Nancy Drew Girl Detective #30-32: The Perfect Mystery Trilogy

With the publication of #30, the Nancy Drew Girl Detective series changed to a trilogy format.  The cover art was redesigned.  While more stylish and possibly more appealing to young people, I dislike it greatly.  Even though the cover art is not particularly great or creative for the first 29 titles, I do like the design.  I do not like most of the covers of #30-47, and some of them are extremely bad with Nancy wearing the same outfits on multiple covers.  It is laughable.  I don't know what the folks at Simon and Schuster were thinking with using the same outfit over and over on some of the later covers.

The Perfect Mystery Trilogy consists of the following books.

#30 Pageant Perfect Crime
#31 Perfect Cover
#32 The Perfect Escape

In #30 Pageant Perfect Crime, Portia Leoni asks Nancy to investigate the Miss Pretty Face River Heights Beauty Pageant.  Portia lost her crown last year after she was accused of shoplifting.  Portia claims that she was framed and asks Nancy to find the culprit.  Nancy goes undercover by joining the beauty pageant as a contestant.  She discovers that quite a few people have agendas and that more is going on than just the mystery involving Portia.

On page 66, Nancy drives an SUV.  Up to this point in the series, Nancy has driven a hybrid car.  She drives a car in later books, so this is a continuity problem.

In #31 Perfect Cover, Nancy continues her involvement in the Pretty Face Beauty Pageant.  I cannot get into specifics, since I would spoil the ending of the previous book.  The plot becomes a bit convoluted by this point with many twists and turns since the beginning of the trilogy.  I was confused several times.  At the end of this book, we learn the identity of the culprit.  The book ends with a cliffhanger.

Nancy spends most all of #32 The Perfect Escape trying to escape from the culprit.  This is another one of those books where the title tells the entire plot.  Nancy runs and runs and keeps getting caught by the culprit, then has to escape and run some more.  Finally it all works out.

Veronica Mars fans will appreciate that she is mentioned on page 31.

While I enjoyed the trilogy, the plot was confusing and convoluted.  The entire third book was not that necessary.  It was just a way to lengthen the story arc to three titles.

While I overall enjoyed this trilogy, I wouldn't care to read it again.