Did you know that the Nancy Drew of the 1930’s is very different from the Nancy of the 1960’s and 70’s? Publishers updated the books, making them shorter, taking out racial stereotypes, sometimes just revising and other times completely rewriting the books. We refer to the original books as OT and RT.

The Original Text (OT) of this Nancy Drew book, The Mystery at Lilac Inn (Nancy Drew, Book 4)  is better than the Revised Text (RT),The Mystery at Lilac Inn (Nancy Drew, Book 4 Revised Text) . From Amazon: “Nancy and her friend Helen visit their friend Emily Willouby at the Lilac Inn, which Emily now owns, to help her plan her wedding. Emily plans on selling inherited diamonds in order to help fix up the Lilac Inn. However, Nancy soon learns that someone has been impersonating her and making expensive purchases under her name. Soon after, Emily’s diamonds are stolen! Can Nancy find the thieves and recover the missing diamonds?” There are a lot of suspects thrown in the story, sort of all over the place. The person that is pretending to be Nancy does so by changing her hair and makeup. In the RT, there’s skin diving and a mini submarine. There’s too much happening in the RT to make it a satisfying read. Four stars for the original, three for the revised.

 

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