how to turn on the lights for the landing field, which she does, and then she goes to the plane and drains the fuel so they can't escape.  Nancy is about to be caught again by the bad guys when two sailplanes land, carrying the State Police, Carson, Ned, Burt, Dave, and Lt. Mulligan, and all the bad guys are arrested and the little old ladies are safe.  Tooker, Bell, and Thorne argue about whose fault it is that they all got caught.

Back at the Corning house, Mrs. Eldridge has been reunited with her family and says that the bad guys had cooked up a racket wherein they promised rich little old ladies an elixir that would make them feel young again, lured them to the fake sanatorium, and then kept them drugged and forced them to sign legal documents handing over all their money.  This time the code started out as "blue bells" because the fake Dr. Bell is conceited and wanted his name in the code, which is a fun addition and valid reason to change his name.  Mrs. Eldridge gives Nancy the bracelet with the family crest on it, and Mrs. Corning plans to have French crystal earrings made for Nancy, Bess, and George in the form of tiny larkspurs.

Notes:
We have a few name changes, some of which I already mentioned, but Tommy in this one becomes Johnny and is apparently not the same child that helped Nancy in Nancy's Mysterious Letter.  Effie is still in this one and she's still hilarious; her dealings with Nancy stay the same as in the OT.  Inspector Mulligan is now a lieutenant and isn't written with an Irish brogue this time; Jim Durkin from the OT is renamed to Henry Durkin, probably to differentiate him from Helen's husband Jim Archer.  I think they made Mrs. Eldridge a bit more spunky in the RT, which I like; she intentionally passes her bracelet off to Dr. Spire and helps with her own escape as much as she can.

In neither version to they explain why the bad guys had not one, but TWO giant estates; this old lady racket must pay very well and they might have gotten away with it if they hadn't gotten so greedy about getting Mrs. Eldridge's money too.  In the RT, Mrs. Eldridge explains that the fake sanatorium scheme was Tooker's (a.k.a. Von Hofwitz) idea; Thorne was still in prison when they started and he invested in the scheme.  Thorne was the one who wanted to use Morgan to steal the crystal collection from the Cornings, that was all his idea and Bell complains that Thorne kept bogarting his henchmen to deal with Nancy or Morgan.

Random question:  how is a houseman different from a butler?  Also, how many different jobs does Ned have?  Inquiring minds want to know.

Nancy's Knockout Tally, RT Edition:
Blunt force trauma:  4
Drugs:  2

Nancy's Skills:
This time, Nancy is familiar enough with small aircraft that she's able to intentionally drain all the fuel out instead of randomly pulling on pipes that look important.

Nancy Drew, Fashion Model:
Nancy wears a lime green dress with a matching sweater when Helen first takes her to her grandparents' house to hear about their mystery.  Nancy wears a turquoise swimsuit at Sylvan Lake, while Bess is in butter yellow and George wears sea green.  For the yacht club dance, Nancy wears a rose-colored formal with her hair piled high and accented with a gardenia.  Thankfully the dainty lingerie disappeared from this version.

Cooking with Hannah:
Hannah is planning to make hot biscuits and chicken at the beginning of the book, and she's going to the cellar for a jar of sweet pickles for Carson when she has her accident.  Sadly that's all the cooking with Hannah that we get since she gets injured and then Nancy goes out to Sylvan Lake for the remainder of the book.

Nancy's Mysterious Souvenir:
Mrs. Eldridge gives Nancy the bracelet with the coat of arms charm, and Mrs. Corning plans to have French crystal earrings made for the three girls.

Rating:
Four and a half stars for both.  I think the mystery is solid, Nancy does some good detective work, and they're both quite enjoyable.  This one and The Sign of the Twisted Candles are both so good that it makes me wonder why Walter Karig's first Nancy Drew book, Nancy's Mysterious Letter, was such a dud.