(Nancy Drew notebooks)

Last month I borrowed ‘The Secret of the Old Clock’ by Carolyn Keene from the school library to read over the weekend. The book is first in the series of Nancy Drew mystery stories. The lead character of in the story was named Nancy Drew who was an amateur detective and solved mysterious case in her hometown River Heights with her best friends Bess Marvin and George Fayne who were cousins. Bess was chirpy and George like her boyish name was tom boy. Together, the three girls were a good team of sleuths. I liked Nancy the best because of her balanced demeanour, while Bess would get anxious and George would angry on reflex, Nancy would stay calm and think straight even in the face of danger. Nancy is home from college and meets the Turners who had come to her father, Carson Drew who was a reputed attorney, for legal help to claim their family fortune following the death of their more prosperous relative Josiah Crowley. She overhears somebody in the departmental store talk about a missing heirloom, an old family clock which was worth a lot of money. Nancy decides to help the Turners by finding the clock. She, along with Bess and George, interviews family friends of the old Crowley trying to put together the facts about the clock and the night that it went missing. She learns that the clock might be hidden in the abandoned summer house of the nasty Tophams, the rival family to stake claims to the Crowley’s legacy. The house was old, far from the city and abandoned because it was rumoured to be haunted. On reaching the summer house, she finds a bunch of local thugs occupying the place that had started the rumour, complete with spooky tricks, to keep people away from the deserted house but had no idea about the old clock. She is overpowered by burglars who lock her in the empty house and desert the hideout. She finds the clock in the attic and managed to slip away. She reports the thugs to the police and returns the clock to the grateful Turners. It was found that the clock was a nothing but a rotting piece of wood with antique carving that did not value much but just when everybody in the room is about to give up hope, Nancy discovers a secret compartment in the clock that contained Crowley’s original will which declared the Turners as his true heirs, thus making them millionaires overnight.