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.
