Sunday, March 9, 2014

Nancy Drew #122 Haunted Mansion, #123 Silver Screen, and #124 Scarlet Hand

In Nancy Drew #122, The Message in the Haunted Mansion, Nancy, Bess, and George travel to San Francisco to help Hannah's friend, Rose Green, renovate an old Victorian mansion. Accidents plague the project, or I suppose we could just call it... sabotage! 

The sabotage is okay, though, because the reader quickly figures out that the culprit is after a hidden treasure.  So this book is more of a hunt for hidden treasure than just a sabotage plot.

I was 99.9% certain that I remembered the identity of the culprit, especially because I have also played the Nancy Drew game based on this book.  I was correct.  I found it interesting that the author made a point of having Nancy not suspect this particular person when she suspected practically everyone else.  That helped make it obvious.

I enjoyed The Message in the Haunted Mansion.

In Nancy Drew #123, The Clue on the Silver Screen, Nancy, Bess, and George attend the Martha's Vineyard Film Festival in Massachusetts.  An important silent film is stolen, and Nancy has a number of suspects, including a famous silent film actress. 

I did not enjoy this book.  I was very aware the entire time that everything about the book is fictitious.  The story deals with silent films and a famous silent film actress, but all of the names are fake.  I was not interested.  I gradually skimmed more and more of the story as I continued to read.

Furthermore, the plot was entirely centered around sabotage, and for the reasons previously stated, the sabotage did not interest me at all.

In Nancy Drew #124, The Secret of the Scarlet Hand, Nancy, Bess, and George travel to Washington, D.C. with Carson Drew.  While at the Beech Hill museum, Nancy learns that a priceless statue of the Mayan Lord Pacal has been stolen.  Some people wish to repatriate the statue to Mexico, and those people are among the suspects.

The book has a cult scene that is rather similar to the one in The Thirteenth Pearl.  Just like in The Thirteenth Pearl, Nancy is imprisoned soon into the gathering.

My initial problem with this book was that the story is set in a museum like in #108 The Secret of the Tibetan Treasure, and an artifact is discovered to have been stolen shortly into the story.  Even though I knew the solution to the mystery would not be the same as in The Secret of the Tibetan Treasure, I felt like I was almost reading the same story at first.  As I progressed into the story, I didn't think so much about the other story, since the plot is quite different.  I really began to enjoy the story around halfway through.

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