The Clue Of The Broken Locket (1965) - Plot & Excerpts
For as many of them as there are and as popular as they purportedly have been over decades of readers, this was a huge disappointment. Nancy Drew is full of bland, shallow characters, predictable and slow-paced action, and boring and unnecessary detail.First things first -- characters. A good writer can take a character you don't really want to like and make you like them, as with Sherlock Holmes. Yes, he's brilliant, but he's very annoying. However, you can't help but like him, faults and all. With Nancy Drew, the characters are just too cookie-cutter to be likable. They have no realism to them. I kept feeling like I was reading about those chipper, chirpy cartoon housewives you always see in vintage pictures. They cover all three hair colors -- blond, red, and brunette -- and all three girl types -- overly feminine and chubby, athletic and tom-boyish, and middle-of-the-road, girl-next-door. Boring. The conversation is horribly stilted. I've watched commercials with more meaningful dialogue. When the "boys" come along, first of all, they have nothing better to do than drop everything to partake in this mystery? They don't have lives or plans to speak of? Well, of course not, because college hasn't started yet. Until then, they just sit around and stare at each other. After college starts, don't expect them to drop as much as a line. All in all, everything is just so white-washed. It's like watching the Andy Griffith show except without adorable little Opie. SPOILERS. The biggest thing I don't get is the behavior of the other red-headed woman. She has lost her only children, her husband is dead, and she is so calm. If it were my children, I would have been INSANE. She casually stops in to buy a record from the local soda shop owner because she has time to think that he might need the business. Seriously? I would be fighting tooth and nail to get my children back, and I am willing to bet that most "normal" mothers would be a little more like a tiger whose cubs have been taken than a vaguely robust Stepford Wife. And then when she gets them back, after they've been ABUSED, all she has to say is, "Yes, I'm your mother, let me tell you all about it," and these traumatized children not only just wander peaceably back to the living room with her, but then it's like she missed them about as much as if they'd been in the next room all this time. There are no tears, there are no embraces, there is no movement and vigor. It's all just very calm and precise and proper. It's like she was possessed by Emily Post. And the next morning, she's not feverishly by the side of her children making sure they are okay (which I would be. . .I would be violently overprotective until I died), she's getting all giddy and silly over the prospect of a treasure! Your children are the treasure! I personally wouldn't be surprised to learn she was in on the scheme the whole time and is playing them for fools. What a creep fest.Secondly -- the action. Predictable. I know it's for children, but it's patronizingly predictable. Oh gee, you think there could be something sinister going on here? Oh no, Nancy, everything in the world is peaches and cream! You would use that metaphor, wouldn't you Bess? (But that's another barrel of fish altogether.) Sure, a young child probably wouldn't have been able to figure it out, but let's pretend for a moment that children excel when given the opportunity to be challenged and that a more complex plot-line still would have been okay. Yes, it picks up after a while, but it's very much a laundry list. They went here and then they went there and next they moved a little bit to the left which might be important but probably isn't.Which brings us to number three -- the inane amount of useless and mundane detail. I DON'T WANT TO KNOW WHAT THEY ATE FOR EVERY MEAL AND WHO SERVED IT. This may be almost unfathomable, but I DON'T CARE. This whole book is one giant laundry list of details all mushed together to very little effect. It should serve as a primer of what not to do with a novel. There was surprisingly little of actual value in the points that made up the plot. This kind of writing is not only infuriatingly dull but also just plain bad. I cannot count the number of times I rolled my eyes at lines like, "Nancy and Bess, although sympathetic, did not comment. They quickly purchased the items they needed, then said good-by and left" (pg. 45). Oh golly gee, I'm so glad to know that they actually bought the things they needed, rather than just staring at them and then leaving. . .and thank goodness I know they said goodbye! Otherwise, I might think they were rude! And why does every chapter need to end with an exclamation mark?Lastly -- poor Bess. The whole book, it just felt like the author and the other characters were pointing and chanting "fatty". They pointed out way too often that Bess would have two scoops of ice cream instead of one or that she is the one who insists upon a snack or that she really likes cookies. Good lord. We get it. She's chubby. It makes you feel better to look down on the fat girl. However, it does you no favors in my mind. Mid-life suicide, anyone, when Bess finally has enough and her last fifteen diets have all tanked and she's heavier than ever? Can you solve that one, Nancy?I know I must seem vitriolic in my review. Honestly, though, this book left a bad taste in my mouth. It's books like this that give older books a bad name. It's a purported "classic," but unlike classics that have actual literary merit, this one probably leaves most of its readers in the cold and with the notion that older books are terrible. Why on Earth there is such a huge number is beyond me. Not only does it highlight some of man's worst features while coating everything with a thick coat of white-wash mixed with a lot of sugar, the effect is singularly sinister because it all seems like a nightmarish situation where no one sees that anything is wrong. No, no, dear, it's definitely alright to make fun of the fat girl because we're all "laughing," for example. Peer pressure gone horribly wrong. I will be staying away from Nancy Drew in the future and will not be making a foray into The Hardy Boys, since they are written by the same type of people, if not the same ones exactly. P.S. If you want to read about a more realistic and enjoyable "girl detective" (and she's a "young sleuth"!), check out the Herculeah Jones novels by Betsy Byars. I'd choose those over these in a heartbeat.
Quick book summary.In the beginning Nancy goes to a cottage with Bess and George. When they get their Nancy see a girl who looks alot like Cecily.They meet Cecily who has a mystery involving a family treasure hidden before the Cilvil War.Cecily's only clue being half a gold locket.In the middle someone plans attacks on Nancy and the cottage. Nancy visits the neighbors who have twins but the twins get beat and slapped by their parents. At the end the neighbors decided to leve early but Nancy gets the police and they take them away.Remember the lady that Nancy saw well the twins were hers.I recommend this book because it is a very good mystery and it is always fun to try and solve mysteries before the book ends. I like how there was lots of detail describing the scene. It was like you were almost in the book with them trying to solve the mystery.It was exciting to see what happened at the end. The book got sad at the end because the lady told us her story about her husband dying and she could not find her kids and when she sees them again it was sad and happy because you were happy for them. I would recommend this book to anyone who likes a good mystery and like to read a good book.
What do You think about The Clue Of The Broken Locket (1965)?
Nancy Drew and her fiends are plunged into a network of strange events when they visit Misty Lake. The very night they arrive, they meet pretty, red-haired, Cecily Curtis, who seeks Nancy’s help in solving two mysteries: one concerning Cecily’s fiancé, Niko Van Dyke, a popular singer who believes that his record company is cheating him of royalty payments” the other, involving a family treasure hidden before the start of the Civil War---Cecily’s only clue being half of a gold locket. Nancy’s investigation leads her to Pudding Stone Lodge, where the sinister Driscoll family lives. Elusive humming noises, a flashing light in the attic of the lodge, the periodic apparition of an excursion launch which had sunk in Misty Lake years ago, and the fleeting appearances of a frightened girl who strongly resembles Cecily gives Nancy plenty of opportunities to test her sleuthing skills Braving a series of dangerous situations and discouraging developments, the alert young detective perseveres in her attempts to solve other mysteries and reveal the astounding secrets of Pudding Stone Lodge.
—Meadow
"The energetic girl was adept at handling the car, and guided it skillfully down the drive in reverse gear. Often Hannah Gruen would shudder as she watched her mistress, predicting that Nancy would some come into collision with the big oak tree near the curb. However, it was Carson Drew who, while driving, had pulled a large-sized strip of bark from the trunk. The fenders of Nancy's cars had never so much as been scratched." Page 13, Chap II, Clue of the Broken Locket.1934, bitches. And it's the man who can't drive as well as the woman.COTBL was the first Nancy Drew I read at 7, and my socks were knocked off. It's a gothic plot, babies with unknown parentage, long lost siblings, coincidences, storms, orphanages, and the eponymous broken locket. I just reread this a few days ago, and had I not remembered the plot from rereading it 20 years ago, I'd not have seen the denouement coming. But I'm a little slow, and the plots aren't the reason I loved Nancy with the fire of a thousand suns right from the start. First, it was the period. Running boards. George has to get in the rumble seat. A character had been gassed in the "World War", (What? No WWII the Big One yet? Also never heard of such a thing as being "gassed" when I was 7; I pictured a guy getting sprayed by a gasoline pump.) The show folk aren't in movies; they're in revues. Doctors come to houses. So do butchers, and complain that the nouveau riche villains in this story don't pay their bills. For meat. All this was vastly different from the 1970s. And it was awesome. Second, Nancy is likable and a little sneaky, a go-ahead gal. In some of the later books she got prissy and too accomplished. In the earliest of these books, ghostwritten by Mildred Wirt, who was a swimming jock, journalist and pilot, Nancy was merely confident and solved problems. She retorted. She demanded. She scoffed. She had Hannah Gruen get a cab over with baby clothes and a decoy broken locket so she could swipe the real ones, clues which would eventually lead to the babies' parentage, the central mystery of the novel.Third, the vocabulary. At 7, I learned "coupe." "Intrigue." "Palaver." Okay, I probably didn't fully get the meaning of "palaver," but I sort of got it from context. Fourth, the feminism. Nancy does actually have the first car accident of her career, but it's because she's chasing down a witness and a woolly headed reverend drives his car into her way. She instantly checks the axle of her car to make sure it's not broken, and gets a clue out of him in the process. And nobody puts Nancy in a corner. After she and her dad, attorney Carson Drew, questioned a witness together, Mr. Drew tells her: "Speaking of evidence, I noticed...you stole the show right away from your old dad." Nancy replies: "I didn't mean to do that, only when you pause so long between questions, I can't keep quiet. I was determined to know what the woman who called upon him looked like." Her dad just keeps right on deconstructing evidence with her, treating her like a sentient adult, no man-splaining whatsoever. In this particular mystery, Nancy uses her stealth, gift of gab and brains to get the job done. In other Mildred Wirt novels, she'll outrun criminals, go undercover, free herself from being tied up more times than you can count, even carry a gun. This was 60 years+ before Buffy, Xena, Scully. Even today, female characters in pop culture are prone to sexist stereotypes. Liz Lemon, for example, love her though I may, can't carry on a relationship and binge eats. And real women? Get patronized by mechanics, doctors, effing male subordinates. Get told they shouldn't do what they want. Are chided for being abrasive, unfeminine. And I'm not talking about numskull politicians or Fox News. This reduction of bright, competent women happens in places where people have college degrees from good universities or should otherwise know better. And other women do it to each other.At 7, I was entranced by the plot and how Nancy managed to do good all the way around, make something out of nothing where she began with no clues. But even today, the vigor and straightforwardness of Nancy and her friends makes me feel better. I'm going to be rereading more. Endnote: The rewrites of the 1950s, 60s and beyond were undertaken to remove ethnic stereotypes, modernize the milieu, and cater to attention spans that had been undermined by television. They managed to remove much of what was remarkable and exhilarating from the 1930-1948 novels. Avoid.
—Diane Walker
I've read both the 1934 and 1965 versions of this book, and it's an unusual Nancy Drew Mystery Story for two reasons: first of all, most of the 60s revisions just condense and update the original story. The 1965 version of Clue of the Broken Locket is a completely different story. Surprise number two, the 1965 version is a much better book. Broken Locket '34 is a pretty dumb, petty story of Nancy going out of her way to find the birth mother of a pair of baby twins because their adopted parents are total jerks. A noble cause to be sure, but the adopted parents aren't criminals in any way, they're just lousy people, so as a mystery the story falls flat. Broken Locket '65 concerns pop music royalties conspiracies, twins separated at birth (grown-ups this time), and a mysterious family treasure. It's a fun, fast-paced story and an actual mystery this time. If you're really into Nancy Drew and her various changes over the years, it's interesting to compare the two books, but if you have to pick one edition, read the 1965 Broken Locket.
—Phyllis
