The Secret Of Red Gate Farm (1995) - Plot & Excerpts
I read Nancy Drew like crazy when I was a kid, and loved them. I could get through a book in a single afternoon, often between getting home from school and eating dinner. So it was with a sense of nostalgic excitement that I opened this book and re-read it, about 40 years after the first time. What a disappointment. They say you can't go home again, and that is true here. This is #6 in the series, so it was pretty old even when I read it the first time - first published 1931 - and the writing is pretty darn awful by modern standards. Or maybe just by my modern standards. There is a forest of adverbs, especially in the dialogue tags. Nancy's mystery-solving skills involve as much blind guessing as clever deductive or inductive reasoning - she's trying to break a coded message, and having realized that one number stands for the letter H, extrapolates that it might stand for "Hale", which is the name of the Mysterious Nefarious Group whose activities excite Nancy's notice in the first place, and then the letter M, why that could stand for "Maurice", and Maurice Hale is the group's leader! There is an incredibly improbable series of events that starts the mystery off, followed by coincidence after coincidence that introduces Nancy and her friends to another (mostly cardboard) person (Joanne) who, coincidentally, is unwittingly peripherally involved in the the Big Mystery. Another coincidence takes Nancy, Bess, and George to Joanne's titular farm, where they amuse themselves by performing domestic services and waiting for more coincidences to coincide so that they can walk into a trap, get captured, and be saved by a deus ex machina (mostly cardboard) male character, but still get all the credit for cracking the code and infiltrating the organization. I hope modern Nancys are better than this one. Because if they're not, I'm not sure I'd give them to any girls I know. The writing is pretty awful, the plotting is lazy and indifferent, the characters - even the primary cast! - are mostly cardboard, and the various anti-feminist messages are irritating to an adult, but potentially poisonous to girls. George often teases her cousin Bess about her plumpness; domestic industry and skill are praised and lauded (because you never know when you might need to make a not-really-a-KKK-robe-and-mask out of several yards of white muslin, using just scissors, needle and thread); and when it comes down to it, the teen sleuth and her friends get themselves into a bad situation and get rescued before they can even start thinking about extricating themselves from it. (Seriously, Chief McGinnis, rather than encouraging Nancy's help, maybe suggest to her that she stop getting herself into fixes that use up valuable police resources in rescuing her from her own poor decisions.) It's true that Nancy is also thoughtful, kind, and likes to help, but she's not as clever as the writers want us to think she is, and I felt horribly cheated that she and her friends all had to be rescued from the bad guys at the end of this story. Talk about disempowering the heroine, and thus the reader! I have a bunch more Nancys as ebooks. I might try another one some day, but I'm in no hurry.
Review originally posted on my blog http://hobbitsies.net/2012/11/sleuthi...Previously on Sleuthing Saturdays, I discovered The Secret of Shadow Ranch. It involved ghost ponies. And farms. And some really interesting culture, actually.So. This week, I learned several things while reading The Secret of Red Gate Farm. The first, and probably the most important thing, is that if you’re with Nancy Drew and you get bit by a snake – don’t panic! She can whip up a tourniquet at moment’s notice AND sterilize your wound with a bottle of perfume they bought several days earlier in the book that they just happen to still be carrying around.I also realized that every single person Nancy Drew has helped so far (we are six books in) is in some sort of financial crisis. Whether it’s almost losing a house (I believe this has happened twice so far?) or a farm or your mother’s jewels, etc – Nancy Drew will be there to save the day just in time for you to tell that greedy buyer (who is usually the bad guy) to step off.Okay, but in all seriousness, I actually really liked The Secret of Red Gate Farm. I don’t read the synopsis of these books before I read them, so imagine my surprise to find out The Secret of Red Gate Farm involved mysterious CULTS. And counterfeit money! And cow milking! Guys, I love cults.I also loved Bess and George in The Secret of Red Gate Farm. They provide much needed personality to balance out Nancy Drew’s lack thereof so far, I think. Not that Nancy Drew will never have a personality, because I know she will as the series develops, but right now I just want to shove her in the mud.Anyway, The Secret of Red Gate Farm is on par with The Hidden Staircase. I loved the mysterious cult-ness of it all and the white figures dancing in the moonlight for no apparent reason. I thought the ghostwriter of this one also did an amazing job of tying all the bits in the beginning to the end, so that rocked.Next up on Sleuthing Saturdays, I’ll be hunting for The Clue in the Diary, so don’t miss it! I, for one, am dying to know whose diary it is – and I have heard that the (hopefully) dashing Ned Nickerson makes his first appearance!
What do You think about The Secret Of Red Gate Farm (1995)?
I've probably said this a zillion times already, but I love the absurdly complicated plots the bad guys think up. Like bad guys on Scooby Doo, they draw attention to themselves through some scheme that's supposed to scare people off. They communicate in needlessly complicated special ways, often in code. There's a baroque quality that I love, like the old-school murder mysteries that involve one bizarrely staged murder. It's that painstakingly crafted-by-hand complexity that still manages to fit the broad outline. I love it like a good limerick.
—Kaethe
I really wish that people who write reviews of the Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys books would pay attention and keep the originals separated from the revised versions! Is that too much to ask?I finished this original story yesterday and it was HIGHLY disappointing. It was completely ridiculous! The notion that counterfeiters would carry on in such an absolutely outlandish manner is ludicrous! The whole idea would be to operate quietly in the shadows, so as NOT to attract attention. A crazy-acting cult would have IMMEDIATELY attracted attention, because in that time period even more than today there was a lot of motivation to keep undesirables of all kinds on the move and not settling into a small town where they could cause trouble.A much more believable scenario would have seen them using the cover of a geologic or archaeologic team investigating the cavern.As written, this story was an insult to the intelligence of readers of ANY age!
—David Baltzer
There are two important things one should keep in mind about this book in particular and the series in general: the social settings will be dated, as the series was conceived in the 1930s, and they are written with young children in mind. As such, the mystery isn't going to be something deep and complex; it will, instead focus on the adventure itself and the apparent cleverness of a main character who always outsmarts the adult criminals and often beats even the police to an arrest. The book had the added advantage of featuring a single parent household.Some vocabulary terms are outdated and may need explaining, as will some of the social interactions. This particular story in the series is not as well written as some of the others. The plot is almost haphazard with barely circumstantial evidence stringing together events which would have appeared unrelated otherwise. It seems standard for Nancy Drew and her friends to happen upon a stereotype, cardboard personality in need of help,; in this case, the character is little more than a plot device.In spite of these faults, my oldest girl and her younger cousins enjoyed reading it together. The main character does offer several appealing characteristics: she's loyal, level headed, polite, and demonstrates a sociall conscience. The kids liked her because she wasn't afraid to do the right thing even if it was dangerous.These are still worth reading in spite of their age.
—Fran
