Nancy Drew #164 Mother Wolf, #165 Crime Lab, and #166 Creative Crime

In Nancy Drew #164, The Mystery of the Mother Wolf, Nancy, Bess, and George visit Wyoming.  They stay at on a ranch owned by a friend of Nancy's Aunt Eloise.  Soon after their arrival, the girls learn that the ranch is involved in a controversy, since part of it is to be used as a wolf sanctuary, and some of their neighbors are unhappy.  Rainbow, the pet wolf, and her pups vanish, and Nancy suspects that the culprit opposes the sanctuary.

Nancy fails to follow up on one piece of evidence that she found.  A certain person had written a letter about being opposed to the captivity of wolves.  Nothing was ever mentioned later, and it's like it didn't matter.  Usually, when something doesn't matter, it's not in the book in the first place.

Nancy is quite rude in this book.  On page 110, she brazenly asks if Paul owns a stun gun.  She seems to be fishing for a reaction.

This book starts out very slow, and by page 40, I was getting rather bored.  It's great for the story to teach us about wolves, but we are given way too much information.  I figured that the wolf would be stolen, but that does not happen until page 46. 

The lengthy expository information paid off, because I did care about the missing wolves.  So often, these books don't give us any reason to care about a missing person or animal, but this book did.  However, the expository information should have been shortened by around 10 pages.  If that had been done, then I might have stated that this book is outstanding.  Since I was bored for part of the story, I'll just leave it at very good.

In Nancy Drew #165, The Crime Lab Case, Nancy helps set up a Crime Lab camp for high school students.  The purpose of the camp is to provide a crime scene with blood and hair samples and have the students use forensics to solve the case.  Bess, George, and Ned also volunteer at the camp.

Life imitates fiction when the leader of the camp, Charles Parris, is poisoned and nearly dies.  Nancy is left in charge of the camp in his absence, and she must solve the real life mystery before others get hurt.

This is a very good book.  The plot is quite creative, and I was captivated from start to finish.

In Nancy Drew #166, The Case of the Creative Crime, Nancy and Bess work undercover at an art school run by a friend of Carson Drew.  Someone is sabotaging River Arts, and that person is using potentially deadly force to get a point across. 

This book starts out good from the very beginning.  I love the setting.

The series seems to be trying for more continuity.  #163 used Ned's fraternity house, Omega Chi Epsilon, and that fraternity goes all the way back to the early Nancy Drew books.  It had not been mentioned in ages.

The art school in this book is set right on the Muskoka River, which is a river from the early Nancy Drew books.

The book has several strong suspects, and the reader is kept guessing as to what is really going on.

This book is outstanding.