Nancy Drew #49 The Secret of Mirror Bay

In Nancy Drew #49, The Secret of Mirror Bay, Nancy, Bess, and George travel with Nancy's Aunt Eloise to Mirror Bay to stay at the Bide-A-Wee cabin.  No trip is complete without a mystery, and Mirror Bay has plenty of that.  A mysterious woman can be seen walking on the water on misty mornings.  A strange glowing green man haunts the nearby woods.  Ned, Burt, and Dave also join the girls at Mirror Bay.

The girls arrive in Cooperstown amid chaos.  Five large travel buses are parked alongside the curb, with hundreds of people milling around.  The people paid hundreds of dollars to stay at a resort, but they arrived in Cooperstown to discover that their destination does not exist.  Nancy is spotted by the crowd and accused of being the perpetrator.  The girl responsible for the scam just happens to look just like Nancy.

It turns out that the people responsible for the scam just happen to have their hideout on the nearby mountain.  Exactly why would they scam people and have the fake destination be right where their hideout is?  If they had chosen someplace else, they would have never been caught.  Nancy's mysteries would be so much harder to solve if these villains would quit being so stupid.

Of course, one of the villains dresses up as the strange glowing green man to scare people away from the hideout.  Naturally, Nancy investigates near where he appears and discovers the hideout.  Dear me, these villains are stupid.

On page 64, Bess has been abducted, and a man is dragging her down the mountain.  Nancy and the others chase after them, down the mountain.  Once the man is within sight, Aunt Eloise yells at him to stop.  The man immediately drops Bess and runs down the mountain.

Nancy has one of her moments of sheer genius when she "kept wondering why the man had taken that route."  Um, the man ran down the mountain because he was already being chased down the mountain.  Why would he turn around and run at the young people?  I'm not understanding what was so strange about the direction he took. 

On page 88, Nancy finds some bobby pins up in the middle of the woods that were left behind by the mysterious girl.  Nancy decides to leave the bobby pins, because she believes the girl might come back for them and be captured.  I've always thought of bobby pins as very inexpensive.  Would the girl actually go back for them?  Would she know where she left them?  If I were the girl, I'd forget about them.

The villains have this great hideout up on the mountain.  It is an underground cave.  A wooden trap door is built into the ground, and the villains climb down the ladder into the underground cave.  I've always liked the hideout, but this time when I read the book, I couldn't help but think...  What if it rains?

The cave even has a refrigerator which is powered by energy acquired from fireflies that are kept in the cave.  I have some trouble believing that the villains are able to get enough energy from fireflies to power the refrigerator, but my bigger problem is...  What if it rains?

How do the villains keep the water out of the underground cave?  Or does it never rain on this crazy mountain?

The woman who walks on water cannot swim, so she was using stilts, hoping to feel a large metal box underwater.  This is, of course, stupid.  Later, Nancy and her friends find the box for the woman, and of course the contents are unspoiled by water.  Everyone is so lucky in this book that water never causes them any problems.

I have always enjoyed The Secret of Mirror Bay, and this time was no exception.  The mystery has the usual plot devices that make little sense, but ignoring them, it is a very good story.