Week 9, Book 9
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, 176 pages)
Cover illustrated by: Rudy Nappi
Revised text publication date: 1968
Original text publication date: 1933
My edition printed: approx. 1978
Ghostwriter: Walter Karig
Editors: Edna Stratemeyer Squier & Harriet Stratemeyer Adams
Revised by: Patricia Doll
Setting: River Heights, an inn called The Sign of the Twisted Candles, Maywood
Originally published in 1933, I will be reviewing the revised text edition of The Sign of the Twisted Candles, published in 1968 and pictured above. This is the second of three books in this series that were written by Walter Karig. The other two are Nancy’s Mysterious Letter and Password to Larkspur Lane.
Nancy Drew and her friends, Bess Marvin and George Fayne, brave a storm to visit The Sign of the Twisted Candles, an inn outside of River Heights. Asa Sidney, a relative of Bess and George, has just turned 100 years old and is living in a tower room unable to negotiate the stairs, and discouraged from leaving his room by the Jemitts, a couple he has hired to look after him (1-2). Thank goodness the adopted daughter of the couple, Carol, has befriended the old man and looks out for him as best she can. Nancy, Bess, George, and Carol hold a birthday party celebration in the man’s room, much to the dislike of the Jemitts. But as Nancy is a paying customer, they are coolly polite, for now, anyway.
Nancy and her friends run into two relatives coming to visit Mr. Sidney, one from each side of the family. Nancy gets the impression that both men are calling to make their claim on the estate, because due to a family feud, Mr. Sidney’s relatives haven’t spared him much time before now (26).
Later that night Nancy receives a call from Carol. Mr. Sidney wants to make a new will and would like to hire Nancy’s father, Carson Drew, for the job. Soon, Nancy is up to her neck in the goings on at the Sidney mansion. Nancy spots Frank Jemitt surreptitiously burying a chest belonging to Mr. Sidney. And Mr. Sidney commissions Nancy and her friends with the task of finding treasures he has squirrelled away in hidden cupboards all over the house. The image of a twisted candle mark the hiding spots.
The fact that Nancy and her father are helping Mr. Sidney has put the relatives’ noses out of joint. Nancy doesn’t shy away from doing the right thing, even if it means making some people upset. But it sure is disheartening when Bess and George give her the cold shoulder and accuse her of trying to keep their family from their rightful share of the inheritance!
Then Mr. Sidney dies. Although his will has already been signed and witnessed, the case is a complicated one. Carson suspects that someone has been bleeding the man of his money. Nancy and Carson use their own specific talents to work different aspects of the case in this thrilling and atmospheric book.
In this one, Nancy uncovers the secrets of The Sign of the Twisted Candles, discovers the true identity of a young girl who was orphaned as a baby and saves the girl from the clutches of her abusive adoptive parents. Nancy still has time to get caught in a storm, visit a lonely old man and hear his life story, search for treasure, go shopping for clothes, go on a date, have a swim, keep an eye on Asa Sidney’s possessions, put an end to a family feud, eat 12 meals, one snack of cocoa and cookies, and a slice of Butterfly Pie, which sounds slightly less gross than the name would lead you to believe.
Nancy narrowly misses an oak tree falling on her car, survives being beaten with a hairbrush, has a run-in with a snake, recovers from being drugged, and is almost pushed off the ledge of the Sidney mansion tower window. I still struggle to understand why she opted to use a ladder to access the high tower instead of going around the back of the house to get the key from her father and going through the front door. Apparently, time was of the essence!
Speaking of hot cocoa, it looks like the previous owner of my copy of this book enjoyed a mug or two while reading the book they were gifted for Christmas, as you will see in the photos. While I cannot say I love having a stained book, I do think it’s sweet to imagine someone reading this book so intently that they accidentally spilled their cocoa. Hopefully, they weren’t too bothered by it!
Time of year
We have two indicators of the time of year in this book and both of them centre around Ned. The first is when Ned calls Nancy wanting to make a date.
“Oh, Ned. I have so much to tell you. When can you leave your job and come down so I can talk to you?”
“Camp closes tomorrow. I should be home the next day.” (114)
I think it is fair to assume that Ned works at a boys summer camp, which likely closes up at the end of August. This would also work well with the second clue we have, which comes at the end of the day Ned and Nancy spend together.
Presently Ned stood up and said he must leave. “I have to get up early tomorrow and drive to Emerson. Football practice starts early this year.” (144)
From these two comments made by Ned, I believe this book is set in late August or early September.
What makes this book different from the others?
I’m sensing a theme with the titles that were ghostwritten by Walter Karig. There are a lot of things that stand out as being different in this one from books one through seven, which had Mildred A. Wirt Benson as ghostwriter. Critiques of that ridiculous ladder scene aside, I really enjoyed this one. It might even be a favourite. Many of the aspects I appreciated about this book are things that I haven’t noticed in the other titles thus far.
Sense of place
One of the things that I think these books generally lack is a strong sense of place. I’m not talking about how Nancy’s home of River Heights is not fixed in one American state. Although, this drives me a bit mad as an adult and I really want to solve this unsolveable mystery, as a child I imagined River Heights as having the same landscape as the one I called home. I suspect a lot of children reading these books felt the same. But what I think a lot of these books lack is a good description of the setting. The broad strokes are usually there, but in this one we really get a sense of the place and the feelings that location and moment in time evokes.
One of my favourite examples of this is when Nancy, Carol, and a banker friend of Nancy’s father, Raymond Hill, go looking for the Jemitts at the old tenant house on the Sidney estate.
They stood in silence close to a towering sycamore tree, their forms blending with the light, mottled background of the trunk. At last Nancy’s keen ears heard a sound that was different from the noises of the meadow insects. It had a metallic ring and was muffled and distant.
Instantly she switched on her spotlight, and the beam cut through the blackness. The tumble-down tenant house sprang into view, and on the rickety front steps Frank and Emma Jemitt were etched sharply in the glare. He was carrying a long, narrow box over one shoulder. His wife held a pair of ornate silver candelabra. (111)
But perhaps one of the best examples of setting a scene is Nancy’s first impression of the tower room where Asa Sidney resides and the description of the man himself.
Nancy gazed into one of the strangest rooms she had ever seen. It was fully twenty feet square, and from all of its walls candles gleamed—candles by the dozen, all winking in the draft from the open door. Evidently Mr. Sidney had not waited for Carol to light them.
It was warm in the room, and the heavy air was pungently scented by burning tallow. In the great arched window directly in front of Nancy was the massive twisted candle whose light she had seen from outdoors.
From a low, broad chair before this window the gaunt figure of a very old man arose. The candlelight showed his long, silver-white hair sweeping over stooped shoulders, and merging with the snowy beard that spread across his chest. Shaggy white eyebrows half concealed glowing eyes—strangely youthful eyes—that peered at Nancy from either side of a jutting, hawklike nose. (9-10)
This description tells us about the shape of the room, the lighting, the smell, and places in that space an old man that is as unusual as the room itself. We get the feeling that Asa Sidney is a character out of a fairytale, and like a fairytale, we know this story is going to have a happy ending, though perhaps not for Asa Sidney. Unlike most of the characters in these books Asa Sidney isn’t entirely good or bad. When he tells his life story it’s apparent that he had a difficult start in life. He neglected his wife and children, and he sought fame and fortune instead. The result was that his wife left him, and he found out that his children had died (21-22). It’s only in later years and with his will that he tries to repair some of the damage his selfishness caused.
Another evocative scene is at the very start of the book. Nancy getting caught in a storm is a common enough occurrence in these books, and they often take place at the beginning too, but the storm in this book is particularly well described.
Trees and bushes swayed in the wind, which had blown up suddenly and now shrieked like a siren. It slammed against the car with terrific force as dust and leaves swirled through the air.
"Oh!" Bess screamed suddenly. "Look!"
Not far ahead of the car a giant elm had started to topple. As Nancy jammed on her brakes, the tree fell with a thundering crash across the road.
The three girls sat stunned, but finally Bess said, "Now we'll have to turn around and go home."
"Don't be silly," said George. "I can see the inn just beyond the tree. We can walk there."
Nancy drove up to the tree, which might offer protection for the car against the storm's blast. She and her friends stepped out into the wind, which whipped their hair and stung their faces. With eyes almost closed, they locked arms, skirted the fallen tree, and set off for the inn.
Progress was slow, but finally they came to the inn's spacious front lawn and curving driveway at the end of the road. Several cars were parked there. The building was a rambling structure in three sections. Its central portion was two stories high and had a flat-roofed tower room. Wings on either side were one story and also flat-roofed.
There was a dim glow of light from the ground-floor windows. In the arched casement of the tower a sturdy candlelight gleamed a welcome. Almost breathless, the three girls dashed up the broad front steps onto the wide porch just as it started to rain. (2, 4)
On the surface, this scene isn’t anything special. But I think what makes it work so well is how simple the writing is. The situation with the falling tree and the girls locking arms for support against the wind is plainly described and provides drama and a sense of mystery to their first sighting of the Sidney mansion, and the reader’s. The light coming from the ground-floor windows is dim, and perhaps a bit cold, as it is only the “sturdy candlelight” coming from the tower that “gleamed a welcome” (4). When the young women enter the building they find the inhospitable Jemitts reign on the ground-floor. It is Mr. Sidney, the resident of the tower, that welcomes them to his home.
Final thoughts
There are a number of other aspects of this book that make it special and that, I think, make it different from the other Nancy Drew books. Unfortunately, there isn’t the space to discuss them all here. As usual, I have jotted them down and hope to revisit the topics in the future. For now, I would be interested to know if any of the books in this series stood out to you as having a strong sense of place.
Favourite quotations
It proved almost impossible to choose one favourite section from this book. Although, saying that I realize this entire blog post has been a means of sharing my favourite scenes. Usually, I choose a quotation that I find humorous in some way, but this week in keeping with our theme I thought I would choose something a bit different. I’ve chosen a section that I found touching. Nancy Drew books are a lot of things, but I cannot say I normally find them romantic. The following scene comes not long after Nancy has been drugged and hidden in the Sidney mansion. Ned returned from making a phone call and, after scouring the grounds, was unable to find her. He was so panicked that he reported her missing to the police. With the fear of losing Nancy fresh in his mind, Ned is afraid of letting Nancy out of his sight.
“Ned, go for the police, will you? I’ll wait here in case he or the Jemitts come out.”
“Promise me,” he said, cupping Nancy’s chin in his hand, “that you won’t disappear again.”
“Not even to chase them?”
“No.” Ned sat still until she gave her word, then hurried off. (140)
There is something about Ned “cupping Nancy’s chin in his hand” that makes their relationship feel more adult than it has up until this point. Ned has always made it clear that he likes Nancy. But I’ve always had the impression that it was along the lines of a school boy crush. Real enough in the moment, though easily replaced if he were to meet another young woman with a similar spirit to Nancy. I can’t say I really like Ned as a character. He’s a bit like a cardboard cutout of the boy next door. Dependable and sincere, but very boring. This section made me appreciate Ned, a little more. I think he really does care about Nancy and see a future with her, if she can survive that long! It remains to be seen if Nancy takes the relationship as seriously.
What are your impressions of Ned? Do you think he’s a good fit for Nancy, or is there another character in this series that you believe would compliment Nancy better? I thought Major John McBride from The Mystery at Lilac Inn, would have been a good candidate for Nancy. They could solve mysteries together and he could even have his own series solving cases for the government.
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