Squeaking out one last post for 2024! We last left Nancy in 1953 1983, wherein characters had convenient identical twin siblings and went to coffee shops inside airports because you could do that back then. For this book, we zoom ahead to the year 2000, where you could still go hang out inside an airport, but not for much longer!

So we have Whispers in the Fog here, the book on which Danger on Deception Island was based. It’s…somewhat similar, in terms of the plot beats and character personalities, and somewhat…not. Let’s dive in (haha, get it, because this book takes place on the coast? I slay myself).

We see the first change made straight off: the game takes place in Washington (where HER Interactive is based), but the book takes place along the coast in Northern California. Much as with Message in a Haunted Mansion, I am overly excited by this because I used to drive between California and Oregon pretty regularly and am not unfamiliar with the area. I await fairly basic references that will nevertheless overly excite me because I’ll feel seen!

(Sidebar: I was reading Don Malarkey’s book a while ago, and within the first page he referenced salmon and I was like, “He’s from the PNW, isn’t he?” and lo and behold, he was from Astoria. I really felt like I could relate to him except for the fighting in WWII part.)

Nancy, Bess, George, and Ned are visiting George’s friend Katie Firestone, who lives in the small coastal town of Seabreak. Katie and George are kayaking bros — Katie is on the “world team” (I’m assuming the US national team) and runs a whale-watching business in the off season. The rest of the Clue Crew is planning to learn to kayak from them — as well as from Katie’s friend, one Jenna Deblin(!). Jenna lives in Seattle and hasn’t arrived yet. You may recall, of course, that game!Jenna is a town local who spends all her time serving us clam chowder and talking shit about Katie and everyone else in town. In the book, however, Jenna is a fellow kayaker who is on friendly although somewhat competitive terms with Katie. (George also knows Jenna, as they all met at “world trials” once. Is the national kayaking team that easy to get onto? Idk, maybe it is. Like curling.)

Katie shows the Clue Crew around the beach, and Bess marvels at the nature while George marvels at the athletic opportunities: “mountain biking behind us, sea kayaking in front of us.” Haha, because her entire personality is sports, get it? I swear. Bess brings up whale-watching with Katie, which segues us into the mystery: Katie’s thinking of shutting her business down, due to sabotage! (No, George doesn’t say it in this book, either. I gotta do everything around here.) She’s been receiving threatening messages trying to drive her away, but no one in town will help her, since all the locals hate her for Not Being One of Them. Over/under on Seabreak being home to a cult of cannibals?

Like five minutes after this exposition, they rock up to Katie’s boat (“Ripper”) and find that it’s been vandalized. Nancy immediately volunteers to find whodunit, and the rest of the Clue Crew gushes to Katie that Nancy’s solved mysteries “all over the world.” Like Pitbull, but for mysteries. The Clue Crew pokes around the boat and Nancy finds a scrap of a business card that says “Lone Motel”, “way 1”, and “7”. This is clearly a motel on Highway 1, but Nancy’s like, “Wow, can’t imagine what this means!” They call the sheriff, who’s not much help, suggesting that kids from “the city” might have been up causing trouble in town. What city? Redding?

Katie doesn’t have enough room to host the Clue Crew, so they head into town to go to their hotel. They try to make small talk with some of the locals, who all act really cagey and weird around them. Over/under on Seabreak being home to a cult of polygamous child marriage?

No sooner have they checked in when some guy tries to break down the door to Nancy’s room and yells at her to come out and fight him. Holt Scotto, everybody! He’s all pissy that Nancy was “asking questions” around town (I went back and literally all she does is mention she’s staying with Katie. I swear) and tells her to stop her nosy nosing. Like everyone in this town, Holt hates Katie, especially because he thinks Katie is singling him out as the most likely suspect behind all her recent problems. I mean, have you considered making a better first impression than “violent rageaholic”, Holt? Ned tells Holt to step off, which you wouldn’t think would scare off a sailor twice his age, but see, Ned gives Holt a “fierce look”! Holt storms off.

(Book!Holt’s description, by the way: “tall, with short hair bleached straw blond by the sun and a small gold hoop in one ear.” Is…is book!Holt hot? Do I want him to stop being an asshole and have an enemies to lovers arc with Katie?)

The next day, the Clue Crew has breakfast with Katie. Katie exposits about sneaker waves and sea caves for all the nine-year-olds reading this book. She then gets a call from one Andy Jason, who is trying to convince her to work for his whale-watching business instead of being independent (and a competitor). Katie shuts him down, but she tells the Clue Crew that he’s been after her pretty aggressively for a while. George wonders if Andy is the culprit and is trying to drive Katie out of business.

Nancy goes through the phone book (hee!) and finds an “Abalone Motel”, which she thinks matches the card she found on the boat. She and Bess drive down there, and Nancy sees a red Mustang following her. Nancy manages to lose him, but then she gets to the motel and realizes the motel card doesn’t match at all and this was a dead end. Cool.

On the way back to Seabreak, Nancy and Bess pass Andy Jason’s business and decide to go in. The receptionist asks if they’re interested in one of Andy’s “excursions” and Nancy’s like, “Is it an immersion excursion? Because otherwise I’m not interested.” She and Bess pretend to be reporters and flatter Andy about how they’re doing an article on the “top business leaders in the area” (presumably between Andy and the guy that owns the local diner). He agrees to an interview, telling them that he’s the only whale-watching business that matters around here, and yes, there’s some chick with a boat up the coast, but she won’t be around for long! Smooth.

(Also, book!Andy: “He was of medium height, with brown hair and a neatly trimmed beard and mustache.” So no tight perm? Look what they took from you, etc.)

On the way back to Seabreak, for real this time, Bess sees a cute old lighthouse and asks Nancy to stop. Nancy gasps when she sees the red Mustang parked at the lighthouse and decides to investigate.

She and Bess approach, and Nancy notes that the only other people here are “about a hundred yards away — as far away as the length of a fooball [sic] field.” First of all, what is that typo? Second of all, hilarious that this book was like, “Let’s convert yards into football fields because we’re American.” Third of all, I don’t know why they didn’t just say “the length of a football field” to begin with. Anyway, the point is, there’s no one else to notice Nancy and Bess sneak into the lighthouse. Weirdly, Bess is the one to take the initiative, creeping under the “Keep Out” sign. I feel like Nancy should’ve taken George along here? She and Bess are otherwise totally interchangeable, so it’s not like Bess specifically had to be the one with Nancy at Whale World wait, I just realized Andy’s business doesn’t have a proper name in this book. Sad! Anyway, as I was saying, perhaps the ghostwriter just wrote Bess’s name first and couldn’t be fucked to change it.

The lighthouse has been abandoned, but Nancy notes that someone has been here recently: there are still-wet footprints on the floor, though they don’t seem to lead anywhere. Nancy and Bess are nervous, but nevertheless take some time to linger and the admire the view. This paragraph of bizarre priorities has been brought to you by Northern California’s Board of Tourism.

From the top of the lighthouse, they see someone running away and realize it’s likely their culprit. They run back down but of course they’re locked in. A few paragraphs later, they manage to shove the door open and see that the culprit has tried to wall them in with a stack of rocks. (Although weirdly, “Nancy ran to the [door] and pulled…Nancy counted to three, and they pushed as hard as they could. The door moved a little…” Maybe you were just trying to pull open a push door, Nancy?)

They make it back to Katie’s, where they also meet her kayaking friend, Jenna. Katie later calls Jenna the “best team alternate we’ve got”, which we’ll file away for later. (Jenna’s description: “She had an athletic body and medium blond hair that shone with pale streaks from the sun.“) Nancy and Bess fill everyone in on their day, and Bess reveals that she looked up the red Mustang’s license plate, and it belongs to none other than Holt Scotto. Ned immediately wants to “find Scotto and deliver a few threats of my own — and maybe a few punches.” HEE! Who is he, Todd Wilkins? This is a book about whales, after all. Nancy holds him and his fists of fury back, pointing out that all their evidence is circumstantial, and they don’t know Holt was necessarily the one who locked them in.

The Clue Crew goes bicycling that evening. Nancy gets separated from the group and hears someone following her, but doesn’t get a good look at them. On their way back, they see Holt’s car at the local diner and decide to stop in. Some woman named Joan Kim is giving a speech there, telling everyone that if they don’t want “outsiders” in their town, there are ways of driving them out. Nothing fatal or illegal, obviously, but the occasional drive-by beating or vandalism isn’t out of the question! That’ll show those city people that we’re better than them, surely. Everyone cheers Joan Kim on. Well, say what you want about the Seabreak residents being psychotically insular and antisocial, I guess they’re not racist.

Joan Kim alludes to having already forced Andy Jason’s business further down the coast, and she’s clearly planning to do the same thing to Katie. Then the diner cook comes over and kicks the Clue Crew out because they’re Not One of Them. Over/under on Seabreak being home to an unsolved murder that happened twenty years ago and the murderer still walks among them?

The Clue Crew leaves, accordingly, but as they’re cycling back, Bess’s bike falls apart and she crashes. Ned examines the bike and notes that one of the nuts has come loose — OR HAS IT? (Once again, George doesn’t say “Sabotage!”, but I guess can forgive her this time, since she’s riding to find a pay phone to call Katie because it’s the year 2000.) Nancy and Ned look at the bike again and realize that, in fact, the bike axle has been cut.

Katie takes Ned and Bess to a clinic to get checked out, and Andy Jason comes across them. He wants to know why Nancy — whom you’ll recall he still thinks is a reporter writing a fluff piece on him — is hanging with “the competition.” Nancy BSes an excuse, but she’s suddenly sure Andy doesn’t believe her.

Back at the hotel, Nancy finds an ominous note telling the Clue Crew to back off. She suspects Holt, who knows where their room is (you know, when he introduced himself by trying to break down their door the other day), but also is suspicious of how creepy Andy is.

Speaking of, Andy stops by Katie’s house the next morning, and once again needles Nancy and Bess about their cover story. Andy heard about Katie’s boat being vandalized and came to offer use of one of his; Nancy is suspicious that he found out about the vandalism so quickly. Maybe he was even nearby, perhaps, when it happened? Andy doesn’t like that at all.

The Clue Crew goes out kayaking and Jenna gets swept out by a sneaker wave and the book pauses to lecture all the 9-year-olds reading it about beach safety. (The ghostwriter does learn her lesson about American measurements and skips to just saying that Nancy and Ned are “about the length of a football field out from the shore.”)

Nancy gets separated from the group, naturally, and a current pulls her into a cave. Ned and George follow her and they all paddle around for a bit. Nancy finds a silver buckle shaped like a horse’s head, and the Clue Crew observes that it doesn’t look too water-damaged, so it must have been dropped here recently.

Nancy hears a whispering noise (in the fog, get it?) and finds an orca oh weird, the book just refers to it as “a whale calf”, just chilling in the back of the cave. The Clue Crew bails out of there and make it back to Bess, who tells them that Katie and Jenna are fighting. Apparently Katie is a way better kayaker than Jenna and “showed her up” when they were practicing, which Jenna is super salty about.

Over dinner, the Clue Crew tells Katie and Jenna about the whale. Katie is surprised and suspicious, as she’s sure she would know if there was any legit whale studying going on around here. “I am kind of connected,” she says. Hee. Are you actually, Katie? I just went back and skimmed, and book!Katie is just a champion kayaker and runs a whale-watching business; she’s not a marine biologist like game!Katie.

After dinner, Jenna goes shopping for a new kayaking helmet and acts weird and cagey about not wanting to borrow one of Katie’s. They wander into a jewelry shop, which just so happens to sell horse head buckles, which conveniently are handmade and only have a few in existence — and even more conveniently, only one has ever been sold, and even even more conveniently, the shopkeeper took a photo of the purchaser! Nancy recognizes the person in the photo as Joan Kim.

The next day, Nancy overhears Jenna making a long-distance phone call, apparently just in an attempt to recover her helmet. Nancy’s like “Weird” but doesn’t think anything more of it. Then the sheriff calls her in to give a statement against Holt Scotto, as Nancy reported him for walling her in at the lighthouse. Holt’s like, “Well, actually, Nancy and Bess were harassing me because I was at the lighthouse first and technically I wasn’t really following them since they lost me before I could stalk them to their destination,” and the sheriff’s like, “Hmm, very good points, maybe I should arrest Nancy instead.” I swear to God. Nancy manages to point out that Holt already threatened her once, and for that matter, wasn’t inside the diner when Bess’s bike was tampered with — though his car was outside. Holt claims one of his friends borrowed his car. The sheriff’s like, “Oh my God, whatever” and tells Holt and Nancy to both leave each other alone. I want to be sarcastic about how useless the sheriff is, but like, I can’t argue that this isn’t a depressingly accurate depiction of how law enforcement handles harassment.

After Holt leaves, Nancy asks the sheriff about Andy Jason and the whale, but the sheriff doesn’t know much about either of them. Of course he doesn’t, because that would be helpful. He does suggest that they find out who owns the land where the whale was found, and Nancy and Ned find that it belongs to an LLC owned by none other than Joan Kim. Nancy’s now convinced that the whale calf and the harassment of Katie are somehow connected and linked back to Joan.

The book doesn’t bother wasting time building suspense about this: the next day, the Clue Crew heads out to look at the whale calf again, but now it’s gone, and they see a spooky freighter ship nearby. They get close to the ship, get boarded and knocked out, and wake up to find that Joan has kidnapped them. The Clue Crew gets split up trying to escape, and Joan corners Nancy at gunpoint. As you do.

Joan cackles evilly that she’s in the business of capturing baby whales and selling them to various unscrupulous buyers; she’s been trying to drive Katie away so her boat won’t get too close to Joan’s operation, like Andy Jason before her. So the Seabreak residents’ weird creepy distrust of outsiders was just them being useful idiots for Joan to cover up her animal trafficking? Because that’s…hilarious and deserved, to be honest.

Lest you think Joan is totally evil, though, she assures Nancy that she’s not going to kill her, she’s just going to dump the Clue Crew in Asia and let them find their own way home. (I guess the gun is just for threats, then?) I kinda feel like she should kill Nancy, though, since she starts fully admitting her guilt in harassing Katie and following Nancy the other night. She denies specifically sabotaging Katie’s bike or vandalizing the boat, though. Gasp! Two culprits in one book? We’re getting a real bargain here.

Nancy tells Joan that she found her buckle, which immediately distracts her long enough for Nancy to throw pepper in her face. Jesus, Joan, it’s a buckle shaped like a fucking horse’s head. Imagine letting your criminal enterprise get blown because you’re too into cosplaying Tex from Shadow Ranch.

Nancy escapes and manages to rescue Ned and Bess, who have been cornered by one of Joan’s minions. The only notable thing about this scene is that Ned “knock[s] the man out with one perfect punch.” Hee. Do I need a tag for a Nedpunch?

The Coast Guard picks everyone up and the Clue Crew reconvenes to discuss the case. Nancy tells everyone that she thinks there’s still another culprit out there: “Both Kim and Scotto confessed to causing some of the trouble. There would be no reason for them to hold back on those other two things.” There wouldn’t be? I guess I don’t have any experience with hardboiled criminals, but “confessing to X so people will think you’re being honest about not doing Y (even though you’re doing both)” is a pretty common lie. (Source: my alcoholic relatives.) Whatever. Nancy muses that Andy seems to want to work with Katie, rather than driving her away, so he doesn’t seem like the culprit. Okay, but have we considered that he’s running a smuggling ring and the whale calf has been trained by the commies to search for treasure?

George casually mentions to Nancy that Katie actually took Jenna’s place on the world kayak team; she’s the reason Jenna was bumped down to an alternate. Nancy twigs that Jenna would’ve been in the right place, right time to slide that threatening note under their hotel room door after Bess’s bike accident. The next day, she uses the house phone to redial the long-distance number that Jenna called the other day, and finds that Jenna was calling the “Malone Motel” — meaning that she was also the one who vandalized Katie’s boat. (Yes, this entire reveal hinges on Jenna calling from a landline. What a time to have been alive.) (Also no, we don’t ever figure out what the deal with the helmet actually was.)

The Clue Crew runs to find Katie and Jenna, who are out training. They get there just as Jenna, after like two weeks, has apparently finally decided to escalate from harassment to battery, as they catch her about to whack Katie over the head with a giant tree branch. Jeez, if this was premeditated, why didn’t you think of bringing an actual weapon along, Jenna?

Jenna confesses all: she got into the area a few days before she claimed she did and snuck aboard Katie’s boat, Ripper, one night. “And ripped it,” George says. Did you have to add that, George? Did you? Jenna rants that Katie ruined her career and she was trying to ruin Katie right back. She cut the bike axle, too, with the intent of hurting Katie, not Bess.

The Clue Crew calls the sheriff, but Katie declines to press charges, as long as Jenna gets counseling. She’s already going to get banned by the world kayaking association, and really, isn’t that the worst punishment of all? I mean, it might be nice for her to have a criminal record so she’ll be a suspect should she join a local-level kayak group and start bumping off the competition there, too. Over/under on Seabreak becoming home to a small kayak club that’s experiencing a sudden spate of mysterious accidents?

Nancy isn’t fussed about such things, however, and she and her friends toast to a mystery well-solved over a dinner of tuna. Not salmon? What kind of Pacific Northwesterners are you? (Fine, fine, tuna is a major fish up there, too — but I didn’t live on a Tuna Street in Oregon, is all I’m saying.) Ned’s like, “And here I thought this vacation would be boring!” and George says, “Haha, but you should’ve known that with Nancy, we always have a whale of a time!” which seems to be forgetting just how much physical injury everyone in this book underwent, but whatever. And that’s the book.

This book is, admittedly, really weird (Joan Kim holding Nancy up at gunpoint! Random baby whale trafficking that gets dropped in the middle of the book for Jenna and Katie’s rivalry! Ned punch!). The first chunk is pretty decent, but I can’t say I enjoyed it once we got to the Joan Kim reveal. If they’d just focused on one culprit, it probably would’ve been better — while the game’s plot of “smuggling ring using a whale trained by the Russians” is also completely bananas, they did manage to consolidate and simplify the two plots into one in a way that made sense, and the game actually seems pretty impressive given how bonkers the source material is. This is also, I think, the first book whose culprit was completely changed (from Joan and Jenna to Andy, who’s surprisingly innocent in this one, although there’s no resolution on his trying to buy Katie’s business). Holt, as ever, remains an asshole but not the culprit. No resolution on him and the entire town hating Katie, either.

On the other hand, the book doesn’t have Hilda Swenson calling me out of nowhere and making me kayak out to the middle of the ocean to do a puzzle she could do perfectly well on her own and only refuses to because she doesn’t wanna leave her house. So. There are no winners here.