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.