56 Weeks with Nancy Drew - The Secret of Red Gate Farm - Part 2/2

Week 6, Book 6

Welcome to the 56 Weeks with Nancy Drew series! If you are new here, welcome. You can find my introductory post to this series here. Please note I will be including plot spoilers in this review series. I explain my reasoning at the start of this post. This is Part Two in a two part discussion. You can find Part One here.

Originally published in 1931 and written by Mildred Wirt, I am continuing my review of the revised edition of The Secret of Red Gate Farm, published in 1961 and pictured above.

Nancy Drew, Code Breaker

Unlike in the other books, where Nancy trots out skills she already possesses, in this one we see Nancy acquire skills she didn’t previously possess. Seeing Nancy willing to try something and—if not fail at it—do it poorly, is something I think all children (and maybe some of us adults) can relate to and find encouragement from.

One thing Nancy hasn’t done before is milking a cow. There is a humorous scene with Bess trying to milk Primrose the cow, followed by this brief description of Nancy’s experience.

    “It’s no trick at all!” Bess insisted. “Give me that pail and I’ll show you just how it’s done.”

    Reuben handed over the bucked, and Bess marched determinedly up to the cow. 

    “Nice bossy,” she murmured, giving the animal a timid pat on the neck.

    The cow responded with a suspicious look and flirt of her tail. As Bess set down the milking stool, the cow kicked it over.

    Bess sprang back in alarm. “You can’t expect me to milk a vicious cow!” she exclaimed.

    […]

    After a great deal of maneuvering, Bess succeeded in handling the whole procedure to the satisfaction of Primrose. Nancy came last, and she, too, was a bit awkward. When Reuben finally sat down to do the milking, the girls watched him with admiration. “It just takes practice,” he said smiling. (75)

Finally, something Nancy doesn’t excel at straight out of the gate! Yes, Bess makes a bit of an ass of herself, and though we don’t hear how George gets on, we expect that she wasn’t terribly good at milking either. And while Nancy isn’t turned into a figure of fun in this scene, like Bess is, we do find out that she was awkward too. Not a description we have come to expect from our elegant and capable girl detective! This realistic snapshot of what it’s like to try something for the first time is refreshing, to say the least. 

The other skill that Nancy tries her hand at is codebreaking. Coming across what she believes is a code, Nancy shows it to her father and asks if he can figure it out (27). 

    “I wish I could, but it looks like a complicated one. It would probably take me days to figure out what these numbers stand for. Why don’t you work on it yourself?”

    “I don’t know too much about codes,” Nancy declared, “but perhaps I can learn!” 

    “I have a book you might use,” her father offered. “It may not help much, since every code is different.” (28)

 

Carson goes on to explain some of the features that codes do have in common and encourages his daughter by saying it will be “a good test for your sleuthing mind” (28).

After dinner, Carson retires to his study while Nancy goes to her bedroom. She reads the book that evening and cracks a chunk of the code in just over two hours! There was something about this scene that sparked my imagination as a child. In part, I believe it’s because Nancy is acting like an average teenager, going to her dad for help. He doesn’t have the answer, instead he provides her with the tools to work on the problem herself. Then she goes to her bedroom, reads the book, puts her mind to the problem, and finds success. 

I was obsessed with codes after reading this book, and had no end of fun making up my own written codes. Codebreaking is an interest that has stayed with me to this day. Although, as an adult, I am more interested in reading about codebreaking than in doing it myself!

At first, Nancy only figures out part of the code. It is weeks later when a random happening gives her the idea to look at the code in a different way. George gets bitten by a snake on their way back to the farm from an afternoon of swimming. Nancy provides on the spot first aid, the doctor is called, and George quickly recovers. It is seeing the shape of the snake on the ground as it slithers away after it has bitten George that gives Nancy the idea the squiggle in the code could stand for the word “snake”. That incident provided the key Nancy needed to solve the remainder of the code (136). Thank goodness she decided to take the afternoon off of sleuthing, otherwise she might never have cracked the code!

It’s this balance between the intellectual and practical that makes Nancy Drew a good detective. She is willing to turn her brain to something new and daunting, like codebreaking, but when she doesn’t find instant success she doesn’t let that deter her. Even as she takes time out to go swimming or help our with farm chores, she continues to turn the case over in her mind.

Other things that make this book special

Along with codebreaking, this book has a few other things about it that I loved as a child. And strangely, all of them start with the letter C. Well, sort of. 

This book is set in the countryside. Now, I know lot of Nancy Drew books are set in the country and many of their climactic moments take place outside. This one is different because it is set on a farm as opposed to a ranch, mansion, or inn. While all of those make for great settings, they also feel a bit more remote. In The Secret at Red Gate Farm, Nancy and her friends do things I had experienced myself as a child, like exploring the surrounding fields and visiting the local swimming hole. This isn’t a fancy setting. Yes, Nancy and her friends are paying guests at the farm, but they also take part in farm life and the pace of this book reflects this slower lifestyle.

The setting does have one special feature. There is a cave that Jo suggests they explore. 

    “You must have explored it before this!” Nancy exclaimed.

    “Oh, yes, of course, though I’ll admit I never did very thoroughly, and I haven’t been near the cave for years. As a child I was always afraid of the place—it looked so dark and gloomy. Lately I’ve been to busy working around the farm.” (45)

What could be more mysterious than an unexplored cave? Good question. How about if that cave were located on land being rented by a cult called the Black Snake Colony?! 

    “I’m not sure what they do,” Joanne admitted. “We’ve never even spoken to any members. I supposed they believe in living an outdoor life.”

    “You can live that way without joining a nature cult,” George said dryly. “I suppose they dance when the dew is on the grass and such nonsense!”

    “Believe it or not they do dance!” Joanne laughed. “But only nights when the moon is out. I’ve seen them here in the moonlight. It’s an eerie sight. They wear white robes and flit around waving their arms. They even wear masks!” (66)

You just know that Nancy and her friends are going to go undercover to find out what the mysterious group does at their meetings. (“Undercover” is the “sort of” C word, I mentioned above. Haha!)

And the thing they find in the cave when they go undercover with the cult also starts with the letter C. It’s counterfeit money. Loads of it!

    Nancy’s first impression on entering was that the chamber appeared to be a cross between a printing shop and a United States mint.

    “Counterfeiters!” she thought excitedly.

    Hand presses stood about and several engraved plates had been left on a table. Various chemicals and inks were in evidence. Neat stacks of paper money lined one wall and other bills were scattered carelessly on the floor. Never in all her life had Nancy seen so much money! (150)

This makes for thrilling reading when you are a child. Imagine sneaking into a cave under the guise of being a cult member, and finding yourself surrounded with all of that counterfeit money and realizing these people are even more dangerous that you had thought, and all the while you are wondering if you and your friends will manage to escape before one of you is asked to take of your mask! Eek!

The last thing isn’t special to this book, or even to this series, as it turns out. I can’t remember the title of the first Nancy Drew book I came across. What I remember is the magical feeling of seeing my own name on the cover of a book.  My full name is Carolyn. Seeing my name on the cover of a book had a powerful effect on me. I knew these books were for me. They literally had my name on them! And in some small way, it felt like someone out there was telling me to dream big. Because if that Carolyn could be a writer, why couldn’t I?

I know now that Carolyn Keene is a pseudonym. Although, we do have Mildred Wirt to thank for many of them, it was a number of women and men who wrote these books. I don’t think it would have mattered if I had known that then, because that just means someone chose my name to put on these books. That in itself is special. It is to me, anyway.

What I don’t love about this book

I’m sure I have said this before, but in case I have not… The 56 titles in the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories series published by Grosset & Dunlap are of their time. They were published from 1930 to 1979 and even the revised texts editions contain content that is, at best problematic, at worst racist, classist, and at times, they manage to be sexist too. So while I read these books as a child, I would hope that the parents of children reading these books now would have conversations with them about what they are reading, pointing out some of the language and ideas that are best left in the past. I get great enjoyment out of reading these books and other vintage children's books. I think reading older books is a great way for younger generations to see how far we have come in some ways and also to highlight the things that haven't changed enough.

In this book, the word “Oriental” is used to other a person of Asian descent. Likewise, the word “Orient” is often paired with words like “mystic” or “exotic” to similar effect, placing both Asian peoples and cultures as opposite to Western. It makes it worse that the woman described as “Oriental-looking” is one of the baddies, placing her in opposition to our heroine.

The other problem with this book is that Nancy gets rescued twice. If you read my blog post for The Mystery at Lilac Inn you already know that this grates on me. I would prefer it if Nancy was not positioned as being either helpless or thoughtless and in need of a man to look after her. She has the tools at her disposal to look after herself. I don’t know why we can’t just leave her to it.

There isn’t the space to discuss these topics here, but in future, once 56 Weeks with Nancy Drew is at an end, I hope to do some posts entirely devoted to these topics and others. 

Favourite quotation

There is one line with the word cahoots in this book, but I cannot for the life of me find it. I’m thinking it was close to the end and I was so taken up by the story that I forgot to mark it down, but I cannot even be sure of that, so I will have to settle for sharing my second favourite quotation. 

    George took Nancy aside and said excitedly, “A little white ago a man phoned here and asked for Miss Fayne. When I answered, he said, ‘Listen, miss, tell that snoopy friend of yours to stop her snooping, or she’ll be sorry!’ Then he hung up the phone without giving his name.” (43)

So much of that is hilarious, but what the baddie said is the funniest. Good thing he said it over the phone, because how could anyone issue that threat with a straight face?!

56 Weeks with Nancy Drew - The Secret of Red Gate Farm - Part 1/2

Week 6, Book 6

Welcome to the 56 Weeks with Nancy Drew series! If you are new here, welcome. You can find my introductory post to this series here. Please note I will be including plot spoilers in this review series. I explain my reasoning at the start of this post. I should add that my discussion of The Secret of Red Gate Farm is a two-parter. Once Part Two goes live, you will be able to find a link to it here. 

Edition pictured: Revised text (20 chapters, 178 pages)

Cover illustrated by: Bill Gillies

Revised text publication date: 1961

Original text publication date: 1931

My edition printed: approx. 1973

Ghostwriter: Mildred A. Wirt Benson

Editors: Edna Stratemeyer Squier & Harriet Stratemeyer Adams

Revised by: Lynn Ealer

Setting: River Heights, Riverside Heights (a few miles away from River Heights) & Red Gate Farm (about 10 miles from Round Valley)

Originally published in 1931 and written by Mildred Wirt, I will be reviewing the revised text edition of The Secret of Red Gate Farm, published in 1961 and pictured above. 

This one opens with Nancy Drew and her friends, Bess Marvin and George Fayne, rushing to catch their train after a day of shopping. On the way, they discuss how the clerk in the perfume shop seemed reluctant to sell a bottle of Blue Jade perfume to Bess (1). Always on the lookout for a new mystery to solve, Nancy suspects the woman deliberately raised the price of the perfume (2). Bess, eager to smell her new perfume, opens the bottle, accidentally dousing Nancy in the stuff. Then one of their fellow passengers faints (6) and while Nancy gets the woman some water, a man approaches her. “Any word from the Chief?” Seeing Nancy’s bewildered expression he apologizes, “But that perfume — Well, never mind!” (8)

The fainting woman, whose name is Jo, is on the way to the city to find a job. Her grandmother is about to lose her farm if they can’t come up with some money (12). Being the kind person she is, Nancy drives Jo to her job interview. At the office building, Nancy overhears a suspicious phone call. The man explains he was just getting stock market quotations (18). One peek at the note the man was making, is enough to tell Nancy he was lying. She copies down the note and the mystery takes off from there (19).

This one takes Nancy, Bess, and George with their new friend Jo into the countryside to uncover the mystery at Red Gate Farm. Nancy cracks a code, goes undercover with a nature cult, and solves one of the “most baffling cases […] the United States Government has ever had” (174) and that coming from an agent of the Secret Service. Not bad, Nancy! She still has time to get caught in a storm, get her car stuck, get it unstuck, do a grocery run, whip up some costumes, learn to milk a cow, offer first aid to three people, hunt down a runaway cow, catch some rays down at the local swimming hole, get accused of using counterfeit money, get rescued not once, but twice, eat seventeen meals, a snack, one chocolate nut sundae topped with whipped cream, and use the word “phony” at least four times (64, 88, 106, 117). Which, by the way, is four times too many. Unless you are in fact reading The Catcher in the Rye aloud. 

Interesting physical characteristics

I noticed something interesting about the edition that I have, which differs from most of the other revised text editions I own. On the copyright page, opposite the table of contents page, is this notice.

    This new story for today’s readers is based on the original of the same title.

I assume they stopped printing this sometime in 1973, because I have two copies of The Hidden Staircase, which have The Double Jinx Mystery followed by The Nancy Drew Cookbook listed on the back cover, both of which were first published in 1973, one copy has the above notice on the same page, the other copy does not. Incidentally, the one that has the notice is different from my other Nancy Drew books in that it has brick red ink on the top page edges, while all the rest are either a midnight blue or have no ink mark at all. Now, I am so happy that I kept both, despite my husband’s suggestion that I only keep one copy of each of the 56 titles. Not that I would ever accept such bad advice!

The other thing that is special about this book is that it is the first one I have shared with cover art by Bill Gillies. Growing up, I only had the Rudy Nappi covers, so while the Bill Gillies depiction is not the face of Nancy as I imagine her, I do think his covers have a certain something. When I look at the Bill Gillies cover I think Nancy has an old Hollywood glamour about her and a certain sophistication that the slightly more pared down version of Nancy lacks. I love the loser curled hair and her clothes have a more feminine, if less practical look about them. 

One cover in particular, The Ringmaster’s Secret, reminds me of Grace Kelly. Surprisingly, this artwork was done by Rudy Nappi and dates from the 1953 hardbacks with wraparound dust wrappers. The pictorial hardcover with this artwork was in print from 1962, though my edition likely dates from 1973, the last year this cover was in print. In others, like this one, I think Nancy has a whisper of Marilyn Monroe about her. Again, this is not how I imagine Nancy to look, but it is fun to see how different artists have imagined her for the various titles and for the time in which the cover was made. 

Time of year

We have Bess to thank for letting us know what time of year it is. At the start of the book when the friends rush to the train station after their shopping trip, she exclaims,

    “And this would be one of July’s hottest days!” (2)

Funny how Nancy’s eighteenth year seems to have so many summers. I guess, summers do seem longer and more frequent when you’re that age, don’t they? 

Timeline

Jokes aside, the timeline in this book differs from the other titles thus far in this series. This one is set over a summer. In The Secret at Shadow Ranch, Nancy and her friends were supposed to be visiting Shadow Ranch for the summer and they may have done, but the mystery is set during the first eight days of that trip. With this book we get seven consecutive days, then an indeterminate amount of time passes, followed by another eight days, then another week goes by and the conclusion comes the week after that when Nancy’s father comes to visit. 

There are still some days when way too many events to be believable are crammed in, specifically near the climax. But overall, I think this book does a better job at maintaining a believable timeline. There is one day when Nancy stays home and works on the code and there are other days when the girls don’t do much more than watch the hillside for cult members who fail to make an appearance. That said, this book still manages to feel pacy with Nancy gathering clues throughout the book instead of having all of the big reveals at the end, which was one of the problems I had with The Mystery at Lilac Inn.

I remember this one!

I’ve been getting the most lovely comments on my #56WeekswithNancyDrew Instagram posts. A few people have mentioned their fond memories of first picking up such and such a title. These comments warm my heart. They also have made me feel a bit jealous! All of the books I have read so far for this project have been rereads, but not one of them could I remember reading for the first time. I wondered if it was because these books feel so much a part of me. I read and reread the same titles over and over again to the point that I thought I had obliterated any memory of my first impressions. 

My experience with The Secret of Red Gate Farm has been different. At one point I teared up because the memory of my having read a certain passage for the first time was so vivid it was as though I could reach through the layers of time and grab ahold of it. It was very odd. And now, such as memories are, I cannot capture that same experience again. When I think back, I am only recreating the memory and that feeling of sitting in my childhood bedroom with the sun coming through the windows and solving the mystery alongside Nancy and her friends is slipping beyond my grasp.  

In part two, I will (mostly) be putting nostalgia aside while attempting to answer the question: What is it that makes this book different from the others? I hope you will join me tomorrow!

56 Weeks with Nancy Drew - The Secret of Shadow Ranch

Week 5, Book 5

Welcome to the 56 Weeks with Nancy Drew series! If you are new here, welcome. You can find my introductory post to this series here. Please note I will be including plot spoilers in this review series. I explain my reasoning at the start of this post.

Edition pictured: Revised text (20 chapters, 175 pages)

Cover illustrated by: Rudy Nappi

Revised text publication date: 1965

Original text publication date: 1931

My edition printed: approx. 1978

Ghostwriter: Mildred A. Wirt Benson

Editor: Harriet Otis Smith

Revised by: Grace Grote

Setting: Phoenix, Arizona & Shadow Ranch in Arizona (150 miles away from airport)

Originally published in 1931 and written by Mildred Wirt, I will be reviewing the revised text edition of The Secret of Shadow Ranch, published in 1965 and pictured above. 

Nancy arrives in Phoenix, Arizona where she is met by her friends, cousins, Bess Marvin and George Fayne. The plan is to spend the summer at Shadow Ranch, owned by the girls’ aunt and uncle. But Nancy is barely off her plane before the cousins inform her that they have to go home tomorrow (1). There’s a mystery at the ranch and Uncle Ed thinks it isn’t safe for the girls to be there (2). The girls advise Nancy to let Hannah, the Drew’s housekeeper, know she will be returning home tomorrow, but Nancy has other ideas. The cousins take turns telling Nancy the details of the mystery. 

Bet and Ed acquired Shadow Ranch two months ago as payment for a debt. They had always wanted to be ranchers, so they moved there and began work. Then the accidents started. Since then, there have been so many unexplained happenings that they believe the ranch is being sabotaged (4). The girls thought their aunt and uncle were overreacting, but they were convinced as soon as they caught sight of the phantom horse (5)!

According to legend, the phantom horse is the ghost of the horse belonging to old-time outlaw, Dirk Valentine. Dirk Valentine was the sweetheart of Frances Humber, the daughter of the local sheriff, the original owner of Shadow Ranch. One night, Dirk went to the ranch to see Frances and the sheriff shot him. As Dirk died, he put a curse on the Humber property. Now, when the ghost of Dirk Valentine’s horse is seen running across the meadow, destruction is said to follow (5).

Nancy is quick to spot that the phantom horse must be a trick and that someone is trying to scare Uncle Ed and Aunt Bet away from Shadow Ranch (6). The question is, why?

Along with friends Bess and George, Nancy stops a gang of thieves, reunites a kidnapped bank manager with his daughter, uncovers the secret behind the phantom horse, and finds a hidden treasure! But she still has enough time to go horseback riding, shopping, go to the rodeo, win a square dancing competition, stop a shoplifter, show off her knowledge of textiles, bake a chocolate cake, appreciate a handsome cowboy when she sees one, eat 16 meals, including tacos and spicy chilli and a lot more cold sodas than usual. Gotta stay cool and hydrated when your detective work takes you to the desert!

This book is particularly interesting as there are a lot of firsts in it. It’s the first Nancy Drew Western. It’s the first book where cousins Bess Fayne and George Marvin are Nancy’s sidekicks instead of Helen Corning. And it’s the first time we hear mention of Ned, the one love interest of Nancy’s that is mentioned throughout the series.

Let’s talk about the genre of this book first. We know it’s a mystery of course, but when I read the synopsis (which appears on the first page with text in my edition) I was surprised by the last sentence. 

    For those who enjoy a suspenseful thriller, Nancy Drew’s first Western adventure makes truly fascinating reading.

For one thing it had never occurred to me that this book was a Western. While Nancy and friends do spend time outside in Arizona, they are only visiting for the summer and they have access to vehicles. I’ve always thought that the characters in Westerns need to spend extended time in the harsh environment and struggling to survive in those conditions. Is there any struggle when you are a wealthy tourist visiting for the summer, riding horses you don’t have to care for, taking a vehicle into town or even into the city when you need a day of shopping, and the rest of the time having all of your meals provided by a live-in cook? Well, I don’t think so. But there are definitely scenes that have a Western feel to them, I’ll grant the publishers that. Nancy and friends do hit the trails on horseback, outwit outlaws, and do battle with the elements in the great outdoors. However, they always manage to get back in time to shower and change before enjoying a meal they didn’t have to prepare for themselves.

Describing this book as "Nancy Drew’s first Western adventure" makes it sound like there are more of them to come. But I’m fairly sure this is the only book in this series that could be described as a Western, by any stretch of the imagination. If you can think of another, please pop it in the comments! Also, I’m not an expert on the Western genre, or even on Nancy Drew, for that matter, so if you believe this  book fulfills the criteria of a Western, please feel free to set me straight.

In my mind, one of the most exciting things about this book is the introduction of Bess and George. Now, this isn’t to say I don’t like Helen Corning, because I like Helen a lot and it makes me sad that she just drifts out of the series. I like that Helen is three years older than Nancy and that they are still good friends even though they are at different phases in their lives. A three year age gap is nothing to an adult, but when you’re a nine year old reading these books, three years seems like a big difference. It can’t help but fill you with awe that Nancy not only has a friend who is three years older than her, but who also treats her as an equal.

I also like how Helen and Nancy play off of each other. Helen is quick to speak her mind and quicker tempered than Nancy. At the start of The Mystery at Lilac Inn, Nancy and Helen’s canoe capsizes. Afterwards, Helen expresses her annoyance about a man nearby who must have seen them but didn’t offer to help. While Nancy doesn’t seem bothered by the incident, Helen is steaming. In The Hidden Staircase, Helen is frightened by a face appearing in the window, but upon investigation, no one is there and there is no evidence that anyone had been. While Nancy goes straight for the logical explanation, Helen comments that she had never before believed in spooks but the ongoing incidents at the house are starting to make her wonder.

Helen is a likeable character with human faults and frailties, who allows her emotions to get the better of her in times of stress. While Nancy acts correctly, moderates her emotions, and always thinks logically.

So now that I have defended Helen, let’s talk about the cousins.

    The three girls had grown up together in River Heights, and had shared many exciting adventures. (2-3)

So we know that Nancy has known Bess and George since they were children. Later, they are referred to as Nancy’s “best friends”. If they are all such great friends why were they not even mentioned in the first four books? Helen gets engaged, drops out of Nancy’s life, and then Nancy remembers she has two other best friends. Is that what we are supposed to think?

From the start, Bess and George are typecast in a way that I don’t think Helen is. Here’s our introduction to Bess.

    The pretty, slightly plump blonde was not smiling as usual. (1)

Bess is pretty, usually smiling, and is, apparently, “slightly plump”. From what I’ve noticed Bess is never depicted on the cover art or the internal illustrations of this series as being any less trim than Nancy and George. That in itself is a problem. If you are telling young girls that this character is fat and she looks like everyone else, then doesn’t that just create an impossible and very unhealthy standard? But no one comments on Bess’s weight, besides her cousin George, who seems to make some snide remark about it every time Bess eats or talks about eating. I’ve noticed George only does this when it is just the three friends together. Perhaps, George doesn’t want the chance of someone standing up for Bess?

    “This mystery has me so upset,” she declared, “that my appetite is gone.” Then she added, “I’ll have a double chocolate sundae with walnuts.”

    Nancy and George grinned. “Poor girl,” said George, “she’s wasting away.”

    Bess looked sheepish. “Never mind me,” she said. “Start telling Nancy about the mystery.” (4)

Later, George makes a more blatantly mean comment to Bess.

    Bess sighed. “I’m so hot, I’d like to have a cold drink and I think I need a hot dog to go with it.” 

    George grinned. “Eating is really a very fattening hobby, dear cousin.” (138)

Bess isn’t given the opportunity to say anything because they are interrupted, which is a bit disappointing. I would have liked to know how Bess would have responded to George’s needlessly hurtful comment.

We tend to think of Nancy in the revised text editions as being perfect. But I think this is one instance where she doesn’t get it right. Nancy is present on both of these occasions, but she doesn’t stick up for Bess. Nancy either exchanges a grin with George or she remains silent. I have no problem reading about a character with faults. Faults make a character feel human. What I do take issue with is a character who always knows what to do behaving like this, because that means Nancy believes that George bullying Bess about her weight is acceptable. And I know it’s not acceptable, but I’m an adult. When I was a child, I didn’t see anything wrong in George being mean to her cousin. Aren’t siblings and cousins supposed to make fun of each other? As an adult, I recognize that any fun being had here is one-sided.

As a child, I didn’t see George’s behaviour as bullying or fat shaming. Fat shaming wasn’t in the lexicon back then and it most certainly wasn’t when these books were written and revised. I saw George’s behaviour as evidence that George didn’t like Bess as much as she liked Nancy. That might be part of what is going on here. I think it’s a sign that George doesn’t like herself very much. But I also wonder if George isn’t a teensy bit jealous of Bess. Bess is fun and she eats when she feels like it. I mean, I know which one of the two cousins I would prefer to be friends with!

Part way through this book, a question popped into my mind. Did the writers, editors, and revisers, and ultimately, the publishers, do a disservice to Bess?

Let’s have a quick description of George for comparison.

    George Fayne, an attractive tomboyish girl with short dark hair. (1)

 

The word “tomboy” is dated, but from it we can assume that George is athletic and perhaps less feminine than Bess. And I think this is a fair assessment. George is strong and capable, purposely sticking out her foot and tripping the big baddie at the climax (173). While she doesn’t have Nancy’s detective skills, she can look after herself. In contrast, Bess is often treated as a figure of fun. 

When Nancy has first arrived in Phoenix, Bess notices Nancy’s knitting bag and asks what her friend is making. Nancy explains that she is knitting a sweater for her father.

    “He’ll love it. Not to change the subject, but there are some handsome cowboys at the ranch,” Bess remarked. As she told Nancy of the fun she and George had been having, Bess grew more cheerful. (4)

Bess is all about the boys. She is always looking to matchmake and puts forth effort to always look her best.

Early on the book, when they are driving from the airport to Shadow Ranch, they get caught in a storm that blows the sand across the landscape with such force that it sifts through the cracks around the windows and doors (14). Once it dies down, Nancy pulls the truck over so they can freshen up.

    She poured some water from the Thermos onto her clean handkerchief and wiped her face and hands. George and Bess did the same, then the girls combed their hair and put on fresh lipstick.

    Bess giggled. “I don’t know why we bother. There’s no one out here to see us but prairie dogs and lizards!”

    “Cheer up,” said Nancy. “You’ll soon be back among all those handsome cowboys!” (16)

Nancy says, “you’ll” instead or “we’ll”, implying that it is only Bess who is freshening herself up for the cowboys. However, I think it is fair to say Nancy and George do their fair share of flirting with cowboys in this book too. After all, it is all three of the friends who find dates among the cowboys at the ranch.

Later on, just after the cold soda and hot dog incident, two men try to kidnap Nancy by the refreshment stand at the rodeo, and it’s Bess who is first to come to Nancy’s aid.

    “Bess’s voice rang out. “She is not going with you!” (140)

George then chimes in with “Let her go!” (140). Oh, and why are Bess and George down by the refreshment stand instead of up in the stands watching the guys compete in the rodeo? Because Bess wanted a hot dog. 

This is one incident where Bess comes out as the stronger of the two, but more often it seems as though the character of Bess is being used as a foil for Nancy.

Bess is more traditionally feminine than either George or Nancy. Across the series, she is always the one who is more easily scared and less likely to want to do detective work. We are meant to identify with Nancy, who manages to be feminine, to still comb her hair and refresh her lipstick after going through a sandstorm, but she is also brave, knowledgeable, and skilled in basically anything one could be skilled in. She is never in a situation where she says, “I don’t know anything about that subject” or “I don’t know how to do that”.

In one scene, Bess is being taught how to rope a steer by one of the cowboys. (44-46). The “steer” is played by a cowboy named Bud holding his hands on his head like horns as he prances in front of Bess’s horse. Nancy and George show up and watch from the sidelines. 

    Bess frowned, bit her lip, and managed to get a noose twirling. Then plop—it dropped over the head of her own horse! 

    Tex gave a piercing whistle. George and Nancy burst into laughter while the “steer” helped blushing Bess to dismount.

    “Never mind,” said Nancy. “You didn’t want to be a cowboy, anyway.” 

    As the boys called joking remarks about the next roping lesson, the girls walked off together. (46)

On her first try Bess fails, and then gives up. If it had been Nancy, she would have executed it perfectly on the first try. If, by some miracle she was not successful, then she would have kept trying until she was not only successful, but until she was roping steers like a pro.

And while Bess is the only one of the friends to have trouble crossing a river on horseback, we know it is only her horse that doesn’t like water. This sets it up so that Nancy can come to the rescue, by taking the reins of Bess’s horse and leading him to land. 

But we could look at this from another angle. If it wasn’t for Bess telling everyone about Nancy’s bravery over supper later, cowboy Dave may not have come around and admitted to Nancy that he was wrong in assuming that Nancy was a “tenderfoot” (75-76).

The next day, the ice has thawed between the two.

    She admired the confident way he did his job and his kind, firm manner with the animals. “I do hope he’s not mixed up in the mystery.” She sighed. (89)

Nancy isn’t much of a sigher, so you know she’s got it bad for Dave.

 

I think it’s interesting to note that when the group returns to the ranch after a rough river crossing, it isn’t only Bess who scoots off to shower and change (74-75). It’s all three of them!

So, I guess I haven’t answered the question I raised about whether a disservice is done to Bess. I think how she is portrayed as being “slightly plump” and how she is treated by George (and Nancy) in that regard does more of a disservice to the readers of these books. In this book, Bess seems capable of looking after herself, as far as her cousin is concerned, anyway. Perhaps the characters of both Bess and George are nothing more than foils for Nancy. I’m sure my thoughts on this topic, and many others, will develop as I continue through the series. 

Favourite quotation

In most books, the main character goes through some personal journey of growth as the story progresses. This doesn’t happen with Nancy Drew, because as we’ve discussed, she’s (mostly) perfect already. (She is in the revised text editions, anyway. Original text Nancy is more human.) Instead, I think it’s the reader who gets to take away a kernel of knowledge from these books.

In this one, we learn that what happens in Arizona, stays in Arizona. At least, according to Nancy!

    When he was out of earshot, Alice said, “As for you, Nancy, he’s really flipped!”

    “And what’ll poor Ned do?” George teased.

    Nancy grinned. “We’ll be home by the time he gets back from Europe.” (111)

Got that? As long as your boyfriend is in Europe and you get home before he does, it is fine to flirt with handsome cowboys on a trip out of state.

I found it very funny that Ned is mentioned in an off-hand way, as though we already know all about him. Apparently, Bess and George aren’t the only people in her life Nancy has been keeping secret!

More importantly, what we learn in this book is that listening to our bodies’ need for sustenance is as good for our own health as it is for our friends’, especially if the friend in question is about to be jumped by two baddies! So go on. Get yourself a hot dog to go along with that cold soda you've been craving!

56 Weeks with Nancy Drew - The Mystery at Lilac Inn

Week 4, Book 4

Welcome to the 56 Weeks with Nancy Drew series! If you are new here, welcome. You can find my introductory post to this series here. Please note I will be including plot spoilers in this review series. I explain my reasoning at the start of this post.

Edition pictured: Revised text (20 chapters, 180 pages)

Cover illustrated by: Rudy Nappi

Revised text publication date: 1961

Original text publication date: 1930

My edition printed: approx. 1977

Ghostwriter: Mildred A. Wirt Benson

Editor: Harriet Otis Smith

Revised by: Patricia Doll

Setting: River Heights and Lilac Inn in Benton (down the river from River Heights)

Originally published in 1930 and written by Mildred Wirt, I will be reviewing the revised edition of The Mystery at Lilac Inn, published in 1961 and pictured above. With the help of a very informative site, series-books.com, I have been having fun dating the printing of my Nancy Drew books, or at least, narrowing down the years. This cover of The Mystery at Lilac Inn with the strip of yellow at the top was in print from 1974-1986. The back cover of mine lists the books in this series up to book 54, Strange Message in the Parchment, which was published in 1977. Which means my edition likely dates from 1977. Fun, right? 

There are a lot of online resources with a wealth of knowledge on Nancy Drew books, in specific, and other vintage children’s series and Jennifer White’s website is one of them. If you are at all interested in learning about collecting Nancy Drew books, I can recommend her site and her blog, of which, I have only scratched the surface. She has a wealth of knowledge to share!

Now, let’s curl up with a nourishing hot chocolate and get into The Mystery at Lilac Inn…

Nancy Drew and her good friend, Helen Corning, paddle from River Heights along the river to visit Emily Willoughby and her aunt at Lilac Inn in Benton. Emily and her fiancé, Dick Farnham, have bought the inn and are planning to run it together. Emily has asked Nancy and Helen to be bridesmaids at her wedding, so the girls are anticipating lots of chat about wedding plans (Lilac 2). Along the way, Nancy finds out she has a double walking around River Heights (1), their canoe capsizes (2), and the closest male doesn’t come to their rescue (4). Helen is indignant, but Nancy laughs the incident off. Although, Nancy is curious about what could have upset their canoe.

Once at the inn Emily gives them a tour of the property and while Dick is away in New York working on publicity for the inn, they meet Dick’s best man, “handsome, well-built” Sergeant John McBride (5). It’s clear that something is bothering Emily and when one of the gardeners tells her he is quitting, it’s the last straw. Emily confides that a mysterious enemy is trying to jinx Lilac Inn. Reports of a ghost, a stolen lilac tree, a record player playing with no one around, and a forced window are enough to put Emily’s nerves in tatters. Thank goodness, Nancy is on the scene, and to think Emily was planning to keep her problems to herself!

What follows is a case of stolen identity, stolen diamonds, and stolen… well, let’s try to keep that part under wraps! 

In this one, Nancy uncovers her impersonator, gets accused of stealing, discovers a secret passage, learns a lot about lilacs, comes up with a few wild theories that all somehow all fit together, and she still has time to go skin diving, discuss bridesmaid dresses, eat 13 meals, attend a steak cookout and singalong, and flirt with Sergeant John McBride. She may not be engaged like every other young woman is in this book, but she sure isn’t too busy solving mysteries to appreciate when a good-looking man enjoys her company!

Time of year

In my last post, I argued that The Bungalow Mystery must have been set during the last week of July. I had a lot of proofs to back up my theory and I was very confident that I was correct within a week or so either way and I am still certain I got it right. So perhaps you can imagine how excited I was to read the following at the end of that book.

    Nancy suddenly felt a sense of loneliness and realized it was because her work on the case was at an end. Would another mystery come her way to solve? she wondered. And it did. In less than a week, Nancy was facing up to the challenge of The Mystery at Lilac Inn. (Bungalow 179; emphasis added)

That’s my job figuring out when the next one is set done and dusted, or so I thought. Imagine my confusion when I came across this passage at the start of The Mystery of Lilac Inn.

    The next second something rammed the canoe violently. The impact capsized the craft, hurling Nancy and Helen into the chilly May water. (2; emphasis added)

Silly me. Of course, Nancy wouldn’t be visiting a place called Lilac Inn when the lilacs weren’t in bloom! This book had to be set in May. And so, as I pointed out when we were discussing when The Hidden Staircase was set, we have to accept that time is fluid in these books and we have to suspend our disbelief. Getting annoyed at the utter disregard for reader expectation and intelligence is not going to help anything, or so I remind myself!

The Secret of the Old Clock took place over 11 days, The Hidden Staircase is set over eight, The Bungalow Mystery is set over six days, and the main action in this one takes place over seven days. That’s a total of 32 days and if Nancy continued with an average of eight days per mystery with no breaks in between her eighteenth year would have 448 days in it, because Nancy doesn’t age in this series. Regular timelines do not apply here.

Okay, so on the upside, we know for a certainty that this book is set in May when lilacs are in bloom. 

    When the canoe came abreast of the dock, Nancy secured it to a post. The girls hopped out and started up the path that led to the inn. On both sides of the path were groves of lilac trees which displayed a profusion of blooms, from creamy white to deep purple. (5)

What a good thing Nancy and Helen aren’t visiting Lilac Inn during August, as I had expected them to be! By then all of the lilac blooms would be long gone.

Location

    Nancy and Helen said good-by and paddled off upstream. The Angus River, a tributary of the Muskoka, was banked on either side with dense shrubbery, willow trees, and wild flowers.

    “We’re almost to Benton,” Nancy said. “The old inn should be just beyond the next bend.” (2)

The Lilac Inn and the town of Benton is close enough to River Heights that Nancy and Helen are able to paddle there by canoe in a short amount of time. We know this because along the way, they pass by their friend, Doris Drake, weeding a flower garden at her home along the riverbank. From Doris, they find out that Nancy’s double is walking around River Heights. 

They come to this conclusion when Doris says, “My friend Phyl told me on the phone just half an hour ago that she’d talked with you, Nancy, at the Elite Drug Store in River Heights” (1). While Doris is surprised to see Nancy and Helen paddling to her spot on the river within half an hour of being spotted in River Heights, she doesn’t automatically assume Phyl’s claim that she talked to Nancy to be incorrect. When Nancy says that it couldn’t have been her, they were paddling at the time, Helen jokes, “'You must have a double, Nancy. Better watch out!'” (1).

They manage to arrive at Lilac Inn before lunch, and that’s with stoping to chat with Doris, capsizing their canoe, and doing a quick underwater investigation to look for what caused the collision.

Lilac Inn is on the water and has its own dock, as we found out earlier and Nancy and Helen are staying in one of the new cottages.

    John carried their bags, as Emily led the way along a shrubbed path which opened onto the spacious lawn surrounding Lilac Inn. Helen and Nancy looked with admiration at the historic hotel, erected in Revolutionary times.

    "Here are the new guest cottages," Emily said, as they reached a group of twelve trim white units.

"And this one is where you'll stay." (6)

Later we get a more detailed view of the inn itself.

    The girls went to the front of the inn, a two-story clapboard building with a one-level wing on either side. All around it were lilac trees and other flowering bushes. Nancy and Helen mounted the wide steps and entered the center hall. Its paneled walls, old staircase, and beautiful cut-glass chandelier made them feel as though they had stepped back into an earlier century. (7)

It sounds like a beautiful place, or it will be, once Nancy uncovers the person who is causing all of the disturbances!

Thoughts on The Mystery at Lilac Inn

I’m going to confess, while I enjoyed this book, I found that when I reached the end I still had no idea about what I wanted to write about. As I had the opposite problem with the first three books in the series, I found myself wondering why. Sure, it might simply have been a case of me feeling overwhelmed, as I often do when faced with a task. But what if my lack of inspiration had nothing to do with me? Blaming something other than myself for my lack of ideas, there’s something can get on board with!

So I got to thinking about all of the reasons I love The Bungalow Mystery. There’s a car chase, which I enjoyed and remember enjoying immensely as a child. But beyond that, there were more sinister characters, more intrigue, and it felt like Nancy was putting herself in more dangerous situations. Yes, there were a ton of coincidences and Carson Drew’s current case just happened to tie in with Nancy’s, but doesn’t it always? Not in this one, you will be surprised to find out. Although, one of the baddies does impersonate Nancy in a bid to get back at Carson who proved she was guilty of check forgery and was sent to prison because of it (163).

Anyway, here are some of my issues with this one.

Nancy lacks agency

She still runs towards danger instead of from it. There are plenty of screams, cries, and crashes in this one. I counted eight occurrences where a loud sound interrupted a scene (9, 15, 42, 77, 82, 134, 153, 170), one of which is when Nancy herself stifles a scream when she sees a grotesque shape emerge from the water when she is out on the grounds alone at night (153). No shame there! We all get startled sometimes, Nancy.

However, on two occasions Nancy is in a tight place and is quickly saved by the police instead of solving the problem herself, as she was capable of doing in the first three books.

    She knew it would be difficult to get out of the muddy ditch. “Well, I’ll have to try,” she decided. “Here goes!”

    She tried to rock the car gently back and forth to gain momentum. The right tires spun crazily and sank lower into the mire. 

    Nancy tried again. No use. She feared it might be some time before a care would come along in this deserted area. Finally she decided to search for some objects to force under the right wheels for traction.

    Just then, Nancy heard an automobile approaching. “Thank goodness!” she murmured a moment later. “A State Police car.” (36-37)

This first occurrence feels innocent enough. Nancy doesn’t have a chance to get her car out of the ditch herself, because a State Police car shows up on the scene almost immediately. Unlikely, but fine. We come to accept that in Nancy Drew Land, pleasant police officers appear on the scene just when we need them.

The scene that bothered me was this one.

    She was lying on the cabin floor where she had been thrown, and was trying to loosen the ropes which bound her.

    Nancy glanced around the tiny cabin. It had two bunks, a table, and a chair. “Even if I could work myself free, there’s no escape route,” she thought. (162)

I’m sorry. Didn’t we just find out in the book before this that a detective friend of Nancy’s father showed her how to hold her hands when someone was tying her up, so she could slip free after? Yes. Yes, we did (Bungalow 125). And we saw her put that knowledge to the test.

    Just then Nancy thought she had found the trick to freeing her hands, but a moment later she sighed in discouragement. The robe still bound her wrists.

    […]

    Suddenly Nancy felt the rope which chaffed her wrists slacken. (130)

But in The Mystery at Lilac Inn Nancy seems to have lost that knowledge. Perhaps The Bungalow Mystery happens in the future and not in the past as the order of these books would lead us to believe? Okay, I’ll put that can of worms aside for now.

    Until now, Nancy had not fully believed that her captors would let her perish. But she was left bound hand and foot, aboard a sinking vessel!

    Suddenly Nancy sniffed the acrid smell of smoke—the fire was spreading! She screamed for help until her throat was hoarse. Then, about to faint, Nancy heard an answering shout, and the sound of a boat puling up outside the porthole.

    “Oh, thank goodness,” she breathed fervently.

    Shortly, two men in River Police Patrol uniforms hurried into the cabin. They quickly untied Nancy and carried her on deck. (Lilac 171)

Instead of solving the mystery and saving herself at the climax, Nancy gets captured by the gang and uncovers most of the mystery because the big baddie is a Chatty Cathy. Then when Nancy is left to die on a sinking boat with an engine fire, she screams for someone to come help her instead of reserving her energy to save herself. What a disappointment! 

What happened to the Nancy who broke out of a closet in The Secret of the Old Clock, or shed her bonds in The Bungalow Mystery, or drove so fast in The Hidden Staircase that she didn’t dare take her eyes off the road? Does Nancy need a vacation? Or is all the talk of her friends’ impending nuptials bringing her down?

Because that is another thing…

Every young woman is engaged to be married

We have already established that Emily is engaged to Dick Farnham. Listen to how Emily introduces Helen and Nancy to Dick’s best man.

    “Now don’t go making up to my friends, John,” Emily teased. “Helen is engaged to Jim Archer, who has a position with an oil company overseas, and Nancy—well, she’s mighty busy these days.” (5-6)

Emily isn’t wrong. Nancy has to solve 56 mysteries before she turns 19. So, yes. She is very busy. But consider this bit from the end of the book at a party on the eve of Emily’s wedding.

    Later, as Nancy, Helen, and Emily were talking, the two older girls suddenly stopped speaking on the subject of their forthcoming weddings. Helen said, “Goodness, Nancy, you must be tired of hearing us talk about steady partners when—”

    Nancy interrupted. Laughing gaily, she said, “Not at all. For the present, my steady partner is going to be mystery!” (180)

I love Nancy’s response here. But I am a little annoyed by how both Emily and Helen talk about Nancy’s love of solving mysteries and her lack of a “steady partner”. I don’t think there is any malicious intent here. I believe it’s a case of them accepting Nancy as she is, but at the same time not understanding how she couldn’t want what they have. 

Even the baddie of the piece is engaged, although her fiancé is nothing to write home about.

    At that moment the cabin door opened. A man Nancy had not yet seen stood there. He was tall and dark, with thin features. 

    Gay introduced him as Simon, her fiancé. “You talk too much, Gay,” he growled. (167)

 

Oh, and we find out that Gay’s sister, who is 27, is married when Gay introduces her brother-in-law (160).

Three engaged women in one book proved to be too much for me, so I did a little digging.

According to the American Census Report for 1960, “The youngest age at which fewer than half of all persons were still single was 20 for females and 23 for males.” Oh, and in 1960, “Eight in ten of all women 25 to 49 years old were married and living with their husband.”

At 18 years old without a steady boyfriend in sight, Nancy may very well have stood out among her peers. 

Which begs the question, if Nancy wants to make a career out of crime solving, why isn’t she in university studying criminology or some other related field? According to one source, (it's from Wikipedia, but the statistics come from a cited source so they might actually be correct), 35% of bachelor’s degrees were earned by women in 1960 and 10.5% of doctorates. So there goes my theory that university might not have been viewed as an acceptable option for Nancy.

Can you see Nancy settling down to a husband and children in the next couple of years? I can’t. But what bothers me is that while Nancy enjoys solving mysteries, it’s treated like her cute little quirk instead of her vocation. Why don’t these books allow Nancy a future in a field she loves? Or are we supposed to assume that Nancy is going to live in her father’s house, forever sponging off of his wealth derived from a successful career in law, while she continues to accumulate trinkets and gifts for a job well done, but not actually getting paid for her hard work and intelligence?

Perhaps, a better question is, why does this issue bother me so much? 

Let’s give Nancy, and her creators, the credit they both deserve. Because Nancy has not entirely been neglecting her education since graduating from high school. At the start of this book she has just completed a course in advanced skin diving. An article in the River Heights Evening News mentions that she finished first among the twenty in her group. Nicely done, Nancy! And guess what? She puts those newly acquired skills to use in solving this mystery. Who would have thought?! 

So, tell me. What is the one thing about Nancy Drew, or your favourite series, that irks you? What is the one thing that you are meant to overlook? But try as you might, you simply cannot! I would love to hear all of the mad, ridiculous, and worrying things about your favourite books that as a reader you are expected to smile and accept.

Favourite Quotation

So this quotation is a little random, but here goes…

    A jinx on Lilac Inn! Nancy and Helen stared at Emily in astonishment.

    “Tell us about it,” Nancy urged her friend. (11)

I can’t help but picture Nancy, with glittering eyes, gesturing that Emily should sit down, while doing a very poor job of disguising how excited she is at hearing her friend has a mystery that needs solving. Nancy’s eager anticipation radiates off the page and as a child I found it infectious. Okay, I still find that energy a bit catching!

56 Week with Nancy Drew - The Bungalow Mystery

Week 3, Book 3

Welcome to the 56 Weeks with Nancy Drew series! If you are new here, welcome. You can find my introductory post to this series here. Please note I will be including plot spoilers in this review series. I explain my reasoning at the start of this post.

Edition pictured: Revised text (20 chapters, 180 pages)

Cover illustrated by: Rudy Nappi
Revised text publication date: 1960
Original text publication date: 1930
Ghostwriter: Mildred A. Wirt Benson
Editor: Edward Stratemeyer
Revised by: Patricia Doll
Setting: The Pinecrest Hotel on Twin Lakes, Melrose Lake (about 25 miles from Twin Lakes), & in and around River Heights

Originally published in 1930 and written by Mildred Wirt, I will be reviewing the revised text edition of The Bungalow Mystery, published in 1960 and pictured above.

This book gets off to an exciting start! A storm kicks up on Twin Lakes, where Nancy and her friend Helen Corning are out in a motor boat. Helen informs Nancy that Twin Lakes can get as rough as the ocean in a storm (1). (That description sounds to me a lot like Lake Erie, but it also happens to be one of those dramatic general statements that get made in these books, so they could be on any lake or it could simply be a fictitious one.) The next thing they know, their motor boat hits a log, leaving a jagged hole in the side of the boat (4). Then a wave washes over their boat taking the two girls with it, leaving the flooded boat to sink to the bottom of the lake. Thankfully, Nancy is a skilled swimmer (no surprise there!) because Helen has somehow lost the use of her arms in the accident and Nancy must get herself, and Helen, to shore (7).

What, you say? We’ve already reached page seven and still no sign of a mystery? Not to worry! It’s coming and with slightly more subtlety than we saw in The Hidden Staircase where the mystery was introduced on the first page.

Just as Nancy is having misgivings about her ability to tow Helen to shore in the treacherous waves, a boat appears being rowed by a “slender auburn-haired girl of about sixteen” (8). Would you exchange first and last names with a your would-be rescuer when you are still in the midst of a life or death situation? I’m fairly certain I wouldn’t, but never mind. Nancy introduces herself and Helen, and the young girl in the row boat follows her lead.

    “I’m Laura Pendleton,” she said. “I read in a newspaper about one of the mysteries you solved. I may need your help some day soon, Nancy.” (9)

It isn’t until chapter two that we find out why Laura might need Nancy’s help. (How Laura came to the conclusion that she may need Nancy's help at this point in the story is a mystery I am still trying to solve.) Laura’s father died in a boating accident six years ago, which is why she felt compelled to go out into the storm when she heard Nancy and Helen’s cries of distress. And just a month ago, Laura’s mother died, leaving her orphaned. Laura has been left in the care of a distant relative of her mother’s, Jacob Aborn, but she has not yet met him. After having some trouble contacting Mr. Aborn through her lawyer, Laura reached out to him directly at his Melrose Lake address about needing money to pay her boarding school tuition. Mr. Aborn replied back telling her to come to the area and him and his wife would meet her. Her main concern is that the letter “wasn’t cordial” (17). 

Well, Laura must be psychic or her skills of perception are as finely tuned as Nancy’s because — you guessed it — all is not right with Jacob Aborn and his wife, Marian. He has a certain charm, but it comes and goes and with his shifty eyes, you know he’s no good. Marian has bleached blond hair, and is incapable of changing her own flat tire, so she is obviously going to be a baddie too.

It isn’t until the end of chapter four that we first hear Carson Drew is working on an embezzlement case. Carson has been hired by Mr. Seward, the president of Monroe National Bank to find the securities that have been recently discovered missing from the bank’s vault and to discover the perpetrator. “Most of the securities were bonds which read ‘Payable to Bearer’” (53), so time is of the essence.

In this one, Nancy investigates the Aborns, helps her father in his case, outsmarts the police, nearly drowns, nearly gets killed by a falling tree, gets hit in the head and knocked unconscious (as does her father), narrowly escapes a car explosion, and still has the energy to play a few games of tennis, go for a swim, nurse Hannah, make a date, add to her souvenir matchbook collection, break a date, diagnose car trouble, take a nap, work through the night, eat 10 meals, one cup of cocoa and two rounds of pancakes and sausages (though, not in one sitting). 

Time of year

At the start of this book, Nancy and her friend Helen on a vacation at the Pinecrest Hotel on Twin Lakes. Caught in a storm while they are out on the lake in a motor boat we find out that the girls lose their sandals when they are washed overboard (12). The next day, the girls spend part of the morning playing a few games of tennis. We can assume they are playing outside, because Nancy comments on the weather being particular lovely when they head to the courts at the back of the hotel (23-24). We also get descriptions of the surrounding area. 

    When the three girls stepped outside, Nancy took a deep breath of air. She loved the earthy smell of the forests surrounding the lake resort, particularly the scent of the tall pines. (23)

Later, we get descriptions of place Laura is staying, the Montewago Hotel, which is about twenty-five miles away from Twin Lakes. The outdoor swimming pool at the hotel is full of swimmers (24-25) and “[i]n front stretched a green lawn bordered by beds of multi-colored gladioli, dahlias, and giant asters” (24).

But the biggest clue we have for the time of year comes when Nancy runs into Don Cameron, a fellow former-student at River Heights High School. He was also Nancy’s date for the Spring Prom. 

    “What are you doing home? I thought you were working on your uncle’s farm this summer before going to college.”

    Don grinned engagingly. “I’ve been picking string beans and berries and hoeing potatoes for nearly a month,” he replied. “But I have a leave of absence to attend my sister’s wedding this Friday." (61)

If Don has been working on his uncle’s farm for nearly a month, then it must be the end of July. It is implied Don has just graduated and is heading off to college in the autumn. I could not find specific dates of the school year for public high schools in the USA in 1960, but I have assumed that it is the same 10-month schedule we have in Canada that starts on the Tuesday after Labour Day weekend in September and ending sometime in the last week in June. This book starts on a Monday and by this time it is Wednesday, so I suspect it is the last Wednesday in July when Nancy and Don are having this conversation.

Location

Since we spent a lot of time theorizing about the setting with The Hidden Staircase, I just wanted to have a quick chat about the setting of this one. 

When her father has to rush off on a business trip, Nancy comes home early from her vacation to look after their housekeeper, Hannah, who has twisted her ankle. Nancy asks Hannah where her father went and Hannah replies, “To the state capital” (44). So no clues there! All we know is that the state capital is far enough away that Carson has taken a flight there (50). Remember it’s the 1960s. I don’t imagine even well-known lawyers were hopping on flights unnecessarily at the time. 

I realize that all I have done here is to provoke more questions. A lovely comment I received on one of my earlier Nancy Drew posts (thank you Savvy Girl!), reminded me that one of the reasons I found reading Nancy Drew so exciting when I was little is that I believed I could grow up to be like Nancy. As an adult, I know how ridiculous that sounds. However, part of what made aspiring to be like Nancy feel attainable, is that these books are not tied to place. River Heights could be anywhere in the USA and as a Canadian reader, it rarely occurred to me that Nancy Drew wasn’t Canadian too. 

What I’m trying to articulate — and I fear I am doing a very poor job of — is that Nancy was someone I aspired to, and she also felt like someone it was reasonable to aspire to be like. Part of what creates that illusion in these books is that they are not definitively grounded in place.

Characterization

There were a number of things that really stood out for me in this book. Although it pains me to limit our discussion, we really just have the space to quickly discuss characterization, specifically description.

Physical description is used in such a way as to provide the reader with an indication of whether we are dealing with a goodie or a baddie. The guideline is pretty simple. If the person is slender, attractive, pretty, good-looking or distinguished-looking with alert or twinkling eyes, or are in any other way pleasant to look at, then they are bound to be a good person. You know a baddie straight off because they will be thin (not slender!) or stout, have shifty eyes, and a face that lacks a sense of humour. 

This description of Marian Aborn is particularly indicative of this.

    At that moment a short, thin woman swaggered into the office. Her print dress was mud-splattered and she had lost the heel to one shoe. Her wet, bleached hair clung to her head in an unbecoming fashion.

Ignoring Nancy and Helen, who were still conversing with Mr. Franklin, the woman said bluntly, "Is there anyone here who can change a tire for me? I just had a flat half a mile away." (18)

Heaven forbid you look less than perfect after having car trouble in a storm! The “wet, bleached hair” clinging to the woman’s head tells the reader just what kind of person we are dealing with. If you insist on having car trouble and stumbling into a hotel looking disheveled at least have the decency not to dye your hair! Coming from someone with dyed blond hair, I found this description particularly hilarious. Even before she opens her mouth, we know this woman is bad news. I couldn’t help but wonder if the reader is also meant to draw a comparison between Nancy who has taken a course in automobile mechanics and knows the possible sources of trouble on a vehicle (143) and this woman who cannot even change a flat tire.

Jacob Aborn is described with slightly more dignity. 

    He was a well-built somewhat stocky man in his early fifties. His face was square, and his small brown eyes were shifty. (29)

Shifty eyes are always a red flag!

***Up until this point I’ve managed to keep this review relatively plot spoiler-free. If you don’t want to read any spoilers, skip ahead to the next section heading.***

But the emphasis on a person’s appearance being an indication of goodness, is particularly stark when Nancy discovers the real Jacob Aborn.

    “As she gazed anxiously into his face, Nancy wondered how she could have mistaken him for Jacob Aborn. Although the two men were of the same age, and had similar facial characteristics, the prisoner was gaunt and thin. His features, contrary to Mr. Aborn's, were gentle and relaxed.” (119)

I don’t care what a person’s face looks like normally, most people look fairly gentle and relaxed when they are… unconscious! 

It is clear when reading this as an adult that the suggestion that goodness somehow comes hand-in-hand with beauty is nonsense. Of course, Nancy Drew books were not the first time this dichotomy was imposed. We see the same thing in fairytales and the old Disney cartoons represent baddies as being physically unattractive in some way. Still, it boggles my mind how this became the standard for children’s stories. Luckily, changes are starting to be made in children’s literature. Now, children don’t have to grow up believing that if they do not fall within the restricted realm of stereotypical beauty they cannot aspire to be like the heroine of their favourite story.

The comparison extends to a person’s vehicle too. When the fake Jacob Aborn is confessing to his crimes, he admits to selling his victim’s blue sedan. 

    “The money helped to pay for my new foreign car.” (127)

Apparently, baddies sell perfectly good vehicles in order to overpay for foreign models. The term “foreign car” gets used so frequently to describe the vehicles of bad guys in these books that it quickly becomes a joke. 

In this book, the police quickly show up after a nearby farmer calls into the station to report a car accident. The police officer that shows up on the scene might just have the funniest and most ludicrous line of the book.

    “When we heard it was a black foreign car, we were suspicious immediately.” (169)

I mean… It is in the late 1950’s that the first cars were imported into America. Were the Big Three funding the publisher? I think we had better leave that theory alone, though it is a funny thought!

Thoughts on the 56 Weeks with Nancy Drew project

When the idea of 56 Weeks with Nancy Drew first occurred to me, I had planned to post one standard book review a week. I imagined it including a spoiler-free synopsis, my opinion of the book, a favourite quote or one that captured the feel of the book, and leave it at that. I had planned to read ahead of my posts, so I would always have at least four weeks of reviews banked. Beyond my being a life-long procrastinator, this project has grown from what I had initially imagined. Here we are at three weeks in and I’m struggling to choose what to include in my reviews, because the notes I am taking as I read are nothing short of madness. 

Beyond keeping a timeline, noting references to the time of year, and locations and place names, the meals referenced and all of the foods described, I’ve also been cataloging clothing references, character descriptions, Nancy’s skills, and so much more. With each book I read I’m adding more things to these lists and adding more lists! I’m having so much fun geeking out on all things Nancy and reading these books critically for the first time. But there isn’t the time to discuss all of the things I want to in one post. Last week, I wrote two posts for The Hidden Staircase and at the end of it I still felt frustrated because I didn’t get to half of the things I wanted to discuss. 

What I’m trying to say, is that I’m having a great time. But I’m also finding this project challenging in a way I hadn’t imagined. Despite the fact that I cannot discuss all of my thoughts on each of these books within the confines of one post per book, I am going to continue to take copious notes, mark all the beautiful, fun, and hilarious passages, as well as the problematic ones in the hopes that I will be able to eventually share that information in the future.

Favourite quotation

I’m going to share a longer quotation than I have for the other two books because I think you need a bit of context for this one, and there is a humorous bit at the end of it. 

    As the car reached a smooth, straight piece of road, Nancy put it to a faster and faster pace.

    "We're gaining on them!" Don said exuberantly.

    Little by little the Drew sedan crept up on the car ahead. Soon its headlights spotlighted the rear of the other vehicle a black foreign car! Three figures were silhouetted inside it! (164)

After reading this book when I was little, I was obsessed with car chases. With my dad driving, I would often pretend we were being followed by the car behind us and say excitedly, “They’re gaining on us!” It was great fun!