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.

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 Clue in the Diary

Happy Drews-day, it's time to search for The Clue in the Diary!

Like last week's Red Gate Farm, this book only has one cover for both the OT and RT, but it does have *some* copies of the OT with a picture cover (so no dust jacket), which made searching for the OT a little more difficult in this case.  That is exactly why I have the book in the middle--based on the photos of the drawings on the end papers, I thought it might be an OT so I bought it, but it's still the RT.  Still, I like the picture covers without the yellow bar on the top so I'm okay with that.

We have an action-packed cover with Nancy chasing after a man fleeing a house fire, and you can see the titular diary falling in the very bottom left corner.  This artwork is by Bill Gillies (I don't have anything with the original Russell Tandy artwork) and I read somewhere that he used his wife as a model for Nancy.  Can't remember where I read that though as I've read through so many Nancy Drew-related things in the past few months.

Anyway, the covers are the same and the RT follows the OT pretty closely, let's take a look.

My OT book once belonged to Jean Hoover.  (I like seeing other people's names and sometimes dates in my vintage books--it's a piece of history for that particular book.)

Case file:
Nancy, Bess, and George are having a picnic after attending a carnival in Sandy Creek; they talk about a mother/daughter duo they met at the carnival and how they adopted them and paid for them to enjoy the carnival rides.  They pack up and continue the drive through the country, and when Nancy points at a particularly large estate, the house promptly explodes in a raging fire.  The girls immediately rush over there and honk the horn to attract more attention in case someone is trapped in the house.  There's a lot of chaos, Nancy gets separated from the other girls and she sees a man fleeing the scene; she also picks up a diary that was dropped at the back hedge.

Nancy heads back for her car and sees a young man get in and start driving the car off; she wonders if he's trying to steal it but he's just moving it out of the way of flying embers from the fire and that is how she meets Ned Nickerson, her main man for many many more books after this one.  Bess and George turn back up and they try to leave, but there's a massive traffic jam and a nervous driver runs into the back of Nancy's car.  Ned directs traffic to get the snarl ironed out, and then he gives Nancy directions to a garage in his home town of Mapleton and follows her there to make sure she doesn't break down on the way.  They hear a lot of speculation about the cause of the fire and Nancy finds out the house's owner, Felix Raybolt (Foxy Felix), is unpopular to say the least--he made his money by less that scrupulous business dealings and people are ready to believe he burned down his own house to collect the insurance money.

Once back at home, Nancy tries to read the diary but soon realizes most of it is in Swedish and she thinks, "I wish now that I had kept that Swedish maid,  She couldn't cook but she might have been able to read this for me."  No Nancy, we love Hannah.  Ned calls early the next morning and says he poked around the ruins and found a ring, so he brings it over to her that night and meets her dad (who is relieved it's not a diamond ring, ha!).  The next day, Nancy, Bess, and George go out to visit Honey and Mrs. Swenson, the two they "adopted" at the carnival; they're pretty much destitute because Mr. Swenson left to find work and they haven't heard from him for a week.  Nancy buys them groceries and they make a feast for dinner that night; she happens to see Ned on the way back to the Swenson cottage and just invites him to dinner at someone else's house.  Bit presumptuous there, Nancy.  She questions Mrs. Swenson and comes to the conclusion that she saw the missing Mr. Swenson fleeing the Raybolt mansion after the explosion as he was one of Foxy Felix's victims.

Carson is unable to locate Foxy Felix, but he does track down Mrs. Raybolt who seems surprised and upset at the news that her husband may have perished in the fire.  She's staying at the Maplecroft Inn because it's the closest to the estate, so Nancy, Bess, and George go there to see if they can meet Mrs. Raybolt.  They do talk to her and she's convinced that Felix is dead.  The girls then go to Mr. Weston's factory in Stanford since he's the nervous driver who damaged Nancy's car; he willingly pays the bill and says he should get himself a chauffeur.  Nancy spots Joe Swenson among the factory workers but can't catch him.  That night, the girls go to a country club dinner dance and Nancy wishes her new beau Ned was there.  A few days go by and the girls buy Honey a new outfit for her birthday and mail it to her.

They finally return to Stanford and find Joe Swenson during his lunch break.  Nancy speaks to him alone and is quickly convinced that Joe had nothing to do with the explosion and Foxy Felix's subsequent disappearance despite having a motive.  He tells her that if he had his diary (and money for a lawyer), he could prove his case in court that Felix cheated him, but Nancy doesn't tell him she has it yet, though she does offer Carson's services pro bono.  Nancy, Bess, and George meet Joe at the factory at the end of the workday but so do a couple of detectives, who arrest Joe for arson and take the girls in for questioning as well.  The four of them face a tribunal (that seems extreme) and they're starting to convince the tribunal of Joe's innocence when Mrs. Raybolt sweeps in and points the finger at Joe as being the last person Felix talked to even though Nancy can tell from her facial expression that she'd never seen Joe before and she was making up the accusations.  So Foxy Felix isn't the only shady member of the Raybolt family and Joe has to stay in jail.

The following night, Nancy decides to stake out the ruins of the Raybolt mansion with Bess and George, thinking Felix might return there.  Bess and George get tired and fall asleep, but Nancy keeps watch and confronts Felix when he shows up.  She screams to alert Bess and George, and Carson and Ned charge up the driveway at "the psychological moment" to nab Felix.  Our heroes take Felix to the Maplecroft Inn since it's so late at night, and the next day force him to go to the jail to exonerate Joe Swenson for arson (and murder, since Felix was presumed dead in the explosion but they never say murder).  Felix admits that the fire started because there was a gas leak in the house and he lit a cigar, but since that was an accident and there's no hard proof that Felix cheated all those people out of vast sums of money, he's not under arrest.  Nancy tells Carson that she has the diary, and other people start coming out of the woodwork saying that Felix had swindled them too.  Nancy goes back to the Maplecroft Inn to confront Felix and tells him that now she *does* have proof of his unscrupulous business dealings and she convinces him to repay everyone or else they'd bring a court case against him.  He writes out all the checks while his wife shrieks in the background; they move to a tiny house in California, can't make any friends, and are never heard from again.

Meanwhile, Nancy holds a "creditors party" at her house and passes out all the checks to the people Felix had swindled.  Joe Swenson not only retained his job at Mr. Weston's factory, he got a big promotion.  The Swensons gift Nancy, Bess, and George with new purses and Ned gets a new wallet; Nancy also gets the signet ring that Ned had found.

Notes:
So at the very beginning of the book, Nancy witnesses Joe Swenson literally fleeing from the scene of a possible crime but decides from a split-second look at his face that he's not guilty.  Two minutes later, she sees Ned hopping in her car and immediately thinks he's stealing it despite how nice he looks.  Come on, Nancy, if you're going to make snap judgments at least be consistent!  Ned is described as 18 or 19 (remember, in the OTs Nancy is 16), with dark slightly curly hair and "whimsical and friendly" eyes.  I remember liking Ned as a kid, so I'm interested to see what I think of him on this read-through.  He keeps turning up wherever Nancy is in this book which could edge into stalker behavior, but this is a kids' book.  Nancy likes him even if she doesn't want to show it; when Ned comes over the first time to give her the ring he found, she wheedles Hannah into serving cake and ice cream and asks her to put on a pretty apron and cap.  Bess, George, and even Carson tease Nancy about her new beau which is kinda cute.

Nancy had planned to ask a Swedish baker, Oscar Peterson, to translate the diary, but that never happens in this book.  Joe himself tells her what he had written down, and she uses the diary as leverage against Foxy Felix at the end of the book.  Nancy decides not to give the diary to the police because she thinks they're high-handed and that she can do the investigation better than they can; she even tries to get Joe away from the detectives when she knows they're out to arrest him, so she could have been arrested for obstruction.  Nancy does crime but never gets in trouble for it.  Also they have to face a tribunal right after Joe is arrested??  I know this is well before Miranda rights but Nancy knows that they can refuse to speak until they have a lawyer present AND the girls are all underage, they should not even be questioned without a parent there!

Near the end of the book, when the Raybolts are both staying at the inn, they're in suite 305.  That's the same number of the office that was mentioned over and over in The Secret of Red Gate Farm.  I'm on the lookout for more 305 references.

Nancy's Knockout Tally, OT Edition:
Nancy stays conscious for the whole book, so the cumulative tally remains:
Blunt force trauma:  2
Near suffocation:  1

Nancy Drew, Fashion Model:
Nancy is wearing a "sports frock" when the mansion explodes, so I am imagining a tennis skirt but that's probably not right for 1932.  Back at home, she wears a dressing robe and dainty black and gold slippers that she kicks off in glee after talking to Ned on the phone for the first time (aww cute).  When Ned comes over to the house the first time, she puts on a flowered crepe gown and heels so clearly she wants to look extra pretty.  While she's running around town, she wears a beret, and for the country club dance she dons a flame-colored chiffon gown with black slippers.  When it's rainy, she wears a red slicker and a "knock-about" hat and I need to look up what that means.

Cooking with Hannah:
Hannah packed the picnic that the girls eat at the beginning of the book but we don't get to find out specifics of what she made.  Hannah makes a cake at Nancy's request for cake and ice cream when Ned comes over.  Nancy spends a lot of time driving back and forth between River Heights, Mapleton, Sandy Creek (where the Swensons live), and Stanford so she eats at a lot of tearooms and inns instead of home cooking by Hannah.

The book on the left was given to Maxine by her parents, and sometime later came into the possession of Brenda and now it's mine.  The other one only has my name in it.

Case file/Notes:
Like Red Gate Farm, this RT follows the OT pretty closely, with some things a bit condensed and one subplot added.  At the start, Nancy speculates that Mrs. Swenson's letters from her husband might have been stolen, particularly if he was sending her money orders and he's been gone for a month.  Later, instead of going to a country club dance with Bess and George, she attends a dinner party with Ned and meets his fraternity brother Phil Roberts, whose father happens to be the Stanford postmaster.  She goes to talk to the postmaster the next day and devises a sting operation to see if a money order actually goes out or if it's stolen.  Sure enough, the money order clerk was stealing and had accomplices cashing the money orders in other towns.

In the RT, Carson has a client who was swindled by Foxy Felix, so he has a more vested interest in finding Felix so his client can sue.  When Ned brings Nancy the ring he found, it has a D in it, which they later learn is for Dahl, which was Joe's mother's maiden name (and also Mrs. Swenson's maiden name, which seems like a really weird detail to include and makes me think of a Gilmore Girls episode).  Joe is working at Mr. Weston's factory under the last name Dahl.  In this version, Nancy recognizes the language in the diary as Swedish because she had a Swedish schoolmate.  Hannah is the one who reminds Nancy of Oscar Peterson the Swedish baker, and in this version Nancy does have him translate the diary for her (after he infodumps about famous people who kept diaries in the past).  The clue in the diary is that Joe wrote about how Foxy Felix had a secret hiding place in his house, and that's why Nancy thinks Felix going to return to the ruins of the mansion.

Happily for Felix, the hiding place was in the cellar and thus not destroyed in the explosion, so when he returns to the mansion late at night he's able to open the safe and starts to burn papers until Nancy stops him.  She later hands those papers over to the police and in this version they do press charges against Felix.  The Raybolts in this book are in collusion to commit insurance fraud (OT Mrs. Raybolt thought Felix was actually dead, he was going to tell her later; RT Mrs. Raybolt was in on it from the jump) and Felix had intentionally rigged the explosion but had to detonate it sooner than he intended when Joe showed up for their appointment early.

Nancy's Knockout Tally, RT Edition:
She managed to stay conscious for two books in a row (way to go, Nancy!) so we're still at 3

Nancy's Skills:
In the OT, she practices piano and sews while she's waiting for the weather to clear so she can go back to Stanford to look for Joe.  In the RT, she's the one who devises the scheme to catch the thieves at the post office.

Nancy Drew, Fashion Model:
She still has her dressing robe and dainty black and gold slippers.  Nancy wears a flowered dress with high heels, and for the dinner party with Ned she dons a pale green chiffon dress with gold evening shoes and a white wrap.  The OT actually has more outfits described than this one, which I think is a first.

Cooking with Hannah:
Hannah makes blueberry muffins, and later makes tea that Nancy is too distracted to drink.

Nancy's Mysterious Souvenir:  
Nancy, Bess, and George all get purses, Ned gets a wallet, and Nancy gets the signet ring.

Rating:
Three and a half stars for both.  It's fine, just not my favorite, though now that Ned has arrived the main gang is all together.