There are plenty of shenanigans for Nancy to get her teeth into in this early entry in the Nancy Drew stories including a mysterious stranger threatening to blackmail her father Carson implying he has committed fraud; and a burglary at a haunted house owned by Nancy’s friend Helen’s Aunt Rosemary and her mother, Nancy is asked to investigate which leads to some very spooky 👻 scenes.   

 

There is plenty of action in the story so there is a lot going on including hidden passages, ghosts, kidnapping, intimidation and even an attempt on Carson and Nancy’s lives!  

 

Anyone who is interested in the Nancy Drew books knows there are often two different versions of the early stories, the OT or original text which were published starting in the 1930s and then the RT versions or revised texts which started coming out in the 1950s.  They are in many cases very different stories. I am really interested in reading the original texts to see how different they are.  This is a Revised Text. 

 

My criticism of the story is how easily the local police allow Nancy, a young teenage girl to interrogate a suspect who is in custody and how she manages with almost no effort get the bad guy to spill the beans they just crumble under her questioning!  She is good 🤣!   I also thought a little bit too much time was spent searching and searching.  However despite this there is always fun in reading a Nancy mystery.