What do You think about The Clue In The Crumbling Wall (1945)?
What a great setting--old estate with overgrown gardens and a castle along a river and an old button factory where the buttons were made from river clams. And a great plot--missing heiress, vandals searching for a secret hidden in the walls, non-stop sleuthing by Nancy, Bess and George. Even some human interest with a wayward boy and the missing woman's needy sister and niece. I had forgotten how good this is. The part where George's clothes are stolen is humorous and the mention of a year later at the end unusual.
—LuAnn
While the title suggests a chapter in book by "This Old House" author Bob Villa, in fact, Nancy and her tubby cousin and her transsexual cousin have stumbled into another mysterious location to investigate mysterious goings-on by mysterious baddies. The book hews closely to the Drew formula with Nancy and her crew of relations - including hunky Carson Drew - poking around River Heights and its environs trying to restore an inheritance to its rightful, youthful, owner; a formula well known to Drew-ies by this point in the series. Some curve balls get tossed out. At one point pre-surgical female George gets stranded naked on the old estate - pretty kinky given the date of publication and target audience. The mystery partly gets solved when a characters feet fit a stone hanging in an old garden because foot size is always conclusive - just ask Queen Cinderella. However, the traditional arc of Nancy getting entangled in someone else's affair, getting captured, escaping with the help of 1947's People's Sexiest Man Alive and father Carson Drew and eventually pointing River Heights constabulary (all trained at the same academy Gotham's Commissioner Gordon's team attended) in the direction of the nogoodniks. All this an fewer grammatical problems than useful for this series.
—Jonny99
This was my favorite Nancy Drew book and the only one I remember well now, probably because I read it over and over again. I loved the gothic atmosphere of the old castle and the Cinderella story behind the mystery. I'm not sure if I should try reading it again now or just keep my younger-self's memory of it. We had the 1950's-1960's editions, not the later edited versions. I don't know if they would seem nostalgic now or just terribly dated. Not going to add to my "read" list all the other Nancy Drew books I read, which was probably a dozen or so of the ones that were available back then. Nancy was one of my three big influential childhood heroes and influences - the other two being Wonder Woman (naturally!) and Joy Adamson.
—Caseyazalea
