The Scarlet Slipper Mystery

 

Hey everyone.  Here's my next offering for the blog: The Scarlet Slipper Mystery, Nancy's 32nd case, which was penned in 1954 by Charles S. Strong whom I couldn't find out all that much about.  Everything I found for him led back to a Wikipedia page, and according to that, he was a writer and adventurer and also penned a Hardy Boys story: The Hooded Hawk Mystery.  Please note, I do try to find out all I can about the different people who wrote under the Carolyn Keene name, but it's not always possible and what I find, take with a grain of salt because I don't have a way to confirm or deny what I come across.

Characters: Nancy Drew, Bess Marvin, George Fayne (with guest appearances by Carson Drew, Nick Nickerson, and Hannah Gruen)

Premise: Nancy works to discover who is trying to frighten a pair of siblings (Henri and Helene Fontaine) and whether or not it has to do with their parents' resistance work in their homeland of Centrovia. 

So interestingly enough, it's Bess, of all people, who gets Nancy involved in her next mystery.  After Nancy comes home from a visit to her Aunt Eloise in New York (in which, during the plane ride, she had to comfort a passenger who was afraid that the plane would crash since it had lost an engine), Bess mentions a dance class she has joined and mentions the instructors Henri and Helene Fontaine whom Nancy learns is from a place called Centrovia, (which was a place Nancy's fellow passenger mentioned), and Nancy is brought into the mystery when Bess finds them crying and Henri explains that they've gotten a note that tells them to leave the country without saying anything to anyone, explaining that their name was changed from Provak to Fontaine after their parents joined a resistance movement against Centrova's oppressive regime and they had had a family friend sell their family heirlooms to fund their escape, first making their way to France before fleeing to the United States.

 In order to keep the Fontaines safe, Nancy has them stay at her place for a bit.  Which, with all of this, I'm assuming means they had work visas in France and the U.S., but this was back in the fifties, so I'm not really sure how all of that would work, especially if they had to apply for asylum or if the Fontaines would get into trouble for visa violations in France and the U.S.

Then Nancy has another run in with the passenger from the plane when his briefcase goes missing who turns out to be a man named Johann Koff who is also from Centrovia, and his briefcase had documents against the regime and was told to flee as well, but Carson Drew gets involved and helps him, and along the way, he's reunited with his cousin Anton Schimdt, which is great for them, and yet, Anton's not mentioned again in the story, and Koff is only mentioned in passing after this, which, to me, was a little annoying, but I didn't write the story, so...

She finds herself briefly involved with another mystery when a friend asks her and her father for help in suing a collector they both know because a figurine she bought from him had a crack in it, but when Nancy and the collector study the figurines, it's discovered that all of them have the same flaw and one has a piece of paper with a set of numbers on it. Along with this, Nancy starts a search for a collection of paintings Henri did of Helen in different ballet poses, which she soon deduces ties into the notes that the Fontaines have received.

Because of the trouble with the Fontaines, Bess recruits Nancy in helping teach the classes, and Nancy gets roped into performing, and during one of her lessons, red slippers that had belonged to Helene and Henri's mother are stolen.  After this, Helene and Henri discover that one of Henri's paintings were tampered with and he discovers that the painting hides a small jewel.

As it turns out, the jewels that were used to fund the Centrovian underground were stolen by a man named Amenian and his wife using the name Judson as well as a man named Thomas Renee and they've been using paintings and other art pieces to smuggle the jewels to the states, which, wouldn't something like this be covered by a federal agency?  I can't remember if there's an art fraud/theft division or if there was one back in the fifties, but this would seem like the best department to handle that type of thing.

Of course, the smugglers want Nancy out of the way and they try to scare her by breaking into her home and tying up Hannah Gruen as well as rolling Togo up in a rug and then locking him in a closet after he got out of the rug (he was fine) and later kidnapping Nancy, Bess, and George, though they manage to outwit their kidnapper, and then finally the Fontaines are kidnapped, and when Nancy and Ned investigate their disappearance, Nancy herself becomes kidnapped, and when the Fontaines, Bess, and George go to rescue her along with a police officer, they end up trapped in a burning house. Fortunately, they make it out and everyone's arrested.

The story was "updated and revised" in 1974 by Harriet Stratemeyer Adams and other than some revised terminology, was basically the same story.  I honestly feel like this was one of the weaker stories that would've done better if some things were tightened up.  For one thing, during the climax in both versions, Bess keeps smelling kerosene and wonders to herself what the police officer would be doing with it and yet never brings it up before they're trapped in the house, making her seem quite stupid and Bess has never been stupid.

One thing I've noticed for the later books in the series (18-34, and this is a "so far" kind of thing, I could be completely wrong in the long run), is they are exactly the same story, but updated but condensing the action and changing terminology.  While that's not a bad thing per se, it doesn't really give a lot to work with in terms of comparing and contrasting, and this particular story in some ways felt like Charles Strong was trying to make a statement about asylum seekers without coming right out and stating so.  Still a good story and worth reading though.  Be like Nancy, kind, courageous, and determined.  Do the Drew.