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?!