Ken Holt #13 Shattered Glass and #14 Invisible Enemy

In Ken Holt #13, The Mystery of the Shattered Glass, Ken and Sandy are on their way to Europe via a cargo freighter.  Only three other passengers are present on the journey, a husband and wife and a man named Gerard.  Ken and Sandy receive a telegram telling them that charges are to be filed against Gerard, and shortly after that, Gerard is lost overboard.  Ken and Sandy decide that Gerard staged his apparent suicide and that he remains on the ship.

This book is a bit unusual in that the entire story occurs on a ship.

I enjoyed this book.  The only part I skimmed was the final scene in the hold, since that type of scene gets dragged out longer than I prefer.

In Ken Holt #14, The Mystery of the Invisible Enemy, Ken and Sandy attend a Halloween party at the Brentwood Foundry and Casting Company.  After the company's president, Lew Collins, meets them, he asks them for help.  Someone has threatened to publicize photos of a top-secret machine that the company has under development unless Collins pays the extortioner $100,000.  Collins cannot afford the sum and asks Ken and Sandy to recover the photos so that he doesn't lose the company.

Page 24 has a passage where Ken, Sandy, and Lew Collins discuss how feasible it would be to have someone investigate at the foundry.  Collins says that the extortioner would be suspicious if "any stranger turned up at the plant, prowling around and asking questions."  Sandy asks if the extortioner would be suspicious of a "new employee with a legitimate job to do," and Collins says that he would.  This is a nice bit of realism that is seldom present in Nancy Drew books. Nancy, Bess, and George always go undercover at places like, oh, very small banks, and nobody ever thinks anyone will notice.

I greatly enjoyed this book.