The Mystery At The Moss-Covered Mansion
Premise: Nancy, Bess, and George investigate strange noises coming from an old mansion which is reputed to be cursed while also trying to prove the identity of a long-lost heiress.
As beginnings go, this one was pretty exciting. Nancy and George are stranded on the side of the road---they were on the way to the house of a woman named Mrs. Labelle to meet Carson for his birthday---waiting for Bess who has gone to look for help, and she comes running up to them very much frightened, saying that she heard strange noises, including a scream, coming from inside of an old abandoned building, and Nancy being Nancy decides to investigate, which, girl! No! Like, I know horror movies may not have been a thing back then, but come on, this is survival 101. You don't go looking for the strange noise. But hey, what do I know? I'm just the reader who's along for the ride. Anyways, while they're investigating, they hear a wild animal scream which is followed by a gunshot and the three quickly flee, though they come back numerous times after George realizes that she lost her watch, though they never find it.
While the girls are mainly focused on the mansion mystery, it turns out that Carson also has a new case: to locate a woman named June Campbell Roland to give her inheritance of 52,000 dollars which was gifted to her from her mother, which, oof, I'd love to have that kind of money, but alas, no rich relatives or friends to give me that kind of dough. As he's waiting on information on his client, Carson is gifted an oil painting of Nancy, which she had commissioned after hiring a famous painter named Jules Raynad, and he loved the gift of course. I mean, I would too, not gonna lie.
Then June Campbell is found after hearing from her friend, Penelope Parson, who mentions a letter from June that mentioned that she was getting married and Mrs. Labelle is surprised at the changes in the woman, but attributes hem to her mother's death, even though she seems to be more interested in the money. Nancy, of course, gets a bad vibe from her, which later is proven correct as "June" was actually a young woman named Venus Cully, the daughter of a Romany woman who worked as a fortune teller at a carnival and she and her brother, Ramo who had previously warned Nancy, Bess, and George away from the mansion, had been behind the whole thing. Of course, Carson beats himself up about this as he had already given Venus the money, even though her documentation had proved to be in order, so, Dude, not your fault. You did your due diligence.
Determined to help Carson get the money back, Nancy takes on this case along with her own and she learns that Ramo was digging near the mansion, and discovers a policeman's badge, which where did it come from? Was it stolen? Was Ramo using it to impersonate an officer? If so, what made him drop it? All questions that Nancy should've asked, but didn't, which, girl, why not? Why didn't you call the police to tell them about a missing badge? Your father is a lawyer, surely you would know how serious this is. Anyways, sometime after this, she and her father go to track down another clue via airplane, but they get lost in the fog and end up crashing (which, I swear, it's always something in these older books), and Nancy ends up wandering around the crash site looking for her father before falling unconscious.
When she wakes up again, she finds herself in a strange room and since she's very much still focused on finding Carson, she finds her way out of the room she's in and it's not until she's out of the woods that she realizes that she was in the mansion she's been investigating, though she puts this to the side when she's met by firemen who take her to the hospital where she's finally reunited with her father.
As it turns out, the mysterious happenings at the mansion aren't nefarious at all, but merely because a painter who's famous for capturing wildlife just wants to be left alone and has a lion and a monkey on the premise, which, I know it was the forties, but was this legal? This feels like this wouldn't be legal. As it turns out, his assistant is the real June who's quickly apprised of the situation, and they work with the police to capture Ramo, Venus, and her mother, Mrs. Cully, and Jules gets her inheritance back, while Venus was let off with a warning as she was under her mother's thumb.
The story was revised as Mystery At The Moss-Covered Mansion in 1971 by Harriet Stratemeyer Adams, and again, I don't really know if there's much more I can say about her.
Characters: Nancy and Carson Drew, Bess Marvin, George Fayne, Hannah Gruen (Guest appearances of Mr. and Mrs. Nickerson, Ned Nickerson, Dave Evans, and Burt Eddleton)
Premise: Nancy investigates an attempted attack on a NASA Space Center.
Nancy's brought in on a mystery when Carson Drew invites her to take a look at a newspaper's coded message, saying that he's investigating an attempt on a NASA Space Center thought to have been done by a Florida orange grower named Billington, which, okay, yeah, definitely a different type of case for Nancy, and I can see how that would catch a reader's attention, but given that this is a government agency, I would think that if they had to bring in a civilian lawyer, there would be an NDA that Carson would have to sign----at the least----which means that he's breaking confidentiality by not only telling Nancy what he's working on, but also letting her look at it. But this is fiction, so I guess we're just gonna let that slide for sake of convenience. In any case, things take a turn when someone runs into George's car just as she and Bess are pulling into the Drew Home and it's rightly deduced that the "accident" has to do with the new mystery and during their investigation, and they're all invited to stay at the Billington home for while they're working on the case.
While they're investigating who tried to blow up the Space Center, the gang comes across a mansion that's being protected by wild animals, which, unlike the original version, the owner makes a point of saying that he's got permission to house the animals, so good for them for fixing this particular plot hole. However, things aren't really smooth sailing as the couple that they're staying with besides the Nickersons----Antin and Tina Resardo----are hostile, making the group feel unwelcome as well as trying to spy on their conversation.
As they continue trying to prove Billington's innocence, they discover that the gang---whose hide out is at the moss-covered mansion---framed him by using a member that resembled him and their end goal is to kill the astronauts during their mission launch, which, again, not what you would expect from the original Nancy Drew franchise. In order to stop the gang from doing this, Nancy and Ned hitch a ride on of their cars, hoping to find evidence they can bring to the police, but end up as prisoners, though they're eventually rescued and most of the gang is arrested, with only the scientist working for them at large, though he eventually turns himself in and the launch goes off without a hitch.
Both stories are enjoyable, though I feel like the original story fit better. I definitely applaud Harriet trying to raise the stakes of Nancy's mystery in the revised edition, but for this one, I feel like there are too many plot holes to successfully suspend disbelief, especially since this iteration of Nancy Drew is geared towards kids. Honestly, I think it would've been better served as a story for the Nancy Drew Casefiles. That's not to say that the original didn't have its own problems, such as the legality of the painter keeping wild/exotic animals and George just seemingly giving up searching for her watch. Still, I'd reread both of them again. Good night and do the Drew!
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