Carolyn Keene - The Sign of the Twisted Candles Books

Pros: Amusing moments, pleasant enough little tale

Cons: Poor characterization, cartoonish bad'uns, unrealistic elements

The Bottom Line: This is escapist literature with all the faults and guilty pleasures therein. The weakest area is the characterization.

Review: Written in 1933 by Walter Karig (using the pen name Carolyn Keene), this is the ninth in the original Nancy Drew series, which ran from 1930 to 1979. It seems to have been revised in1968. Nancy is an amateur sleuth, forever 18, who solves mysteries ...

Pros: some words here will expand a tween's vocabulary by making her use the dictionary

Cons: everything else

The Bottom Line: This doesn't even seem to make an attempt to be a story that will make the reader think along with the mystery. It's just hack writing, pure and simple.

Review: Nancy Drew, along with her best friends Bess Marvin and George Fayne are off to visit a distant relative of the two cousins. The mission is to discover if the old man, Asa Sidney, is being mistreated by his caretakers, Frank and Emma Jemitt. The old man ...