Scan barcode
A review by bupdaddy
The Secret at Shadow Ranch by Carolyn Keene
3.0
I'd never read a Nancy Drew, because, you know, I was a boy and it would have been unthinkable and all. As an adult, I always thought I should at least read The Secret of the Old Clock (Nancy Drew #1). But when I came across this original text version of #5, I knew the universe was speaking to me.
Nancy and...introducing Bess and George (so I'm told), and a cousin Alice go to a ranch for the summer (several day train trip to "the west") and go more than a third of the book not even knowing what mystery there was to solve. Still, enjoyable enough in its awkward, stilted YA style of the early 1930's. And there were some !exciting! vignettes out on horseback in the mountains with flash floods and mountain lions. It really wanted for some quicksand somewhere, but one takes what one can get.
Finally we figure out there's something mysterious about the little gamin who's confused about where gamins should be and lives in a bedroom in a little shack in the middle of nowhere in the west. And her mean guardian. Something mysterious about her, too, I mean.
Around the third time the girls get lost in the woods and end up at that shack again, I think anybody'd figure out all roads lead to the shack so let's not run from our destiny, let's plunge through this. Nancy confronts the mean woman, things get worse before they get better, Nancy solves the mystery and makes everything better, and - bonus! solves another huge mystery in the last 5 pages while she's popping a zit or whatever.
What makes the original text worth it:
- Nancy Drew, gunslinger. She carries a revolver and knows how to use it.
- Nancy decks a guy. He's only dazed, but laid out on the floor, and it buys her enough time to mount her horse and skedaddle.
- a big plot point hinges on her telegraphing her dad and waiting for his response to come in at the telegraph office, days later. If he doesn't respond, she has no way of finding out why. I mean, if there were better ways of communicating long distance, they'd have done that in the first place.
- supposedly it's an entirely different book than the revised text (and the title changed from Secret at Shadow Ranch to Secret of Shadow Ranch. So you can read both!
Nancy and...introducing Bess and George (so I'm told), and a cousin Alice go to a ranch for the summer (several day train trip to "the west") and go more than a third of the book not even knowing what mystery there was to solve. Still, enjoyable enough in its awkward, stilted YA style of the early 1930's. And there were some !exciting! vignettes out on horseback in the mountains with flash floods and mountain lions. It really wanted for some quicksand somewhere, but one takes what one can get.
Finally we figure out there's something mysterious about the little gamin who's confused about where gamins should be and lives in a bedroom in a little shack in the middle of nowhere in the west. And her mean guardian. Something mysterious about her, too, I mean.
Around the third time the girls get lost in the woods and end up at that shack again, I think anybody'd figure out all roads lead to the shack so let's not run from our destiny, let's plunge through this. Nancy confronts the mean woman, things get worse before they get better, Nancy solves the mystery and makes everything better, and - bonus! solves another huge mystery in the last 5 pages while she's popping a zit or whatever.
What makes the original text worth it:
- Nancy Drew, gunslinger. She carries a revolver and knows how to use it.
- Nancy decks a guy. He's only dazed, but laid out on the floor, and it buys her enough time to mount her horse and skedaddle.
- a big plot point hinges on her telegraphing her dad and waiting for his response to come in at the telegraph office, days later. If he doesn't respond, she has no way of finding out why. I mean, if there were better ways of communicating long distance, they'd have done that in the first place.
- supposedly it's an entirely different book than the revised text (and the title changed from Secret at Shadow Ranch to Secret of Shadow Ranch. So you can read both!