The Sign of the Twisted Candles

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Next up, the RT version.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nancy's Mysterious Letter

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

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

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

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

Let's take a look inside.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On to the RT!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Bungalow Mystery

Happy Drews-day and welcome to The Bungalow Mystery!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nancy's Knockout Tally, OT Edition:  2

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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