The Message in the Hollow Oak

Happy Drews-day and let's search for The Message in the Hollow Oak, Nancy Drew's 12th adventure.

Like her previous outing, The Clue of the Broken Locket, this book changed completely between the OT and the RT version.  The OT involves Nancy traipsing through the woods in a remote part of Canada on the trail of unscrupulous gold miners and can I say I *adore* the horse peeking out of the bushes next to Nancy's hip on the OT cover?  I didn't notice him at first and now he's the first thing I look at because he makes me giggle.

The RT involves Nancy traipsing through the woods of rural Illinois on the trail of a French missionary who supposedly left a treasure hidden in a hollow oak tree.  Nancy spends most of the book staying with an archaeological expedition that is digging into a First Nations burial mound, which begs the question how long a person has to be buried before digging them up changes from grave robbing to archaeology.  I think this time the RT has more issues with its treatment of non-white cultures than the OT.

Anyway, I think the peek-a-boo horse makes me like the OT cover better than the RT, but the RT is definitely an attention-getter with the skull.  Let's take a look at what the books have to say.

Case file:
Nancy has won a radio contest to suggest a title for a new mystery story by author Ann Chapelle, and the prize is a deed to some land in a remote part of Canada near Lake Wellington, which could be valuable for its timber and mineral rights.  She goes to Carson's office to tell him about it and meets Carson's client Mr. Taylor, who is looking to sue a Canadian company for infringing on his property rights.  Carson suggests that Nancy go view the property in person if she can find a chaperone, and Mr. Taylor suggests his friend Mrs. Donnelly.

Nancy leaves the office and kindly helps an old lady cross a busy street with her suitcase, only to have the suitcase stolen when a man drives up claiming to be the old lady's grandson while she's in the bank.  The old lady turns out to be Mrs. Donnelly (because of course she is) and Nancy immediately drives off in pursuit of the baggage bandit, and she recovers the pilfered possessions from one Tom Stripe, also from Canada.  Mrs. Donnelly quickly agrees to chaperone Nancy and her chums Bess and George for a trip to Lake Wellington, and tells Nancy that it's possible that there's GOLD on the land she won so Nancy is immediately stricken with gold fever.  That explains why the super persistent Raymond Niles offers to buy Nancy's land and won't take no for an answer.

Nancy, Bess, and George prepare for the trip to the wilds of Canada, and on the train Nancy strikes up a conversation with a woman who turns out to be Ann Chapelle, the author, and then there's a serious train crash.  Bess is a bit dazed but Nancy and George are uninjured and so they help recover other victims of the crash until the wreckage catches fire.  Mrs. Donnelly and Ann Chapelle are both injured severely enough to require hospitalization, so the girls find a hotel in town and telegraph their parents who are all inexplicably fine with them continuing the trip when Mrs. Donnelly recovers.  That night, Nancy wakes up to see Bess sleepwalking with the land deed in her hand; Bess goes out on the fire escape, but Nancy grabs a handy rope and lassoes her before she can fall (a trick she learned at Shadow Ranch, love the callback), but Bess drops the deed and a man picks it up and walks off.

The next day, Nancy goes to place an ad in the local paper for her missing deed, and she's given a message to pick it up at the Ranny farm, which they do after checking on Mrs. Donnelly and Miss Chapelle.  While Mrs. Donnelly is fine and soon to be released, Miss Chapelle sustained more serious injuries and requires surgery; since she has no family, she asks Nancy to deliver a message to her estranged grandfather if she should not survive the surgery.  Ann Chapelle is a nom de plume for Annette Chap, who was raised by her grandfather Pierre near Lake Wellington; she wanted to elope with her beau Norman Ranny, with whom she communicated by leaving notes in a hollow oak tree, but Norman didn't meet her as promised so she just ran away to America and became an author and screenwriter.

Nancy connects the dots to the Ranny family she just met, so she asks them if Norman is their son and he is.  He had fought in World War I and hasn't been the same since.  Mrs. Donnelly is sufficiently recovered to continue their trip (mighty brave to be getting on another train so quickly) and they finally arrive in Canada.  The girls hire Pete Atkins to guide them to Pierre Chap's property so Nancy can tell him what's happened to Annette, and from there to her new land which is near the Chap homestead.  On the way, the group is waylaid by Niles and Stripe, who are still after the deed to Nancy's land.  After coming off the worse from a scuffle with Nancy's group, the two men meet Norman Ranny and convince him to take them to Pierre's cabin as quickly as possible, and then they jump Ranny and leave him tied up in the cabin basement (this cabin has a basement??).  

Nancy and her group arrive looking for Pierre Chap, but he's nowhere to be found, and Nancy spies Niles and Stripe in the woods nearby and tricks them into thinking the girls have left so they leave thinking they're in pursuit.  It appears that their guide Pete has disappeared, and Nancy finds Norman Ranny tied up in the basement fruit closet and tells him about Annette; Ranny said he had gotten a note from Annette that she refused to elope with him and that's why he hadn't shown up 19 years ago, and after fighting in WWI he's become a drifter and sometime gold prospector.  Since they can't find Pierre at his cabin, Ranny offers to take the girls to another family's cabin near her land so she can still inspect it the next day.  That evening at the Dawsons' cabin, one of the sons comes in with Pete whom he found unconscious on a trail--he had been attacked and hit on the head with a blunt object. 

The next day, Ranny takes the girls to Nancy's land where they find a whole mining operation happening without her permission.  The leader of the mining operation, Buck Sawtice, tells her the land belongs to the Yellow Dawn mining company.  Nancy convinces the pilot who brought Sawtice there to fly her and her companions back to Lake Wellington so she can telegraph Carson.  Then they fly back to Windham, where they had left Annette Chap in the hospital, and Norman and Annette are happily reunited.  Carson immediately meets up with them because he's working on the lawsuit for Mr. Taylor which also leads back to Lake Wellington; Sawtice and his accomplices Niles and Stripe were also behind Mr. Taylor's issues.  Also Annette is very concerned that her grandfather seems to be missing.

They all return to Canada, and Carson gets a surveyor to establish Nancy's claim to the land, taking an entire posse with them.  Carson worries for the girls' safety but Nancy suggests they use the hollow oak as a message drop if they get separated (this helps how?!) and he lets them go along.  While the surveyor works, Nancy wanders around and overhears a conversation in French that seems to indicate that Sawtice has abducted Pierre Chap; she and Norman Ranny go to the hollow oak tree and discover  a note from Pierre and that he had buried a chest full of money there, so they relocate it to keep the bad guys from finding it.  Tom Stripe follows them and finds Nancy's bracelet near the oak, that's the scene on the cover.  They capture Stripe but still can't find Pierre, and basically the posse gets bored and disbands, leaving Nancy, Bess, George, Carson, and Ranny to figure it out on their own.

Finally Nancy strikes a deal with Buck Sawtice that he can have the deed to her land if he produces Pierre Chap unharmed.  Sawtice and his group keep mining in the meantime, though both the surveyor and Ranny have told Nancy that there isn't much gold on her land.  Pierre is turned over to the group in pretty sorry shape as Sawtice and his group had been torturing him for his chest o' money.  Nancy snoops around the mining operation and finds where the gold they've dug up so far is being kept, and with the help of Bess and George she grabs it and gives it to Carson.  Then she runs back and lights a stick of dynamite to destroy a dam, which causes the entire area where the mining company is working to flood while Nancy and company skedaddle on horseback and return to Lake Wellington.

Annette travels up to Lake Wellington as soon as she is able to and reunites with her grandfather, while Carson has warrants issued for Sawtice and his co-conspirators, since he has solid proof of their perfidy after their sylvan adventure.  Pierre gets his money chest back and Norman Ranny and Annette are planning to get married the following week.  After Nancy returns to River Heights, Annette mails her a picture of the hollow oak tree.

Notes:
I asked the Google and apparently there is a real Wellington Lake in Ontario.  This book immediately sparks some questions:  why is Canada giving away land in radio contests in America?  And why is Mr. Taylor engaging the services of an American lawyer if he's suing a company in Canada?  Bit weird, he would need a Canadian lawyer for that.  And I seriously doubt that Canada would just be handing out land willy-nilly even if there wasn't gold on it.

This whole case is pretty bananas from start to finish:  a massive train wreck, a gold rush, a broken engagement, kidnapping and elder abuse, not to mention Nancy's solving the problem with dynamite.  Not going to lie, I loved that part!  It was fun to follow along as Nancy traveled all over the woods and outsmarted a whole lot of men on the way who underestimated her.

Nancy's Knockout Tally, OT Edition:
Nancy stays conscious for the entire book for the third time in a row, a new record!  So we remain at:
Blunt force trauma:  2
Near suffocation:  1
Drugs:  1

Nancy's Skills:
Thanks to her training at Shadow Ranch, Nancy is able to lasso Bess before she can fall off a fire escape, and all three girls ride horses all over northern Canada with no issues.  She can understand spoken French well enough to figure out that Sawtice's men abducted Pierre Chap (I studied French for 7 years and I am fairly certain I never learned any vocabulary words related to any type of crime).  Apparently Nancy is a demolition expert in her spare time, as she uses one stick of dynamite to ruin all of the miners' chances to use her land.  Way to go, Nancy.

Cooking with Hannah:
Nancy makes a chocolate cake; Hannah says that Nancy can do it better than she can and Nancy points out that Hannah's the one who taught her.  Aww.

Nancy's Mysterious Souvenir:
Nancy finishes this mystery with a bag of gold nuggets that Carson arranges to have converted into cash, and Annette sends Nancy a photograph of the hollow oak tree.

Now let's look at the RT:

Case file:
Aunt Eloise calls Nancy from New York City and invites her to visit; her friend detective Boyce "Boycey" Osborne has a mystery for her.  Boycey and his friends like to get together on vacation and attempt to solve mysteries, but their most recent one left them stumped (pun totally intended since this is a tree-related mystery).  He tells Nancy that they were following the legend of Père François, a French Canadian missionary who worked to convert the Algonquins to Christianity in the late 17th century and supposedly left behind a treasure in a hollow oak tree.  They found one hollow oak with a lead plate on it; it had Père François' name and an arrow, but they all had to return home before they could follow up that clue.  He also warns Nancy about Kit Kadle, who is also looking for the treasure.

Luckily for Nancy, Ned's cousin Julie Anne is part of a university archaeological dig near where the detective club was working in Illinois, and the girls on the dig are all staying at a big farmhouse so Nancy can stay there too (the boys have their own farmhouse nearby, no shenanigans allowed).  On the way to meet up with Julie Anne, Nancy is harassed by a male passenger on the plane who is later identified as Kit Kadle.  She meets Julie Anne in St. Louis and they take a helicopter from there to the dig site near the Ohio River.  Soon Nancy meets farmer Clem Rucker who agrees to drive Nancy around the area while she searches for clues.  The very first day, she finds the first oak that the detective club had seen and also finds a second one due east of the first.  Someone in a helicopter spies on them at the second oak.

The next day, Nancy accepts a ride from Art, one of the archaeology students, to the town of Walmsley to ask about the helicopter at the local airfield.  Pilot Roscoe Thompson tells her that the spy was a passenger named Tom Wilson who has gray hair and a limp, but Nancy immediately suspects he's Kit Kadle in disguise.  Back at the dig site, Nancy helps out with the excavation and finds an infant finger bone.  That night is the first of a couple of instances of men trying to break into the dig site, so Nancy gets in touch with the State Police.  An "elderly Indian" man tells Nancy that Père François had a treasure but it was stolen by river pirates, who killed Père François and hid the treasure in a cave.  Theresa, the dig supervisor, suggests that Nancy take a river trip on a towboat.

Nancy arranges a towboat trip out of the town of Cairo, and then returns to the dig site where she finds an anonymous note that the treasure has been found--it's taunting, but not really particularly threatening.  That night, she finds men trying to steal a skeleton that the group had assembled and discovers that Bob Snell, a student who was on guard duty that night, is missing.  She also finds out from Carson that one of Boycey's detective friends has gone missing as well.  One of the students, Claire, is unhappy that all this danger and disruption of the dig site started happening after Nancy arrived (justifiable objections, to be honest) but nobody likes Claire and they do like Nancy so they tell Claire to shut up and color.

Even with Bob missing, Nancy embarks on the tugboat trip along with Ned, Bess, George, Burt, and Dave, as well as Art and Julie Anne from the dig.  Art is kind of a turd because he's got a crush on Nancy and is jealous that Ned is there.  The next day, the tugboat captain points out a cave, so the kids go ashore to check it out and Nancy finds a note from Boycey's missing friend which says that he's been taken prisoner by Kit Kadle and is being moved to Elizabethtown.  The whole group hitches a ride to Elizabethtown and Nancy finds the missing detective in an abandoned house; the local deputy puts out a BOLO for Kit Kadle.  Then the kids go back to the tugboat, finish their cruise, and they all return to the dig site where there's still no sign of Bob Snell.

Nancy borrows a truck from Clem, and then she takes Bess, George, Ned, Burt, and Dave (hereafter referred to as the Drew Crew) to the hollow oaks she's found so far.  That night, two men claiming to be from a museum attempt to take all of the dig's finds but the students chase them off.  The next day, Nancy goes out again with Ned, Art, and Julie Anne to look for the next hollow oak and/or Bob, and they find an abandoned quarry which Nancy gets knocked into by a random dog.  Art finds a lead plate with Père François' name on it but no idea which direction the arrow might have pointed originally, and he finally starts acting okay with Ned.

That night, while listening to the radio, they hear a report of a ham radio operator with a message that Bob Snell is being held prisoner, and they find out that the message was sent from an open area in southern Illinois, so somewhere close to the dig site.  Nancy receives a ransom demand of $5000 and the hollow oak treasure in exchange for Bob, but Nancy doesn't mess around with kidnappers so they contact the State Police and plan to leave a dummy sack instead of real money at the drop site.

Nancy and the Drew Crew find Bob being held by the two fake museum guys, so they overpower the bad guys and turn them over to the police.  Nancy immediately finds another oak tree with a lead plate on it, and they follow the arrow from there north to a waterfall where there's yet another hollow oak tree which apparently just recently fell over and is lodged in the waterfall.  Inside the tree is a metal box which contains a copper hunting horn.  Kadle and another man with a gun tell Nancy and the Drew Crew to hand it over, but the police immediately (conveniently) arrest him and take him away.

Inside the hunting horn, Nancy finds a cross necklace, a signet ring, and a surveyor's kit so this hunting horn must be pretty large.  She also finds a paper with a letter written in 17th century French, which Nancy immediately translates.  It gives the location of another burial mount and says that Père François got hit with an arrow when the Iroquois attacked the Algonquins he was proselytizing to; he knew he was going to die so he put the treasure in the tree.  Theresa plans to excavate the other burial mound when she's done with the current dig, and Nancy is invited to dig the first shovelful of dirt at the next excavation.

Notes:
I seriously doubt that even one hollow oak tree would still be in place after over 250 years, much less a whole succession of them, so in my opinion the whole premise of this mystery is unbelievable.  Also why would a missionary have a fancy copper hunting horn with him while he's traipsing from one village to another trying to convert the indigenous peoples to his religion?  I can believe the cross necklace and the surveyor's kit would be useful at least.  Also it's amusing to me how much time Nancy has to spend going back and forth to town because there's no phone in the farmhouse at the dig site.

I find it difficult if not impossible to believe that Theresa would keep the dig going after one of the students was abducted.  Claire brings up very valid points about all the danger happening after Nancy comes to the dig *and* the fact that she's not affiliated with the university in any way, but she's told to hush because the other students (and apparently Theresa) don't like her and they refuse to listen to her.  You were right, Claire, and I support you.

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

Nancy's Skills:
Nancy tries her hand at archaeology and uncovers several bones at the dig site in her free time from working on the mystery, and she's fluent enough in French to seamlessly translate a document written in the late 1600s and hidden in a tree for 250ish years.  I was two classes away from having a minor in French at college and I can confidently say I could not have pulled off that feat.

Nancy Drew, Fashion Model:
Nancy wears a "smart beige suit" to go to New York and again I say yawn.  I wonder if it's the same as the tan cotton suit she wore in the RT Secret of the Old Clock.  Go for colors, Nancy.  She changes into a clean pants outfit after taking an unexpected swim in the quarry but we don't know what color, and that's all we get.

Cooking with Bess:
Since this mystery takes place away from River Heights, we get no cooking with Hannah, but Bess steps in to save the day.  Bess is squicked out by the archaeological dig (eww, bones?) so she makes dinner one night:  ham patties, macaroni and cheese, and banana ice cream topped with cherries and ground walnuts.

Rating:
Five stars for the OT because I thoroughly enjoyed the gold rush shenanigans.  Three and a half stars for the RT because I just can't get past the preposterousness of the premise but treasure hunts are always fun anyway.

The Clue of the Broken Locket

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now let's take a look at the RT.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Secret of Shadow Ranch

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let's take a look at the RT.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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