Ghosts, Submersibles, Thieves, and Confessions
Author: Carolyn Keene
While visiting an engaged friend at her recently purchased cozy inn, Nancy discovers diamond thieves, bombs, strange submersibles, and a doppelganger with an axe to grind. Our titian haired heroine, back for the fourth time, is involved in what is thus far her most dangerous investigation yet. Torn between helping her down-and-out friend who relies on the Lilac Inn’s successful establishment to afford her marriage and a credit-card stealing double who is not only racking up bills but bad feeling, Nancy is once again plunged into a dual mystery. Only this time, the villains are more than willing to go all the way. Nancy’s life is in danger at the remote inn and her father, Carson Drew, may not be able to put the pieces of his past cases and the current, alleged “hauntings” at the Inn together in time to save Nancy.
Once again it is time to delve into the oddly cozy, and yet hard-core-gumshoe world of Nancy Drew, and experience so much longed for childhood nostalgia. I began The Mystery at Lilac Inn with only a vague memory of a haunted hotel and, of course, some gorgeous lilacs. Re-written from the original 1931 version authored by ghostwriter Mildred Wirt Benson to the yellow-covered Flashlight version in 1961 by Harriet Stratemeyer Adams, the Flashlight Nancy adventure that I read shifts the focus from a racially charged sub-plot involving Nancy’s temporary hiring of a new maid in the absence of Hannah Gruen, to a stronger focus on the shenanigans at the Inn. The choice leads Nancy to directly participate in the mystery and become endangered multiple times from a near fatal skin-diving incident to an actual capture in the conclusion by a gang of take-no-prisoners, boastful villains. While I have as yet to read the original, much harder to trace down 30s version, the Flashlight version’s choice seems a wise one and leaves readers hooked on a fast paced adventure set at a labyrinthine inn.
Nancy Drew, of course, focuses on a young audience and as such, presents everything in straight-forward, non-fancy language that children and pre-teens can easily follow. Yet the atmosphere is still rich and vivid. The Inn comes alive as both cozy and creepy at the same time and, while we know that no one will die in a Nancy Drew novel (especially Nancy!), the sense of risk propagated by realistic villains remains true. Nancy may never die… but she will come close and experience horrors along the way. The villains, loquacious as they must be to properly explicate the mystery and their evil motives, have no problem with binding and gagging our adventurous sleuth and plotting a watery death for her.
Nancy herself is a character much like Marvel’s Captain America – in many ways a protagonist that is too good to be true. Nancy does not have any moral quandaries and is always on the straight and narrow, sans any temptations. Normally, this is the death kneel in literature for a main character, who needs to have some flaws to be recognizable as truly human, but in all honesty, that’s not what audiences are looking for in these cozy mysteries. Here, the world is divided into good and bad with no shades of grey and the comfort (and therefore the cozy) is that bad will provide some rollicking challenges, but good and happiness will always win in the end. As such, Nancy stays our ever plucky heroine – something to truly be amazed by in that she was written as a strong female character in a time when such a protagonist not only did not exist but was considered heavily improper. You go girl!
The Mystery at Lilac Inn is another enjoyable, cozy, edge-of-the-seat puzzle with our childhood heroine and favorite sleuth. Betrayal, revenge, clever machinations, showdowns, and truths that are not as they seem abound and only Nancy, who is both clever and brave, can unravel the tangled web in time to save lives and the future of the inn. Grab a coffee, cuddle under some blankets, open a window, and prepare for another trip back to the blissful dreams of childhood.
– Frances Carden
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