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motherbird76's review against another edition
3.0
Re-reading for nostalgia only. Ridiculous prior knowledge by Nancy of tap dancing, Morse code and her dad took lessons in defusing a bomb! etc is par for the course. A greater level of danger in this book than previous.
bargainsleuth's review against another edition
3.0
For this and other book reviews, visit www.bargain-sleuth.com.
I'm reviewing the OT, the Original Text of The Clue of the Tapping Heels. I really wish Goodreads would separate these Nancy Drew texts because the Revised Text is a completely different story.
First, the OT has not aged well with it's racial stereotypes, whether its the "colored" men (or as Ned actually calls one, "I saw a darky..." or the bumbling Irish cop. And the weird repeated description of a colored man with light freckles.
Second, the cover art is wrong. George and Bess were not around when Nancy found the ladder leading to the upstairs of her house.
Nancy is learning how to tap dance at the beginning of the story and mentions to "Mrs. Gruen" (not Hannah, which is weird) that she's learning to tap dance and thought it could be used for Morse Code. Ah, foreshadowing at its finest.
Miss Carter is a former actress but now she's a cat hoarder living in Berryville, a few miles away from River Heights, who can't keep up her place. The Bunce's are the neighbors who had a ward, Gus Woonton, a boy of undescribed age described as "simple minded". The Bunces don't take good care of Gus, so Miss Carter takes him in, but she can't handle him, either, and puts him in an institution and pays for his care even though she's strapped for money. They find out Gus has died, and Miss Carter would like the Bunce's to reimburse her for the money she spent on Gus, assuming his parents left him money. The Bunces claim there is none, threaten to turn Miss Carter in to the authorities for her cat hoarding, and are, in general, horrible neighbors. There's mysterious tapping going on at Miss Carter's and Nancy is asked to investigate.
Nancy, Bess and George take a train to New York and of course, the Bunces are on it. Nancy just knows they're up to no good!
At one point, when at a fortune teller's place, George and Nancy are drugged by incense?! and kidnapped. They manage to escape with the help of the bumbling police, who at least know that the "Egyptian" Omar is a pretty shady dude.
Turns out Gus Woonton is alive and well, he just escaped the institution. The doctor there said he was adapting well and a simple operation of the brain would make him a "normal" boy. Uh, can you say lobotomy? They were popular at the time the OT was written, and with almost all the cases, with disastrous effects.
Nancy is later kidnapped by the Bunce's and stuffed in a trunk headed to South America. They are helped by one of the ship's crewmen. Bess and George and Mr. Drew's detective convince the police to search the ship and at first find nothing, but Bess and George just know Nancy is on the ship and find her because she's tapping her feet in Morse Code.
Returning to Miss Carter's, Nancy discovers a secret room and finds Gus Woonton, who is a little underfed and disheveled. Turns out his real parents are the Bunce's, who worked for the wealthy Woontons, and claimed he was the Woonton's son to get ahold of their money, which they squandered.
There's a subplot involving a romance with Miss Carter and an old love, too, and selling one of her old plays so she can earn royalties and not live in such dire straits.
The story veered off into several different directions. I know that's common with Nancy Drew books and that all paths lead to several mysteries intertwining and being solved at the end, but this was a bit of a stretch for me.
I'm reviewing the OT, the Original Text of The Clue of the Tapping Heels. I really wish Goodreads would separate these Nancy Drew texts because the Revised Text is a completely different story.
First, the OT has not aged well with it's racial stereotypes, whether its the "colored" men (or as Ned actually calls one, "I saw a darky..." or the bumbling Irish cop. And the weird repeated description of a colored man with light freckles.
Second, the cover art is wrong. George and Bess were not around when Nancy found the ladder leading to the upstairs of her house.
Nancy is learning how to tap dance at the beginning of the story and mentions to "Mrs. Gruen" (not Hannah, which is weird) that she's learning to tap dance and thought it could be used for Morse Code. Ah, foreshadowing at its finest.
Miss Carter is a former actress but now she's a cat hoarder living in Berryville, a few miles away from River Heights, who can't keep up her place. The Bunce's are the neighbors who had a ward, Gus Woonton, a boy of undescribed age described as "simple minded". The Bunces don't take good care of Gus, so Miss Carter takes him in, but she can't handle him, either, and puts him in an institution and pays for his care even though she's strapped for money. They find out Gus has died, and Miss Carter would like the Bunce's to reimburse her for the money she spent on Gus, assuming his parents left him money. The Bunces claim there is none, threaten to turn Miss Carter in to the authorities for her cat hoarding, and are, in general, horrible neighbors. There's mysterious tapping going on at Miss Carter's and Nancy is asked to investigate.
Nancy, Bess and George take a train to New York and of course, the Bunces are on it. Nancy just knows they're up to no good!
At one point, when at a fortune teller's place, George and Nancy are drugged by incense?! and kidnapped. They manage to escape with the help of the bumbling police, who at least know that the "Egyptian" Omar is a pretty shady dude.
Turns out Gus Woonton is alive and well, he just escaped the institution. The doctor there said he was adapting well and a simple operation of the brain would make him a "normal" boy. Uh, can you say lobotomy? They were popular at the time the OT was written, and with almost all the cases, with disastrous effects.
Nancy is later kidnapped by the Bunce's and stuffed in a trunk headed to South America. They are helped by one of the ship's crewmen. Bess and George and Mr. Drew's detective convince the police to search the ship and at first find nothing, but Bess and George just know Nancy is on the ship and find her because she's tapping her feet in Morse Code.
Returning to Miss Carter's, Nancy discovers a secret room and finds Gus Woonton, who is a little underfed and disheveled. Turns out his real parents are the Bunce's, who worked for the wealthy Woontons, and claimed he was the Woonton's son to get ahold of their money, which they squandered.
There's a subplot involving a romance with Miss Carter and an old love, too, and selling one of her old plays so she can earn royalties and not live in such dire straits.
The story veered off into several different directions. I know that's common with Nancy Drew books and that all paths lead to several mysteries intertwining and being solved at the end, but this was a bit of a stretch for me.
bargainsleuth's review
3.0
For this and other book reviews, visit www.bargain-sleuth.com
This review is for the Revised Text RT of The Clue of the Tapping Heels. First off, I just love the internal illustrations in this edition. This is the way I remember Nancy! Second, who ever heard of a cat that obeyed it's owner? The Miss Carter in this revision is able to call her cats by name and they obey her commands. Who ghostwrote this book? Clearly not a cat owner.
Once again Miss Carter is a cat lady, but this time instead of being seen as a crazy cat lady with more than 25 running around, she breeds Persians as a source of income.
Nancy Drew books like using one word over and over. In the OT books, it was always "chums" instead of "friends". In The Clue of the Tapping Heels, it's "pudgy" in describing a man, repeatedly throughout the book.
On page 47, the writers and editors of the book must have thought that the word crowbar was too hard or kids wouldn't know what it was, because they describe the tool, but the word is never used.
Nancy thinks the police aren't taking the cat-napping seriously because they refuse to post 24-hour guards at Miss Carter's house!
It's weird that Nancy takes on a case when she has a commitment to rehearse in a play almost ever night. This gets in the way her staying at Miss Carter's house in Berryville, when normally she'd be spending the night there to determine who is making the strange tapping noises and stealing the Persians.
I notice in the RTs that church is mentioned in almost every book. In The Clue of the Tapping Heels RT, Bess is seen praying for Nancy at one point, and then there's just this random question that comes out of nowhere asking if Nancy goes to church.
Despite all this weirdness, the book gets really crazy when a bomb is planted in the Drew's garage and Carson says he took a class a few years ago on bomb diffusion, so he'll just go ahead and take care of it and not call the authorities right away!
The whole Gus Woonton as a young adult (instead of a simple-minded boy as in the OT) and the Bunce's worked into the mysteries didn't work for me. However, without Gus, there wouldn't have been much of a mystery. He's just seen as a smart aleck troublemaking teen whose parents got so fed up with his antics they shipped him away to some place like a reform school.
Weird mystery, I think I prefer the OT with all its racial stereotypes but better story flow.
This review is for the Revised Text RT of The Clue of the Tapping Heels. First off, I just love the internal illustrations in this edition. This is the way I remember Nancy! Second, who ever heard of a cat that obeyed it's owner? The Miss Carter in this revision is able to call her cats by name and they obey her commands. Who ghostwrote this book? Clearly not a cat owner.
Once again Miss Carter is a cat lady, but this time instead of being seen as a crazy cat lady with more than 25 running around, she breeds Persians as a source of income.
Nancy Drew books like using one word over and over. In the OT books, it was always "chums" instead of "friends". In The Clue of the Tapping Heels, it's "pudgy" in describing a man, repeatedly throughout the book.
On page 47, the writers and editors of the book must have thought that the word crowbar was too hard or kids wouldn't know what it was, because they describe the tool, but the word is never used.
Nancy thinks the police aren't taking the cat-napping seriously because they refuse to post 24-hour guards at Miss Carter's house!
It's weird that Nancy takes on a case when she has a commitment to rehearse in a play almost ever night. This gets in the way her staying at Miss Carter's house in Berryville, when normally she'd be spending the night there to determine who is making the strange tapping noises and stealing the Persians.
I notice in the RTs that church is mentioned in almost every book. In The Clue of the Tapping Heels RT, Bess is seen praying for Nancy at one point, and then there's just this random question that comes out of nowhere asking if Nancy goes to church.
Despite all this weirdness, the book gets really crazy when a bomb is planted in the Drew's garage and Carson says he took a class a few years ago on bomb diffusion, so he'll just go ahead and take care of it and not call the authorities right away!
The whole Gus Woonton as a young adult (instead of a simple-minded boy as in the OT) and the Bunce's worked into the mysteries didn't work for me. However, without Gus, there wouldn't have been much of a mystery. He's just seen as a smart aleck troublemaking teen whose parents got so fed up with his antics they shipped him away to some place like a reform school.
Weird mystery, I think I prefer the OT with all its racial stereotypes but better story flow.
blondierocket's review
The sixteenth Nancy Drew book, Nancy and her friends meet a retired actress who owns a large number of cats and has more than one mystery on her hand. Some of her cats have gone missing, plus she has a mysterious tapper in the house.
Nancy joins a tapping contest while her friends help her search out the cat napper at a breeding show.
This was a fun book and Nancy’s challenge of working more than one mystery keeps the stories interesting through every page.
Nancy joins a tapping contest while her friends help her search out the cat napper at a breeding show.
This was a fun book and Nancy’s challenge of working more than one mystery keeps the stories interesting through every page.
laura_cs's review
4.0
To start off, let me just say that this is probably the most ridiculous Nancy Drew cover to ever exist. The cat takes up pretty much the entire thing, and looks a bit ominous. And annoyed. And Nancy just looks at the large cat god head and is clearly disturbed, but only mildly. And then there's another Nancy who looks like she's about to hit the disco scene a few decades early. Like, just what the heck was going on here? What were the notes given to the artist? Just what?
The mystery itself was good. A literal cat burglar, a retired actress cat-lady, a whole bunch of cats, secret rooms, and what is the source of that mysterious ticking, sorry, I mean tapping noise?
The mystery itself was good. A literal cat burglar, a retired actress cat-lady, a whole bunch of cats, secret rooms, and what is the source of that mysterious ticking, sorry, I mean tapping noise?
deepat's review against another edition
adventurous
lighthearted
mysterious
relaxing
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
5.0
Must be one of the first books I bought. Such a treasure. Interesting story too. Love that Ned is a part of the stories. Quite a complicated plot, but everything tied in so well at the end. Love even the crispy brown old pages. Also found my old bookmark in here, real nostalgic trip down memory lane. A quick read too 😍
joyfulpages's review against another edition
4.0
Oh Nancy!! Learning Morse code “just for fun”, tap dancing in the local theater production, solving mysteries left and right, and doing it all with style! Somehow she finds herself solving a mystery for an old actress who now breeds Persian cats (???) to make a living. This woman also has a live-in housekeeper, of course. She hears a strange tapping at night in the house and Nancy is on the case, literally MOVING IN to her house with trusty Bess and George to catch the mystery tapper. Of course Bess and George immediately get stuck taking care of all the cats and doing chores, and Nancy gets to fly around in her roadster sleuthing it up. Nancy is sort of like Scooby Doo in the sense that whenever she catches the suspect they admit to everything right away and don’t mind at all that a random teenager and her friends are questioning them instead of, uh, any law enforcement officer. Favorite line by far was when Bess and George are getting stuck with the old lady and the cats—again—while Nancy dashes off after a clue, and the lady says “don’t worry, i’ll entertain you girls with humorous lines from my old scripts!!” What could be better?!
meganreads5's review against another edition
adventurous
lighthearted
mysterious
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
ayeesha97's review
adventurous
lighthearted
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.0
anieeereads's review against another edition
adventurous
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.75