I’m not a huge fan of the game (if Joy whines at me about her tragic childhood one more time, I swear), but Jesus, it’s actually a huge improvement on the book. Because this book? Is terrible. It took me so long to get through that HER finally announced and dropped Mystery of the Seven Keys in the meantime (which I was planning to wait to buy on Steam, but am considering just buying off HER’s website? We’ll see. But it’s on the list!).
But let’s get it out of the way, since I have the recap all ready to go. Much like Nancy Drew Ghost Stories, this book was allegedly published in 1983, which I’m struggling to believe. There’s a gosh-shucks-gee-willikers tone to the writing that is nothing like Secrets Can Kill, which was published just three years later and generally reads pretty similarly to other ’80s teen books, like the Sweet Valley series. Even the less-trendy main line of ’90s Nancy Drew books were stylistically pretty close to middle grade and YA books of the time, so I don’t know what’s happening here.
Also much like Ghost Stories, the mystery is pretty tepid, clues get teased and then dropped with no explanation, and the final resolution is an absurd series of coincidences. I guess the Stratemeyer Syndicate were too busy thinking of new hunks for Nancy to date in the Files series to come up with better plots for the main books.
If you played the game, you know how this goes: a carousel is mysteriously lighting up and moving on its own, BUT WHY? Could someone be manipulating the carousel for nefarious purposes??? Mayhaps…hidden treasure??? Although — thinking about it, despite the title, neither the game nor the book lean very hard on the haunting concept. In both, Nancy immediately assumes the carousel shenanigans are a prank or a coverup. Nobody entertains the idea of a real haunting very long, the way they do in other “haunted” games like Blackmoor Manor or Ghost of Thornton Hall.
Anyway, so the Clue Crew are out at the local amusement park, baby-sitting “the three Custer children”. There is absolutely no need for there to be three of them, by the way. Janet (or Billy?) tells Nancy that they want to see “the haunted carousel,” which prompts Billy (or Janet) to chirp, “Why is the carousel haunted?”
Glad we asked, because while Nancy doesn’t know, some reporter guy rocks up and promptly offers her a reward of her choice if she finds out. Nancy dorks that the best reward would be to think of the children, and suggests that the news station give all the kids in River Heights “an afternoon of free fun-rides”. The reporter guy takes the bet, which I’m assuming he’s going to have to pony up either way, lest he be known as the guy that told a bunch of kids to fuck off.
Then the Clue Crew runs into a Swiss tourist couple, the Trompels. The book notes that [They] had arrived in New York only two days before…River Heights […was] their first stop outside the huge skyscraper metropolis. Is this book acting like River Heights is in New York? I’m pretty sure every other entry in the Nancy canon has placed it vaguely in Illinois.
The Trompels been pickpocketed and have lost all the money they’ve brought. (The book takes pains to note that they had both American dollars and Swiss francs. When I was like five, I had all the different European currencies memorized because I played the shit out of that Madeline game, and then the euro was adopted like two years later and I never had to use that knowledge ever again. Tragic.) The Clue Crew are all embarrassed that this should have happened and tarnished the Trompels’ impression of the land of the free and the home of the brave. Now Switzerland is going to side with the Soviet Union in the Cold War 🙁
Nancy flexes her detective skills to identify that a team of two thieves must have used the bump-and-distract method to steal Mr. Trompel’s wallet, and they’ll have dumped it after stealing the money. The third Custer kid finally gets to be named (“Gary”) and gets his moment in the sun by dumpster-diving for the wallet. Nancy asks around to see if anyone spotted the wallet being tossed, and manages to ID the thieves as a young guy, a bald old guy, and some third old guy. Oh, are there three Custer kids because there are three thieves and three members of the Clue Crew? Perhaps the book is attempting to evoke the imagery of the Holy Trinity, and Nancy is Jesus. That’s deep.
The thieves conveniently decide to meet back up inside the park, so Nancy sees them and confronts the pickpocket: “If you surrender the loot now, I’ll let you go. But you’d better hand it over fast, because if you don’t, you’ll soon find yourself behind bars!” Instead of busting out laughing, or maybe just running away while Nancy delivers those incredibly long sentences, the pickpocket gets all sweaty under her judgmental gaze. His two friends run up to try and fight Nancy off, but then the police finally show up and the thieves scamper after dropping the money. The Trompels tearfully tell Nancy how grateful they are and how much they now love America and capitalism and David Hasselhoff.
Crime successfully busted, the Clue Crew and there-was-no-need-for-there-to-be-three Custer children go back to enjoying the carousel and its “gay music”. See? What teenager in the ’80s was using “gay” to mean “happy”? Then Bess says “Golly, I remember how much I loved to ride [the carousel]!”, then she and George start talking, and the ghostwriter describes them as “[Nancy’s] chums”. Seriously, when was this book actually written? The last time I saw someone use the word “chum” to mean “friend,” I was rereading Anne of Green Gables.
Anyway, Nancy chats with the owner of the carousel, one Leo Novak. He’s equally baffled as to why the carousel is suddenly turning on of its own accord. He explains that the carousel used to be housed here in River Heights, but then it was sold to another amusement park which eventually closed, and it was just brought back to town recently — which was also when the “hauntings” started. Nancy wonders if the two things are connected, but Mr. Novak just shrugs and is like, “Idk.” We also find out that Mr. Novak has been the carousel’s operator since it was first built, and he’s now the owner, as he bought it when the first owner died. Then Bess rocks up and reminds everyone that it’s time for dinner, and Nancy and George laugh at her because haha Bess fat.
Apparently the Custer kids are Bess and George’s niece/nephews, and they’re watching them on the family houseboat (what, you don’t have one?). They invite Nancy back to the houseboat, but when they get there, they see some guy creeping around. They freak out that it’s one of the thieves, but of course it turns out to just be Ned. He invites Nancy to have dinner with him at “Rustlers’ Inn” and Nancy insists she has to go back home and put on full cowgirl cosplay. I guess it’s a good thing he didn’t invite her out for Chinese.
Over dinner, Nancy explains the mystery to Ned and invites him to stake out the park with her. Ned asks her to promise to invite him along to every stakeout so she’s not alone, and Nancy pats him on the head and says he’s so right, but Ned didn’t realize that she had actually promised nothing. Oh, Nedstopher.
Ned and Nancy stake out the carousel and see two mysterious figures skulking around, just before the carousel turns on again. Nevertheless, Nancy notes that the skulkers actually seemed surprised by the carousel turning on, and they promptly flee the scene. Ned chases after them but gets conked on the head and knocked out (oh, Nedgar), so they give up and go home.
The next day, the local paper announces that Nancy is trying to solve the “mystery of the haunted carousel” (let’s not name-drop or anything), because I guess there’s literally nothing else of import happening in River Heights. Hannah Gruen also tells Nancy that she got a call from one “Joy Trent”, who wants Nancy to solve a different, totally unrelated mystery for her.
Bess comes over and Hannah offers her breakfast, which Bess accepts although she says she already “[had] a nibble” when she woke up. Sigh. Anyway, Nancy tells Bess about Ned’s head wound, and Bess gasps “Oh, golly!”, then Nancy reassures her that Ned is fine, “thank heavens.” This is definitely how teenagers in the ’80s talked.
Nancy and Bess go to the park again to take another look at the carousel. They’re met there by one Detective Norris, who’s traveled all the way from the St. Louis. He tells them that the two older thieves they saw the other day are escapees from the St. Louis prison system: “Fingers Malone” and “Baldy Krebs.” I love this. That’s exactly what you’d call your hardened criminals if your primary exposure to gangsters was 1930s Looney Tunes.
Anyway, apparently Fingers has an amusement park fetish (as you do?), so he and Baldy are just hanging around River Heights, picking pockets and admiring the turn-of-the-century carousel craftmanship. The police got an anonymous tip that they would be at the park again today, so they’re on the lookout for them.
Nancy and Bess go to the carousel, but aren’t able to find any clues left behind by the mysterious skulkers. Embarrassing. I bet I would’ve struggled to find until I looked up a walkthrough that would tell me where to look found a clue, or at least a keyboard I could use to repair the park’s rides because the head engineer doesn’t feel like doing it.
They’re approached by an elderly dude fellow, sorry, because it’s apparently 1903 up in here. He introduces himself as Amos Franz, yet another amusement park enthusiast, although not a criminal…OR IS HE? Franz exposits that the carousel’s “lead horse” is, for some mysterious reason, not of the same style as the rest of the horses, meaning it was added to the carousel later. Franz suggests that, when the carousel was modified to replace the lead horse, the machinery was also tampered with to cause the mysterious hauntings. Nancy briefly speaks with Mr. Novak, who shoots the lead-horse theory down: he says the horse was replaced several years ago because it got hit by a truck, whereas the hauntings only started recently.
Nancy spots Fingers Malone hanging around the park, and she and Bess chase after him. Bess gets winded after like two seconds because haha Bess fat, so Nancy goes after Fingers by herself. (I originally typed “goes after Fingers alone”, then realized that rhymed with “Fingers Malone” and was furious.) Fingers runs into the haunted house, and Nancy’s like, “But that’s no reason not to be a law-abiding citizen!” so she waits in line to buy a ticket for the haunted house while Fingers runs away. Oh, Nancy. As she waits, she notices a girl waving at her, but doesn’t recognize her.
Luckily for Nancy, Fingers hasn’t used this opportunity to actually get away or anything, and Nancy chases him around the house, but he manages to knock her out and escape. (Don’t worry, though, the book takes care to note that Nancy’s titian red-gold hair is thick enough to protect her from head injury. If you’ve ever been concussed, I hope you know it’s your own fault for not having locks as luscious as Nancy Drew’s.)
Nancy comes to with Doyle and Norris present. She tells them what happened, but naturally they don’t believe her, as they sealed off the haunted house as soon as they heard Fingers was in there. Nancy asks Bess to confirm that Fingers escaped, but Bess says he never came out. Nancy’s like, “Omg, how is it possible for someone to leave the building without using the regular entrance or exit???” Nancy, are you new here?
The Clue Crew reconvenes at Nancy’s house, where people have been calling Hannah all day to share their “far-out” theories about the carousel. WHEN WAS THIS BOOK WRITTEN?? Anyway, Nancy says she’d like to have an engineer check out the carousel machinery, and Bess volunteers one “Neil Sawyer”, an engineering student whom George liiiiikes. Is he supposed to be the basis of Ingrid’s character? Because that is hilarious. Is Neil going to tell us that we need more Omega 3 because our vibes are off?
Bess brings up a movie she saw once, where the criminals started a fire in another building to distract the cops while they robbed a bank. Maybe the culprit is using the carousel as a mere distraction! Then, immediately: “Something like that,” Bess said timidly. “I guess it’s a pretty wild idea, huh?” Hee. I bet Nancy usually smacks her down whenever she tries to be a super sleuth.
Anyway, then George calls Neil and he agrees to check the carousel out. “Oh, marvelous!” Nancy says, because it’s 1913.
Hannah tells Nancy that Joy Trent came by, seeing as Nancy hasn’t returned her call yet. She describes Joy for Nancy, who muses that Joy sounds vaguely familiar, but she just can’t place her. (She’s clearly the girl who was waving at Nancy earlier. Not to spoil that mystery for you.)
Nancy goes to George’s house, where Bess and George are having a cookout. George has invited Neil over, who explains to Nancy that he figured out how the carousel trick works: someone is using a radio relay signal to turn the carousel on from a distance; he noticed some damage to the control box wiring that might’ve come from clipping the relay onto the wires. Nancy is pleased and has the excited hope that she might now be one step closer to a solution of the haunted carousel mystery. Heh. Let’s not be too obvious about padding the word count here.
Nancy visits the carousel the next day and sees Mr. Novak arguing with a woman, whom he blows off as just some busybody interested in the carousel mystery. Nancy tells him about the radio-relay theory, but Mr. Novak insists he would’ve noticed if someone messed with the control box. He’s also wearing an eyepatch and Nancy thinks he has a black eye, but he just blusters that it’s nothing. Suspicious!
Ned invites Nancy out to lunch at “the Limehouse Tavern”, an English dockside-themed pub. “Sure, let me just run home and put on my Horatio Nelson cosplay,” Nancy doesn’t say.
Ned tells Nancy that one of his professors is really into this artist dude named Walter Kruse and is working on a book about him. Walter Kruse, as it turns out, used to date the daughter of the carousel’s original owner (“Mr. Ogden”). Seeing as Mr. Novak also used to work for the Ogdens, Ned’s professor wants Nancy to ask him about Kruse. When she does, however, Mr. Novak claims not to remember him.
Joy Trent finally catches up to Nancy at the park and invites her to meet up and discuss Joy’s case. Nancy gasps that Joy is the girl she saw outside of the haunted house the other day (thank you for joining the rest of the class, Nancy) and the chapter ends on this realization like it’s a cliffhanger, but then Nancy just shrugs and is like, “Whatever.” Nancy also notes that Joy is rich, as she’s driving around town in a “sleek, foreign sports car.” The wanking over Joy’s car is like, the only indication that this book might’ve actually been written in the ’80s. It’s very 1bruce1.
The next day, Joy calls and tells Nancy that her house has been broken into. Then Nancy gets another call from Chief McGinnis, who tells her that 1) a boat was stolen from the river during the last carousel “haunting”, supporting Bess’s theory and 2) they got an anonymous tip that Joy’s house was being broken into, although the theft was over by the time they got there. Nancy is intrigued that the police seem to be getting all these tips about her cases (you’ll recall that someone also called the police alerting them to Fingers and Baldy’s presence in the park earlier).
At Joy’s house, Nancy sees the the woman who was arguing with Mr. Novak the other day driving off. When she asks Joy’s aunt (“Aunt Selma”) who that was, however, Aunt Selma gets all huffy and says she’s just some busybody. Suspicious!
Joy tells Nancy that the family butler was accosted by two men in ski masks the other night, but they ran off when the police arrived, seemingly without taking anything. Then Nancy settles in and gets more of Joy’s backstory: she’s an orphan; her father died recently and her mother died when Joy was a toddler. Joy reminisces about how she too used to love the amusement park — in fact, she loved the lead horse on the carousel so much that, when the carousel was about to be moved away, her father bought the horse for her. “Daddy made a deal to buy the horse from the carousel owner and wrote him out a check then and there!” When I was nine, I had a set of So Weird novelizations I really loved, and my dad gave them away without telling me. Joy and I had very different childhoods. Anyway, Nancy reflects that this must be why the lead horse was replaced — so why did Mr. Novak tell her that it was replaced because a truck crashed into it? Anyway, Joy doesn’t have the horse on hand, as she lent it to the local daycare center. Joy’s Aunt Selma is present for most of the conversation, and she’s all pissy and suspicious that Joy is telling a total rando about their family history.
ANYWAY, none of this (seemingly) has to do with the mystery Joy wants Nancy to solve. She actually called Nancy over here because she recently found a riddle her father left her, and she needs help solving it. The riddle involves the names “Iris” and “Old Glory”; Joy exposits that Iris was her mother’s name and just completely ignores the “Old Glory” bit. Sure, whatever. Anyway, the Trents have absolutely zero photos of Joy’s mother, because if you wanted to have a photo taken in the 1980s, you had to sit in a portrait studio in front of a box camera while the photographer coated a glass plate in collodion and dipped it in silver nitrate. Oh no, wait, that was the 1880s. I have questions about when Nancy Drew writers think the camera was invented. (Like how the Shimizus, in 21st century Japan, apparently only had a single photo of their mother taken in 20 years.)
Anyway, Joy has no idea what her mother looks like — which is convenient, say, if Joy’s mother were still alive, or perhaps had a mysterious relative, she could totally hang around Joy without being recognized. Hypothetically, of course.
Back at the carousel, Mr. Novak explains that yes, Joy’s horse was sold from the carousel — but then the replacement lead horse was damaged in the truck crash and also had to be replaced. Nancy’s like, “Oh. Okay.” She makes slightly more progress investigating the “carousel hauntings as a distraction” theory: she talks to the guy whose boat was stolen during the last haunting, and he says he saw two guys stealing his boat. Nancy recalls that she and Ned saw two guys skulking around the carousel. And yet, it seems the thieves weren’t after the boat itself — it was found abandoned, and Nancy muses that they simply used it to make their getaway. She suggests dusting the boat for prints, and the boat owner acts like that’s the smartest thing he’s ever heard and Nancy is genius for using fingerprinting in a mystery investigation. God, River Heights must be such an annoying place to live in. (Even Chief McGinnis falls all over himself to tell Nancy how brilliant she is to think of dusting for fingerprints, because apparently that thought didn’t occur to him on his own. I swear.)
Nancy then gets a call from the mysterious woman who’s been lurking around Joy. The woman asks Nancy to deliver a mysterious box to Joy, although she refuses to tell Nancy who she is or let her look fully inside the box. Nancy’s like “Seems legit”, although all this subterfuge is pointless, because Joy opens the box in front of Nancy anyway. The box contains iris flowers and card identifying the woman as “Rose Harrod.” “Golly!” Joy gasps, because it’s 1933.
(Sidebar: Nancy meets Rose at the “Romany Tearoom”, which seems like kind of an inappropriate name for a shop. Unless Madame Zurga is still running her scam on account of Nancy not bothering to, you know, actually investigate her after wrapping up the whole pirate frog gang thing.)
Aunt Selma is SUSPICIOUSLY upset over this Rose Harrod person and tells Joy not to contact her. Joy gets all snippy that Aunt Selma isn’t even her real mom her permanent guardian, and maybe she’ll cut Aunt Selma out of her life and choose a new guardian before she comes of age. (Which, oddly, the book IDs as happening when Joy turns 21, not 18.)
Nancy goes home and tells Carson about Joy’s case. Naturally, Carson knows the lawyer who handled Joy’s father’s will/Joy’s guardianship, and he puts Nancy in touch with him. Ah, nepotism. Joy’s lawyer doesn’t give Nancy much useful info, but does tell her that yes, “under certain circumstances,” Aunt Selma could be removed as Joy’s guardian.
Bess and George invite Nancy to have a sleepover on the Custers’ houseboat, because when there’s been a rash of crime around the marina, you definitely want to stay out there late at night. I swear. Naturally, ~someone~ cuts the houseboat adrift, and they nearly get hit by another boat but then they don’t. (No word on what that other boat was doing on the river at crack-thirty either, though.)
Chief McGinnis calls Nancy and tells her that they dusted the stolen boat for prints, and you’ll never guess who the two thieves were! Our antagonists, Fingers Malone and Baldy Krebs! Nancy speaks to Detective Norris and tells him that she recalls that Fingers Malone was nearly caught at a “park” in St. Louis — could that have been an amusement park? Er…didn’t we already establish earlier in the book that Fingers is weirdly obsessed with amusement parks? Well, whatever, let’s do this whole song and dance again: Nancy figures out (again) that Fingers is obsessed with amusement parks (I guess Baldy is just humoring him?) and got busted for picking pockets at one. (Per Norris, Fingers picked the pocket of a prominent St. Louis jeweler, who “was sore as the dickens” over the crime. Because it’s 1893.)
With that breakthrough, Nancy switches to working on Joy’s case for a bit. She realizes that “Old Glory” might refer to the American flag, and there’s a painting of a flag in Joy’s house with the flagstaff pointing at an iris…and then Joy recalls that the name of her carousel horse was Glory, whom she sometimes called “Old Glory,” and that turns out to be the real clue and the flag painting is never brought up again. What?
So Joy and Nancy go over to the daycare center to see the horse, and Joy weirdly compliments Nancy on her ability to ride a wooden horse: “Something tells me you’re an expert horsewoman, Nancy!” and Nancy flips her hair all, “I’ve ridden in a few shows. If I had a horse like Glory at home, I’d probably have no time for detecting!” Guys, this is a fake wooden carousel horse. We’re all aware of that, right?
Nancy observes that Glory doesn’t seem to be in the same style as the other carousel horses, which means that Mr. Novak lied again, and the original carousel lead horse is out there somewhere. Weirdly, though, Nancy wonders if Fingers and Baldy, along with whoever broke into Joy’s house, were looking for Glory — not the original lead horse.
Nancy has a brainwave and realizes that an old word for iris is flag; thus, they need to look for a flag in Joy’s house. Not the flag they noticed earlier that was pointing at the iris. Another flag, for some reason. Anyway, they find a statue with a flag that turns out to have a clue attached: a drawing of a horse with a frog on its back. (Horse girls may have already cracked the next clue here.)
Nancy switches back to working on the carousel mystery. I will say, so far, this book is probably the most like the games in that Nancy keeps dropping one of her mysteries to work on another one, and conveniently they end up being the same mystery. Not to spoil that well-hidden twist for you. She goes to the library and looks up Walter Kruse in the card catalog (hee), and gets all twitterpated over SOMETHING she finds in her research. She calls Some Reporter Guy and tells him that she’s nearly cracked the carousel mystery, but she needs help drawing the culprit out. She’s like, “Can you rework the entirety of the evening paper and also fix tonight’s news for me?” and Some Reporter Guy’s like, “Well, if I tell them it’s for Nancy Drew, I bet the news station and paper will agree!” Man, I understand why Brenda Carlton hates Nancy so much now. Imagine having all your stories turned in and the paper ready to print, and Nancy Drew busts in demanding that you work overtime to redo the entire thing to help her solve some bullshit mystery about an amusement park. I’d go postal.
Nancy and Bess go to the amusement park and casually let it slip in front of Mr. Novak that there’s a particular CAROUSEL HORSE at the DAYCARE that probably IS ORIGINALLY FROM MR. NOVAK’S OLD CAROUSEL. Mr. Novak acts all shifty and is clearly eavesdropping on them. Nancy tells Bess that if that doesn’t work to lure him out, she also planted stories about the carousel hauntings in the paper and evening news.
Then Nancy goes to meet Rose Harrod at Regent’s, “one of the most exclusive hotels in River Heights.” This town has like ten people, how exclusive can this hotel afford to be? Whatever. Anyway, when they get to the hotel, they find out Rose is missing — she went out yesterday, per a note she left, and never came back. The clerk tells them that some guy called and said that Rose should meet him if she wanted more information about Joy, and she should look for a guy “with a mustache and a cane.” That’s not weird or sketch at all. (Also, the guy tells Rose to meet him at the airport coffee shop. Hee! Oh, the days when you could just waltz into an airport to hang out.)
Nancy (oh yeah, and Ned, who has come along for this trip although he contributes nothing) asks around the airport and finds out that Rose was drugged and dragged off by two dudes. The Clue Crew tracks the culprits’ car to some sketchy town and the local gas station owner’s like, “Oh yeah, I totally saw that lady who was drugged and kidnapped, she’s just in that house over there.” That was easy.
They find Rose bound and gagged in the house, and they free her and take her to the hospital. They then gather Neil the engineer, Some Reporter Guy, and Officer Doyle to entrap the culprit(s). They all go to the park and bust Mr. Novak as the person causing the carousel hauntings, via some fuckery with the radio relay that I don’t care that much about.
Then Nancy and Ned run off to the daycare. They see two dudes trying to break in, and while Nancy amusingly describes one as an “overage hippie” because of his long hair, in the interest of time, I will just spoil it and say that it’s Fingers and Baldy in disguise. Nancy and Ned spy on them as they appear to be trying to open Glory up, but then Ned falls over on his chair and reveals their presence. Sigh. It’s hard to be a Ned fan sometimes.
Ned and Nancy fight Fingers and Baldy, then Amos Franz (remember him?) swoops in and reveals that he’s actually an insurance investigator and was simply pretending to have a carousel fetish as his cover, as you do. (It’s never explicitly said, but I guess he’s the person who had been calling the police and giving them tips?) The three of them beat up Fingers and Baldy and hold them for the police.
The next day, Nancy gathers the Clue Crew and explains the plot: The original-original lead horse was damaged by a truck, back in the early days of the park. Walter Kruse carved the replacement horse, Glory, back when he was working for Mr. Ogden. Mr. Novak recently read about Walter Kruse’s work being worth a lot of money, and wanted to get Glory back to he could sell it. He was staging the “hauntings” to get the carousel in the news and hopefully draw Joy out to look at it, as he recalled what she looked like, but not her or her father’s name. It’s not mentioned whether Novak was going to then steal it from Joy or if he was just going to try and buy Glory from her.
Fingers Malone and Baldy Krebs were also after Glory for a totally different reason: when Fingers pickpocketed that rich jeweler in St. Louis, he stole a bunch of diamonds, which the jeweler had just happened to be carrying around. As you do. Not wanting to get caught with the diamonds, Fingers handed them off to…Walter Kruse! Not that Walter Kruse was a criminal, he was just friends with them. Conveniently. And Kruse decided to hide the jewels inside the horse he had just finished carving, “as an impish joke.” Also as you do. Anyway, he told Fingers where he’d hidden the jewels, and Fingers came looking for it like twenty years later.
But! Joy’s dad had also already found the diamonds when he bought Glory, and he moved them to a new hiding place: inside Glory’s hoof (the underside of which is called the frog). Nancy pops the frog out of Glory’s hoof and finds the diamonds, as well as a note from Joy’s dad.
Sigh, here we go with yet another reveal. I am so tired. Alright, the note reveals that shortly after Joy was born, her mom came down with some rare and fatal disease called YAnovelneosis. Mama Joy’s parents offered to pay for an expensive treatment for her, but only if Joy’s dad divorced her and disappeared forever. So he did, but then Mama Joy died anyway. I feel like they could’ve cut out that whole middle bit about Joy’s parents having to divorce? Anyway, Joy wibbles that she wishes she knew what her mom looked like, and Nancy’s like, “Aha, but you do! Because Rose Harrod is her twin sister!” I don’t even……this is so stupid. Sorry, I’ve just taken a Benadryl and I can’t think of anything funny to say, I’m just bowled over by how dumb this all is. (Also, I don’t think anything I write can top “Don’t be sad that you don’t have a photo of your mom because here’s her secret identical twin!”)
Anyway, Rose had only recently found out about Joy’s existence, and she was poking around town trying to find her. Novak, Fingers, and Baldy thought she was after the jewels instead, so they kidnapped her for like five seconds. But now the truth has been revealed and everyone’s happy. Joy decides to make Rose her guardian instead even though she’s known the woman for like ten seconds and as far as I can tell, Aunt Selma doesn’t seem like a bad person, just kind of strict and old-fashioned. Whatever.
Nancy has a hearty chuckle and wonders if any of her future mysteries will be as exciting as this one. The book notes that she’ll soon find out when she “[accepts] the challenge of the Enemy Match.” That one couldn’t have been that thrilling, though, since it wasn’t cool enough to get turned into a game. On the other hand, given how shit this book is, the bar for being turned into a game is apparently pretty low.
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