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 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.

The Mystery at Lilac Inn

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Bungalow Mystery

Happy Drews-day and welcome to The Bungalow Mystery!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nancy's Knockout Tally, OT Edition:  2

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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