This is the original 1930 version of the book that started the Nancy Drew series. Like most girls I was completely obsessed with the series, but mostly I read the yellow-cover revisions that even I can remember were very poorly written potboilers. For nostalgia's sake I’m planning to reread at least the first bunch of books in the series, and also because I’m curious about the original versions.

This book was both so much better than I expected it to be, but also a product of its time in a terrible cringey way. The characters are really thin and stereotyped; the bad people are bad in every way and the good people are nothing but good. There is a really horrible racist portrayal of a black caretaker in the middle of the book that was painful to read. Nancy herself is independent and plucky but intensely privileged; she’s clearly super smart, just out of high school, with her own car, but lives with her father and does not seem to have any ambition at all. In between solving mysteries there is lunch, and shopping, and vacations at the lake, and charity balls. Nancy is about as unwoke as a well-off white teenager can be, and despite her being the heroine it’s hard not to view her unfavorably with today’s lens.

On the other hand the plot is action-filled and fast-moving, the mystery is a bit obvious but still compelling, and the original art from is really well done.