Carson Drew has a friend in trouble (again). Mr. Gonzales has a crocodile farm in Florida, and some of the workers seem to be acting rather shady. Mr. Gonzales needs help NOW, so of course, Mr. Drew enlists Nancy!
Nancy, George, and Bess fly to Florida to stay with the Cosgrove family. Big mistake! A man named Steven meets them at the airport to pick them up in his car, and suddenly Nancy, Bess and George are captives. Aready.
Nancy picks locks with the nail file and bobby pin she just happens to have. Very McGyver! Nancy, Bess and George run through a swamp eventually get back to civility so they can call the police; the police come to get their story, and Nancy, George and Bess take a cab to the Cosgrove's.
The gang visits Crocodile Island to meet Mr. Gonzales, who thinks his partners might be selling boot-leg crocodiles (WHAA?). When Nancy, Bess, and George try to visit Croc-Isle off-hours with the Cosgrove's son Danny, they are threatened by a man who man makes his point by scraping their boat with his, saying the damage will be worse if they don't get out fast.
After a mysterious nighttime delivery to the island and some threatening phone calls, things are getting scary. A.k.a, normal. Carson's worried, but Nancy convinces him that she can stay. After all, she has a sixteen-year-old boy (Danny) to protect her and her friends! She'll create a plan to keep herself from getting killed, too.
Nancy and Co. find treasure, look for clues, get attacked by mosquitoes, and discover that a suspect is an AWOL Navyman. They overhear a phone conversation; "...need five hundred" Five hundred what? Five hundred high-speed cameras from the US, that's what, smuggled out for secret operations! Freaky. Eventually, Nancy gets captured again, but not alone!
Nancy and Ned, who is visiting with Burt and Dave, get trapped in a submarine. Dave manages to radio for help. Everything is solved! No more sneaky camera operations. Everyone's safe, even the crocs.
- When Nancy wants to know more about submarines (she and her friends see a periscope in the water) she is able to visit a naval base, as the Cosgroves are, conveniently, friends with a naval captain. Nancy tracks down the AWOL. Really, this is much like The Mystery at the Moss-Covered Mansion: Florida, sneaking around the government, swamp animals threatening them...
This book opens fantastically! And check out the Technicolor, Hitchcock cover...
The book opens...
Nancy: "What did Marty King mean by her remark?"
And what does Nancy mean by that?
Nancy's J-E-A-L-O-U-S of her father's new secretary! Her father dares to mentions to Ms. King a new mystery involving a glowing eye. You traitor, Carson! [/sarcasm] Also, Ned has been kidnapped, and the only clue is a message from him, dropped from a robotic helicopter, which had landed on the Drews' front lawn. There is only one line--Beware of Cyclops! But Mary King, Carson's new secretary, cattily claims she's already solved part of the mystery!
Nancy admits to Bess and George she's jealous. "Jealous!" George exclaims, summing up the character profile that the ghostwriters must have had. "That's one trait you don't have!"
So let's sift it out to the best parts: There's a creepy museum with a glowing eye image in the wall. Burt and Dave hang out in a suspicious house. The gang is mesmerized by hypnotic beams of lights shaped like eyes, with disembodied voices echoing in the room. There is a mysterious experiment by Ned! It's like a Nancy Drew drug trip.
It was a really, really, weird attempt at a "sci-fi" kind of mystery. It was pretty cool, but it concentrated too much on the stupid glowing eye clue. On a 1-10 scale? 6.
And this one mentions computers! Back when the yellow-spine books were written, computers were pretty much restricted to labs\science. I think, but am not sure, a lot of people were kinda suspicious of the "new-fangled invention". Thus my tag, "OMG computers!"
Nancy and Mr. Drew are listening a famous violinist at the River Heights Art Museum when an elderly woman's purse is snatched. She's crying so much over the music that she doesn't notice at first. Nancy gets into hero mode, stands up and runs after the man. She chases him through the museum and is about to catch him when the man pulls the contents from the purse and throws the empty purse down. Nancy returns the empty purse to 'Mrs. Sutherland', and Nancy also meets her "wild" tween daughter, Rose.
Rose's father is a famous violinist, but somehow he can't be tracked down. He's also a gypsy, which seems to be a mark of shame here. Mrs. S asks for help, and Nancy accepts with the eagerness of a dog being offered a steak. She needs to help the innocent old lady and Rose, who is so "wild" that she speaks boldly and has a high temper! OMG! In a bizarre plot involving dolls, Nancy can find something that will assure money for Rose's future--she just has to find a certain doll. If the doll is found, it could also lead her to Rose's "baby Daddy" :P Nancy also has to deal with a red-haired gypsy named Nitaka, who also wants the doll that furnishes the clue. The titian detective gets in trouble trying to discover gypsy secrets...
- During a visit a gypsy camp, Ned states doesn't want his fortune read. Ned: "Not me...I'll go into business, prosper, and marry a certain ambitious young lady named--" Nancy interrupts hastily, making the excuse that a violinist is about to play. It is always clear that while Nancy likes Ned as a very close friend, she's not really tolerant of Ned's different feelings!
- Nancy is very free about speaking disparagingly about the gypsy culture, despite not knowing the much about it. That changes when some girls tease Rose for being part gypsy. Ta-da! Gratuitous "some gypsies are very nice and are great musicians!" comment.
- Nancy is chasing suspects when a policeman stops her. "Do you know how fast you were going? We've got laws!" Moments later, after Nancy explains (she's all, "I am breaking the laws, but that's okay, because I'm chasing bad people!1!1), the cop asks who she is. Nancy quickly answers, "'Nancy Drew...Carson Drew's daugh--' The policeman waited no more. Like a released rocket he shot down the road." Lolz...not using names, are we, Nan?
Like a lot of the Nancy Drew books, this tends to wander, but was enjoyable. As a bonus, it is set in my childhood state, Florida. It also centers around the Kennedy Space Center, plotwise. My mom and dad took me and my siblings there. I was seven, it was friggin hot, I was tired, and I didn't give a damn about the rockets. I'm sure I would've enjoyed it in cooler weather.
Anyway, Nancy is helping her father with a legal case (again). Carson doesn't have a Florida license, so he's working with another lawyer in Florida. Their client was falsely accused of sending exploding oranges (!) to the space center. (Let's hope our enemies abroad never read this book--or this post! They just might send the White House a gift of fruit ;).
Nancy goes to Florida and stays at the client's house. The client's foreman and his (the foreman's) wife were supposed to pick up the Drews, but they make a "mistake" and the Drews had to take the taxi to the house. Carson Drew believes the incident is deliberate, because anything disruptive is suspicious.
Par for the script, Bess and George come to Florida, too, as well as Ned, Burt and Dave. (Do the boys ever have time for college?). Well, here's your convenient plot device: the Nickersons (Ned's family) are having a party at their summer home in Florida. I'd have a tag for 'convenient plot device', except that every book has one.
The mystery starts, and soon we have a house where suspicious things happen, a plot to blow up a space launch, and devious plots to harm Nancy (and, inadvertently, Ned). That's a bit crazy, huh? I don't think I need to mention that it all comes right in the end...but I already did.
- Nancy and crew get lost in an orange grove but get out by knowing that the roughest side of the tree is north. I've tried this before. I guess it only works when you're freaking out.
- Bess stops at the edge of a swamp to pick a water lily and almost gets bitten by a gator. Somehow, I found this really funny.
- The orange packing house catches on fire. Nancy asks what she can do to help, and one worker is all "you're a GIRL! WTF? You can't do anything." This was rewritten in '69 -'71, but I'd love to get the 1941 original to see if the original scene if it is similar (or there at all)*
- While investigating a house that Mr. Drew might buy (being a Midwest lawyer must pay well!), the gang discovers that it is next to a weird house guarded by wild animals. Of course, they have to investigate, but they also have to get past the guard panther (!), so they drug it by hiding a pill meant for humans in a piece of meat. The huge panther takes the little sleeping pill, drops off in minutes. Uh-huh. But it is Bess' idea, so I have to cheer.
Overall, I'd give it a 5 out of 10...nothing special, but still fun.
*ETA: Thanks to Jennifer, @ the Series Books for Girls Blog, we have a great explanation of the role of sexism and feminism in the original books vs. the condensed\rewritten.
