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A review by bargainsleuth
The Password to Larkspur Lane by Carolyn Keene
3.0
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The Original Text (OT) The Password to Larkspur Lane is just a crazy mess, but I couldn't put it down because I had never read the OT before and had no idea how it would end.
The ghostwriter was Walter Karig. His first Nancy Drew book, Nancy's Mysterious Letter, was just awful, full of misogynist writings. His second book, The Sign of the Twisted Candles was much better. The Password to Larkspur Lane fell somewhere in-between with me. It was good, but not great. There were quite a few head-scratching sentences. "Nancy, despite her remarkable deductive powers, was a normal, healthy girl, and a bedtime lunch appealed to her as much as it does to any young person." Or, "It was Nancy's turn to look astonished. She often forgot that few people were gifted with her sense of observation and deduction."
In true 1930's form, Nancy's encounters are not what you'd find today. Nancy's in her yard one day picking larkspur for a flower show (I prefer the name delphinium for the flower) when a low flying plane (flying so low she can make out a symbol on the tail) hits a bird that lands in the yard. It's a carrier pigeon. That carrier pigeon is injured, and is carrying a message. Nancy calls the International Carrier Pigeon Association (she does not have to look up the number--Nancy is all-knowing!) and finds out the bird is not registered to them. A rogue pigeon and a mysterious message lead Nancy on to her next mystery.
There's a kidnapped doctor and an elderly woman being held hostage at some shady sanitorium. Karig makes Carson Drew sound not-so Carson Drew-like: "It is more important to me that you are free from harm than that all the mysterious women in the world should have their freedom." That does not sound like the caring Carson Drew I grew up with.
There's the racial stereotypes we often find in these 1930's volumes. Helen Corning just calls her servant Cook, who speaks in broken English like the stereotypical black servant. And once again, Karig forgot that Helen Corning should be married to Jim Archer by now. His Helen has her dating random guys.
One line cracked me up. When Nancy is asking for information about the suspected kidnappers, the hotel proprietor says the Tookers are mysterious because "They don't come to church, or don't subscribe to the local paper." Crazy dialogue. Crazy plot lines, but somehow it works.
The Original Text (OT) The Password to Larkspur Lane is just a crazy mess, but I couldn't put it down because I had never read the OT before and had no idea how it would end.
The ghostwriter was Walter Karig. His first Nancy Drew book, Nancy's Mysterious Letter, was just awful, full of misogynist writings. His second book, The Sign of the Twisted Candles was much better. The Password to Larkspur Lane fell somewhere in-between with me. It was good, but not great. There were quite a few head-scratching sentences. "Nancy, despite her remarkable deductive powers, was a normal, healthy girl, and a bedtime lunch appealed to her as much as it does to any young person." Or, "It was Nancy's turn to look astonished. She often forgot that few people were gifted with her sense of observation and deduction."
In true 1930's form, Nancy's encounters are not what you'd find today. Nancy's in her yard one day picking larkspur for a flower show (I prefer the name delphinium for the flower) when a low flying plane (flying so low she can make out a symbol on the tail) hits a bird that lands in the yard. It's a carrier pigeon. That carrier pigeon is injured, and is carrying a message. Nancy calls the International Carrier Pigeon Association (she does not have to look up the number--Nancy is all-knowing!) and finds out the bird is not registered to them. A rogue pigeon and a mysterious message lead Nancy on to her next mystery.
There's a kidnapped doctor and an elderly woman being held hostage at some shady sanitorium. Karig makes Carson Drew sound not-so Carson Drew-like: "It is more important to me that you are free from harm than that all the mysterious women in the world should have their freedom." That does not sound like the caring Carson Drew I grew up with.
There's the racial stereotypes we often find in these 1930's volumes. Helen Corning just calls her servant Cook, who speaks in broken English like the stereotypical black servant. And once again, Karig forgot that Helen Corning should be married to Jim Archer by now. His Helen has her dating random guys.
One line cracked me up. When Nancy is asking for information about the suspected kidnappers, the hotel proprietor says the Tookers are mysterious because "They don't come to church, or don't subscribe to the local paper." Crazy dialogue. Crazy plot lines, but somehow it works.