Do The Drew

      Hey all, you know what time it is! Our foray into the world of Nancy Drew with mystery #21 The Secret In The Old Attic first published in 1944.  Again, this is a Mildred Wirt Benson offering (I have a feeling that she ghostwrote a lot of the stories)   Characters : Nancy Drew, Carson Drew, Bes Marvin, George Fayne (with guest appearances by Hannah Gruen, Effie Schneider (Hannah's niece), and Ned Nickerson). Premise : Nancy investigates two acts of theft: a silk-making process and plagiarized song compositions. After being asked to examine a pair of gloves, Nancy's invited by her father to take on a case to prove that Lucius Dight stole a method of silk-making from a man named Mr. Booker, in which he takes silk made from spiders (orb weavers) and makes fabrics/clothes from them, which, okay, kind of interesting, but I sure as heck wouldn't do it.  At the same time, Philip March asks Nancy and her father to help him prove that his late son's music ...

Today I bring you another one of my favorite mysteries: The Secret At Shadow Ranch (Of Shadow Ranch in the revised story).  The 5th in the series, this is another volume that was written by Mildred Wirth Benson and as much as I love this one, it's a little slower than normal.  It's almost like Benson was just having a good old time writing Nancy, Bess, and George on a ranch and halfway through went "Oh shoot!  This is supposed to be a mystery story!"  And now that I've confused you a bit, to quote another mystery series I like (Ghostwriter) "Let's rewind!" Characters : Nancy Drew, George Fayne, Bess Marvin (with a guest appearance by Bess and George's cousin, Alice Regor, and a cameo appearance by Carson Drew) Premise : While on vacation, Nancy investigates after witnessing a child being mistreated. In the 1931 story, Nancy is invited by Bess and George to their uncle and aunt's (Richard and Nell) new ranch which is called Shadow Ranch for a ...

      Today's offering is Mystery #10, The Password To Larkspur Lane. Originally written in 1933 and then revised in 1966, the actual ghostwriter of this volume is Walter Karig who wrote two other books in the series (Numbers 8 and 9).  According to his Wikipedia page--which, take with a grain of salt, cause Wikipedia--he wasn't a fan writing Bess and George and had a soft spot for Helen Corning, which explains why she features so prominently in the original version. Characters : Nancy Drew, Helen Corning (with appearances by Carson Drew, Ned Nickerson, Hannah Gruen, and Effie Schneider (Hannah's niece). Premise : Nancy investigates the disappearance of an elderly lady after a family friend is forced to tend to her. Okay, first of all, I know I said that I wasn't going to comment on being blonde-haired versus being a redhead, but as you can see, my cover of the copy of the 1933 story has her as a redhead, and my best guess is that someone working on the series was tr...

Okay, to start us off, we're going with one of my favorites, the Nancy Drew Mystery number 25, The Ghost Of Blackwood Hall, originally written in 1948 and then later revised in 1967. As everyone knows, the Nancy Drew stories were written by Caroline Keene. What some people may not know---though in this day and age of internet, I kinda doubt it---this was a pseudonym and the series, as well as others, had several ghostwriters. The ghostwriter of this particular volume was Mildred Wirt Benson who ghostwrote---not sure if this is an actual word, but for now, we'll say it is---for various stories in the Nancy Drew collection as well as the Dana Girl Mysteries and other series.  In this and other reviews, I will probably not be rehashing out the trope of Nancy's skills being better than the police department unless it just really irks me as this is a common trope in the series and not really the point of this blog. I also will not be covering the fact that Nancy goes from bein...

 Welcome to Do The Drew, a sister blog to my main blog Rumbles Of A Book Dragon.  Do The Drew focuses on the Nancy Drew stories from the 30s and their revisions and will not be done in any particular order.  As with Rumbles Of A Book Dragon, all pictures are taken from the internet and don't belong to me and I will do my best to make sure the photos match the editions of the books that I own. I am aware that these books will have outdated views on certain topics/social issues, and I may comment on them within my review of the books.  As with my other blog, all my reviews will have spoilers for the books discussed.