Password to Larkspur Lane

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

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

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

Let's take a look inside.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let's look at the RT:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Secret of Shadow Ranch

Happy Drews-day and today is one of my personal favorites, The Secret of Shadow Ranch.  Or The Secret AT Shadow Ranch for the original text.

OT on the left, and my two RT copies on the right.  I just got the one in the middle a couple of months ago at a used book store in Old Colorado City.  I think it's interesting that the book's title changed slightly.

The Secret at Shadow Ranch is the first OT Nancy Drew that I ever read, though it's not the first one I purchased.  I love the cover of it with the bright colors and you can tell instantly that this mystery takes place away from River Heights.  Also this book has that awesome vintage book smell and I love it.

The RT cover is similar in composition but with a darker color palette and, of course, the phantom which isn't in the OT.  I find it interesting that Nancy's depicted riding a bay horse on the OT when it doesn't specify what color her horse is, while in the RT it specifically says bay and yet they show her on a black horse.

I give both covers five stars, I don't have a favorite between the two because they're both awesome.  Let's take a look at the contents.

Case file:
Elizabeth "Bess" Marvin and her cousin George Fayne (a girl who happens to have a boy's name) beg their friend Nancy to come spend the summer with them at Shadow Ranch in Arizona, which was recently acquired by their uncle Richard "Dick" Rawley as payment for a debt.  Aunt Nell is going to check out the ranch and put things in order to most likely sell it, and she's taking Bess, George, and their other cousin Alice Regor, who is Dick's niece (Bess and George are Nell's nieces).  They tell Nancy that Alice's dad disappeared 8 years ago when Alice was 7 and no one knows why.

Nancy gets permission from Carson to go on the trip (he wants to go fishing in Canada anyway) so then we have a chapter of the girls buying new clothes and packing for the trip, then taking the train to Chicago where they meet up with Aunt Nell and Alice.  They continue on together and Nancy makes the acquaintance of Ross Rogers, who lives in Mougarstown near Shadow Ranch.  They arrive at the Mougarstown station and are met by George Miller, the ranch foreman, who refuses to call girl George by her first name (this turns into a running bit throughout the book).  The ranch is run down and all five cowboys employed there are over 40, to Bess's dismay.

George Miller gives the girls riding lessons and then clears them to go riding on their own on the ranch and neighboring Shadow Mountain.  On a 15-mile trail ride with cowboy Jack Glenwell as a guide, a storm comes up and swells a creek which they have to ford.  Bess freezes in fear midstream so Nancy has to go back and grab her horse's bridle and lead her safely across.  They stop at a small cabin on the mountain for shelter, but the cabin's occupant, Martha Frank, is extremely unfriendly.  Nancy is intrigued by the 12-year-old girl living there with Martha who doesn't look like she's related to her.

Back at the ranch, they decide to do a round-up of all the cows on the ranch so Nell can sell them, which is a good distraction for Alice who's bummed about her missing dad.  Nancy is (of course) the best of the girls at helping with the round-up.  In Mougarstown the next day, Nancy sees Martha Frank argue with a junk shop owner with the singularly amazing name of Zany Shaw and wonders what they're arguing about.

A few days later, the girls decide to ride into the mountains and have a picnic; Aunt Nell insists they take a revolver with them, which Nancy carries because she's the best shot (of course).  After their picnic lunch, the girls fall asleep and then a lynx spooks their horses, who bolt.  Nancy shoots the lynx, but they have to walk 7 to 8 miles back to the ranch since the horses skedaddled.  George twists her ankle so once again they stop at Martha's cabin, who's probably wondering why she can't get rid of these four nosy girls.  A rescue party comes from the ranch to get them so they don't have to walk all the way back.  The next day, Ross Rogers visits but he's a bit awkward and Nancy realizes he's unsure of his own name, which makes her even more curious about him.

Days go by and the girls keep going on trail rides and have encounters with a rattlesnake and a bear, and try fishing but they stink at it.  They go into Mougarstown to attend a dance and all three attract local admirers, who suggest that they do a moonlight ride sometime soon.  The next day, Nancy is riding solo when another storm rolls in, so she stops again at Martha's cabin and this time gets to talk to Lucy, the girl who lives there.  They go through a trunk of items that Martha told Lucy to never mess with and Nancy finds a fancy doll and clothes with labels from Philadelphia.  She theorizes that Lucy was kidnapped and sends a telegram to Carson asking him to look into abduction cases in Philadelphia.

A few days later, George plans a trail ride but they get lost, so they end up taking shelter in a cave overnight.  The next morning they come across Lucy out picking berries and she helps them get back to the correct trail to return to Shadow Ranch.  Nancy wants to bring Lucy to stay at Shadow Ranch, but Martha won't allow it.

The girls' admirers from the dance come over on the night of a full moon for the moonlight ride and they happen to take the trail up by Martha's cabin.  They see Lucy run away from the cabin with Martha chasing her and threatening her; Lucy runs right off a small cliff, and she's knocked unconscious and has a broken arm.  Luckily Nancy's beau is a doctor, so he splints Lucy's arm and insists on taking her back to Shadow Ranch since Martha was clearly abusing her.  Nancy finally gets a response from Carson:  there was one kidnap case that matches Lucy--Louise Bowen, who was 3 1/2 and whose parents are now both deceased.

The next day, Martha demands Lucy's return and while she's camped out at the ranch, Nancy sneaks out the back and goes back to look through the trunk at Martha's cabin.  She finds a tiny child's ring with the initials LB on it and decides that's proof that Lucy Brown is Louise Bowen.  Zany catches her at the cabin, but she punches him under the chin (way to go, Nancy) and flees back to the ranch. 

Martha refuses to answer questions about Lucy until Nancy threatens her with the authorities.  Martha finally says that Zany, her brother (real name is Zeke Work which isn't as good as Zany Shaw), kidnapped Louise to get back at Louise's father, who had unfairly accused him of stealing.  A good Samaritan tried to stop them, but Zany hit him on the head; they thought he was dead so they ran with the child.  Turns out the good Samaritan was Ross Rogers, who lost his memory after the blow to the head.  Nancy decides that she won't press charges against Martha and Zany if they leave and never come back, which they do.

Nancy figures out somehow that Ross Rogers is actually Robert Ross Regor, Alice's long-lost dad (Aunt Nell had never met him, that's why she didn't recognize him); his identity is confirmed when Uncle Dick shows up.  Alice and Mr. Regor are excited to be reunited and also plan to adopt Lucy/Louise.  When the foreman George Miller takes Nancy and everyone else to the train station to leave, he finally calls girl George by her first name.  Uncle Dick and Aunt Nell decide to hold onto the ranch for now.

Notes:  I swear my "summaries" of the books are getting longer and longer.  Anyway, like I said, this is the very first original text Nancy Drew I ever read, and it was quite the experience.  There was a marked effort in the beginning to establish the personalities of Bess and George, who are introduced in this book, which was nice.  Bess is timid and loves food and boys, George is brash and frequently rude to Bess about her weight (the fat shaming starts here and goes on for decades, which I wish wasn't a thing).  If I recall correctly, George and Bess were the invention of Edward Stratemeyer's secretary to be Nancy's friends, and they pretty much pushed Helen out of the series (Helen getting married was added in the revised texts as a reason why she's no longer Nancy's mystery-solving BFF).  I recommend Melanie Rehak's book Girl Sleuth for more information on the behind-the-scenes of Nancy's creation.

The plotline with Alice and her missing dad is interesting but does have some holes.  If her dad disappeared when Alice was 7, I doubt she would still be so depressed about it 8 years later; after that much time, I think it would be normal to her for him not to be in her life.  In my opinion she acts more like he disappeared sometime in the last year, not more than half her life ago.  Finally we get someone who suffers some ill effects from being struck on the head since Mr. Regor loses his memory.  Also it's very convenient that the Regors decide to adopt Lucy/Louise without even discussing it with Alice's mom first.

I feel like this book is more of an adventure story than a mystery on the whole.  Most of the book is about Nancy, Bess, George, and Nancy riding around the ranch and having adventures in the mountains; the mysteries don't show up until pretty late in the book and the only detective work that Nancy does is rifle through the trunk in Martha's cabin and ask Carson to look into abduction cases in Philadelphia.  I was also surprised by Nancy using a pistol in this book, since I hadn't read the OT versions of the first four when I first read this one and she does handle a gun in a couple of other books.  Still, it's fun to read something written in the 1930s and read about things like Pullman cars on the train and how Aunt Nell doesn't like it when George uses slang like "Oh, man!"  I know I'm clutching my metaphorical pearls at that verbal outburst.

Nancy's Knockout Tally, OT Edition:  
She manages to stay conscious for this entire book, so the tally still stands at
Blunt force trauma:  2
Near suffocation:  1

Let's take a look at the RT.

Case file:  
Nancy Drew arrives in Arizona to be met by Bess and George for a vacation at Shadow Ranch, but they tell her that they'll all have to leave the following day as someone is trying to sabotage the ranch and Uncle Ed says it's not safe.  They tell her about a phantom horse appearing and a windmill being pulled down, and then Nancy notices a man eavesdropping on their conversation.  They find a note warning them away from the ranch when they get to the ranch wagon to start their 150-mile drive to the ranch.

On the way, they get stopped by a sandstorm and then the ranch wagon overheats; the girls discover that the water bottle that was supposed to be filled up by Shorty Steele (one of the ranch hands) is empty, so they have to be rescued by Dave Gregory, another of the ranch hands.  They finally arrive at the ranch and Uncle Ed and Aunt Bet agree to let the girls stay to investigate.  Nancy meets Alice Regor, Bess and George's cousin, whose father disappeared six months ago after a bank robbery.

The first night at the ranch, Nancy wakes up and sees a prowler go into the kitchen, but he disappears, and the next morning the water pump has been sabotaged.  Nancy goes to the town of Tumbleweed with Dave to report to the sheriff and get parts for the pump.  While in town, Nancy foils the attempted robbery of a shop belonging to Mary Deer, who gives Nancy a watch that once belonged to Frances Humber.  Frances lived on Shadow Ranch decades ago and was in love with the outlaw Dirk Valentine (excellent name), but her dad the sheriff shot Valentine dead and no one has found the outlaw's treasure.  Also, the phantom horse is supposed to belong to Dirk Valentine; he cursed Shadow Ranch when the sheriff shot him.  Nancy also buys a pastel drawing at the shop, which Alice later recognizes as the work of her missing father.

Later that evening, Nancy gets her first look at the phantom horse; the ranch dog Chief runs after the horse and disappears, and the girls' room is ransacked while everyone is out trying to chase the phantom.  The next day, the girls take a ride with Shorty as their guide to investigate a cabin on the mountain, but he takes a "shortcut" and keeps them from getting to the cabin.  He's really good at attracting suspicion.  Later Nancy finds a message inside Frances' watch that references a green bottle.  The girls go riding and check out a nearby ghost town, where they see a couple of men running away and find a crushed pastel crayon in the street.  Nancy goes inside a building and a rockslide takes it out but she's fine because she's mostly indestructible.  They find the cabin that Shorty tried to keep them away from, and Chief comes running out.  On the way back to the ranch, there's a big storm which swells a creek, and just like in the OT Bess freezes and has to be rescued by Nancy.

That night, Nancy wants to have her horse saddled and ready to chase the phantom, but someone locks her in the tack room.  She sees a light in the spring house but no one is there, so she deduces that there's a secret passage from the spring house to the cellar of the main house.  The next day, the girls and all the cowboys go to Tumbleweed to pick up some horses Uncle Ed bought, and Nancy meets Mr. Diamond at Mary's shop, who is very interested in the Dirk Valentine treasure.  That night, Nancy finds Dave digging up the floor of the cellar and he admits that he's looking for the treasure because he's one of Frances Humber's descendants.  Dave was the prowler in the kitchen on Nancy's first night at the ranch.  Pooling their knowledge of the legends about Dirk Valentine and Frances Humber, Nancy figures out that Frances hid something in an oil lamp which is conveniently still in a storage room--they find a letter about the treasure.

As they're reading the letter, the lights go out and the phone line is dead; Nancy heads for the stable and is ready to go when the phantom appears, but it runs through the herd of new horses and Nancy falls off her horse and gets knocked out.  The fences have been cut so now all the ranch hands are busy trying to round up the horses and fix the fences.  The next day while all the men are working, Nancy and her friends go to town and buy "squaw dresses" (ugh) to wear to a rodeo-barbecue-dance that they're going to with the ranch cowboys.

Nancy and Alice want to investigate the cabin where they found Chief; Shorty saddles the horses and puts a nettle under Nancy's saddle so the horse rears, but Nancy manages not to fall off this time and Shorty denies doing it.  They remove the nettle and go to the cabin, where they find a man named Bursey who claims to be the pastel artist despite the obvious fact that he doesn't know anything about art.  Nancy calls the sheriff who says he'll go arrest Bursey because Nancy thinks that he's keeping Alice's dad prisoner somewhere.  (If I was the sheriff, I would want more proof than what Nancy has.)

Nancy announces that the Dirk Valentine treasure has to be in the cliff houses which used to be a part of the ranch, because the letter said it was in the oldest house on the ranch.  The girls and cowboys all go to the rodeo-barbecue-dance thing and win a square dancing competition; Nancy announces to the entire crowd that she knows where the treasure is because she wants to pull a trick on the men who are sabotaging the ranch.

Back at the ranch the next day, Uncle Ed and some of the cowboys send out a diversion party with shovels to trick Bursey and his conspirators as to where they're looking for the treasure.  Nancy, Bess, George, and Alice ride around the mountain for most of the day and find the phantom horse's paddock near the cabin before they finally go to the cliff houses at dusk to look for the treasure.  They find Alice's dad immediately, who tells them that the bank robbers have kept him prisoner for six months and include Bursey, Diamond, and Shorty Steele.  Nancy finds the treasure in another cliff dwelling and lights a signal fire to notify Uncle Ed, but then she gets caught by the bank robber gang.  The villains monologue and argue about who gets what, and that gives Uncle Ed and the sheriff enough time to show up and capture them.  Nancy refuses to take any of the treasure despite being the one who found it.

Notes:
I was an incredibly horse crazy kid so this book was one of my childhood favorites.  It's also the debut for Bess and George, who are Nancy's ride-or-die friends for many many more books.  The glowing phantom horse is straight out of a Scooby-Doo episode, but I love Scooby-Doo so that's not really a criticism.  I love the Old West legends about Dirk Valentine (excellent outlaw name, five stars) and hidden treasure.

One thing that's funny when you read the books in order is that in the revised text, Nancy's boyfriend Ned is mentioned and she doesn't meet him for the first time until #7, The Clue in the Diary.  At the beginning of the book, Nancy is knitting a sweater and in the matte cover book, it's for Ned whereas in the flashlight version (the one I had as a kid), the sweater is for Carson.  They still left in another mention of Ned though:  in the middle of the book, when discussing the cute cowboys, Bess and George ask Nancy what Ned would think and she says he's in Europe so he wouldn't know anyway.

The original text had zero mention of indigenous people, so I thought the inclusion of Mary as a native character (and owner of her own business) and the cliff houses was an improvement.  However, Nancy and the girls buying "squaw dresses" for the dance is...not great.

Martha Frank and the abducted child are completely gone from the revised version, but I found it interesting how they still worked in the cabin on the mountain as the bank robbers' hideout.  I still have issues with the Ross Regor storyline though; this time he's been held prisoner of the bank robbers for six months.  No way would real criminals keep him alive that long and drag him all over the countryside--they would have gotten rid of him when he accidentally saw them robbing the bank!  Also, Shorty is a very obvious suspect from the jump.

Nancy's Knockout Tally, RT Edition:  3, she adds one this time thanks to falling off her horse

Nancy's Skills:
Nancy is an excellent rider and bakes excellent chocolate cakes.  She also stays calm when Chief growls at her on their first meeting and soon has the dog practically eating out of her hand, to the amazement of Uncle Ed and the cowboys.

Nancy Drew, Fashion Model:
When she arrives in Phoenix, Nancy is wearing an olive green knit dress with matching shoes and beige accessories; George wears a brown linen dress and Bess wears pale blue (which is usually Nancy's color).  Later, Nancy wears a yellow blouse and skirt with a matching pullover sweater.  After rescuing Bess from the flooded creek, the girls all clean up and Nancy wears a powder blue sweater and skirt; George wears a dark green linen dress, and Bess wears a yellow sweater and skirt (wonder if she and Nancy just switched clothes).  Finally Nancy wears jeans sometimes!  When they buy the dresses for the rodeo-barbecue-dance thing, Nancy's is turquoise blue with silver trim; George buys a bold red one, Bess a yellow skirt with a black bodice, and Alice chooses a pumpkin-colored dress.

Cooking with Hannah:
We only get a phone conversation with Hannah, but she has to be the one who taught Nancy how to bake chocolate cakes.

Rating:  
Five stars for both because horses.  Hey, I make the rules for the rating system!

The Bungalow Mystery

Happy Drews-day and welcome to The Bungalow Mystery!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nancy's Knockout Tally, OT Edition:  2

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Hidden Staircase

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nancy's Knockout Tally, OT Edition: 1

Nancy's Mysterious Souvenirs:  
The Turnbulls' silver urn

Now to the RT version.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nancy's Knockout Tally, RT Edition:  1

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

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

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

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

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