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...
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.
