The Ghost Of Blackwood Hall

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 being blonde-haired to titian-haired or the fact that the stories go from 25 chapters to 20, as again, this is a common occurrence within the series.

Characters: Nancy Drew, Bess Marvin, George Fayne (with appearances by Hannah Gruen, Carson Drew, Ned Nickerson, and Nancy's dog, Togo, a terrier).

Premise: Nancy is hired to find a woman's stolen jewelry and winds up going against racketeers who are swindling the public.

At the start of this story, Nancy's relaxing and reading a tale of ghost stories, and gets her day interrupted by a family friend, a jeweler known as Mr. Freeman, who has brought a woman---Mrs. Adeline Putney---to her for help, soon learning that her late husband's jewelry has been stolen and switched with fakes after burying them in the woods at the direction of the husband's "spirit", which, lady, why?  Even if you're a believer in ghostly spirits----which I'm not----why would you do this at "his" behest, even if you trusted him?  Was this a normal thing for him?  And if not, why would you automatically trust it?  But I digress.  Of course, Nancy takes the case and what seems to be a simple case of theft turns out to be a whole racket with people being hypnotized during "seances" and then directed to carry out the gang's instructions, taking their money for a supposed charity to help orphans, which, I really hate people like this.  I really do.

After some more investigation (with the help from her father, Carson, this time), Nancy, Bess, and George discover the base of the operation: a manor known as Blackwood Hall, and eventually, after revisiting the manor with Ned and Carson, she learns that the gang behind the plot is the Brex family: Howard, Joe, John, their mother, and their spouses, which is how John is able to escape police custody after he's arrested.

The Brex family tries to stop Nancy and her friends from discovering their plot through any means they can think of such as knocking Nancy and Ned out, sending Nancy warning notes, turning Mrs. Putney and others against Nancy, playing ghost, and even locking Nancy in a small elevator of the manor with a poisonous gas. Thankfully, these tricks don't work and Nancy and the others are able to capture the Brex family and present them to the police who arrest them all.   

Both the 1948 and the 1967 versions were the same (the latter being revised by Priscilla Baker-Carr), just updated to change terminology (Mrs. Putney is described as being "queer" in the '48 version, while the word "odd" was is used for the '67 volume, though the word "queer" is still used in two different parts of the story).  In the latter, pieces of dialogue are used as part of the narration cutting out the need for some of the chapters and we don't get to see Nancy's kidnapping played out, but rather just hear about it, which deletes a few pages from the story, hence the reason that this volume goes from 25 chapters to 20.

As stated above, this is one of my favorite Nancy Drew stories and there was a part of me that was curious to see if there would be any changes within the legal system---how they handled telling people certain information, for example----but that wasn't seen here, though maybe you see that more in one of the Hardy Boys stories, I don't know.  Unfortunately, since there were no big changes in the story, I can't really compare and contrast.  One thing of note, was that a character that appeared once in the story---Belinda---was described as being dark-skinned in the first version of the story, while in the revision, her race was omitted.

The main difference that I did find, however, was that the 1948 version was a lot more introspective and you got to see Nancy puzzling things out to herself and even though I grew up on the revised versions, I've found that I actually prefer the older volumes. And there you have my first review for this blog.  Until next time, be like Nancy.  Be bold, tenacious, kind, and willing to help others.  In other words, do the Drew!