A Review of Nancy Drew Ghost Stories

I have not been reading any books at all in the last couple of weeks.  Just about everything that could go wrong did go wrong, culminating in a catastrophic ice storm that resulted in me not having power for 109 hours.  I also have a very bad feeling about this week and the next couple of months, but that's a topic for another post.

I still didn't have power on Saturday morning, although by that point the linemen had arrived and were replacing the pole and fixing the downed lines.  I saw where the Nancy Drew Book Club Facebook group was discussing the Nancy Drew Ghost Stories.

Well, why not?  I hadn't been in the mood to read series books, but I could probably manage this one.  I had never read it before.  I had enough sunlight shining in through the windows to be able to read.

I chose my Econo-Clad hardcover library binding to read.  The book was rebound from an early Wanderer printing and has nice white paper.  The entire reason I started building a set of the Nancy Drew Digest books in hardcover was to have hardcover books to read.

The stories in this book vary in how good they are, and I suspect that multiple ghostwriters were involved.  The adjectives used to describe Nancy's hair color vary by story:  reddish-blond, strawberry-blond, or titian.

The book contains six short stories.

  

In "The Campus Ghost," a professor has been dead for five years.  That is, she was swept away in a flood, and her body was never found.  Someone who looks like her has been appearing at night in the laboratory at the school.  This story was too predictable for me, although I did find it overall enjoyable.  

"The Ghost Dogs of Whispering Oaks" is much more compelling.  This story partially inspired Her Interactive's Nancy Drew game, Ghost Dogs of Moon Lake.  This story would have made for a good full-length Nancy Drew book.  I really enjoyed it.

I read part of "Blackbeard's Skull," and then I skimmed the rest of it.  I felt that for a short story it has too many characters.  A short story has less room for detail than a longer story does.  I couldn't keep the characters straight.

"The Ghost Jogger" just seemed a bit flat to me, so I didn't read much of it.  

I barely glanced at "The Curse of the Frog" and "The Greenhouse Ghost."  They appeared to be just like the Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, and Dana Girls books of the 1970s.  This is not a compliment.  It should be noted that there are some very good books from the 1970s, but in general, the stories are a bit boring.

So, I managed to read part of the book.  At least that's something.  My power came back on at 1:26 PM on Saturday, which is even better.