The Sign of the Twisted Candles

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Next up, the RT version.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nancy's Mysterious Letter

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

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

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

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

Let's take a look inside.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On to the RT!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Secret of Red Gate Farm

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

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

Let's have a look at the OT.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Mystery at Lilac Inn

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Hidden Staircase

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nancy's Knockout Tally, OT Edition: 1

Nancy's Mysterious Souvenirs:  
The Turnbulls' silver urn

Now to the RT version.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nancy's Knockout Tally, RT Edition:  1

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

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

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

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

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