Reviews of Nancy Drew #93 through #96

In Nancy Drew #93, The Case of the Safecracker's Secret, Mr. Charles, president of Bentley Bank, asks Nancy to investigate who has been tampering with the safe deposit boxes in the bank's vault.

The plot is a bit ridiculous.  Mr. Charles hires three new interns who are teenage girls.  They are working undercover, and no one is to know why they are at the bank or that they already know each other.  Right.  No one would wonder about three teenage girls showing up at the same time.  No one would wonder why they spend so much time together.

This would not be strange if the bank were a large one, but the book's description makes it seem that not very many people are employed by the bank.  If so, then everyone would know that the girls are connected from the very beginning.

On page 52, Nancy realizes that Bess is acting like she knows Nancy, so Bess is giving their undercover status away.  Hello?!  The girls have been talking to each other ever since they arrived at the bank.  Even if the other employees assumed that the girls did not already know each other, they have been talking so much that they have to know each other by this point.  Stupid.

On page 15, "Mr. Charles pointed to a small metal pane next to the vault door, with numbered buttons set up in a grid, like on a push-button phone."  How about just calling it a key pad?  These 1990s Nancy Drew books now seem dated, and I did not notice that when I read them a dozen years ago.  The mention of a push-button phone also seems dated, since nowadays rotary dial phones are very uncommon and obsolete.  Practically all phones in use nowadays are push-button, except possibly for scattered people still using old rotary dial phones in their homes.

This book was not as enjoyable as it could have been, since I remembered from my last reading exactly who one of the villains is and was fairly certain about the other one.  Also, the story about the villains is a bit ridiculous, but I would give away too much of the solution if I were to mention it here.

In Nancy Drew #94, The Picture-Perfect Mystery, someone is out to ruin Lila Cramer, a famous artist.  Lila's daughter, Lee Ann, was tricked into selling all of her mother's paintings for the price of one painting.  The suspects include Lila's rival, artist Jennifer Williams.

I read The Picture-Perfect Mystery very quickly and thoroughly enjoyed reading it.  It helped that I couldn't remember anything about the identify of the villain, which kept the book suspenseful to me.

In Nancy Drew #95, The Silent Suspect, Nancy and Ned travel to San Francisco to help figure out what is wrong with Ned's cousin, Lisa.

This book is very enjoyable and suspenseful.  I couldn't remember the culprit, although I had a good idea about partway through.  Clues pointed towards several different people, which kept me guessing.

In Nancy Drew #96, The Case of the Photo Finish, the International High School Track and Field Games is taking place in River Heights.  Nancy, Bess, and George are each hosting one of the athletes, and of course, their athletes are involved in the mystery.  Cheryl is staying at Nancy's house, while Marta stays at George's house.  Cheryl and Marta are rivals.  Someone keeps trying to hurt Cheryl, and Marta receives threats.  Both girls believe that the other girl is guilty, but Nancy wonders whether someone else is involved.

Marta's trainer is named Helga, and I kept confusing Marta and Helga.  The problem was that both names have two syllables and end with the letter "a."  I would have enjoyed the book more if I had not had to keep flipping back far enough to remind myself which was which.  Aside from the name problem, this book is enjoyable, and most readers will not guess the villain's identity before the end.  I guessed partway through the story, but only because I have read the book before.