The Mystery of the Ivory Charm

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And now for a look at the RT:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Clue of the Broken Locket

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now let's take a look at the RT.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Password to Larkspur Lane

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

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

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

Let's take a look inside.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let's look at the RT:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 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!