This post is part of the Nancy Drew Review Project; visit the project index here.
Nancy Drew’s sixth adventure, The Secret of Red Gate Farm, was originally published in 1931. A revised version of the text was published thirty years later, in 1961. For my ongoing Nancy Drew Review Project, I read both versions of the text.
Both the original text and the revised text have practically the same plot: Nancy, Bess, and George befriend another girl on a train and undertake a scheme to help her out with her money troubles. Along they way, the four girls get involved in a counterfeiting ring, a mysterious cult, and a truly strange bottle of perfume—are all of these strange events related. (Duh.)
1931 Original Text
I don’t know that I would have said Red Gate Farm was a favorite Nancy Drew book prior to this, but I absolutely loved reading it this time around! It’s got the perfect mix of mystery, amusing shenanigans, and downtime for the characters’ personalities to really shine through.
Although I did appreciate that Nancy did all of her sleuthing alone in the first four books, I cannot deny that the Nancy + Bess + George trio is a lot of fun. The two cousins bring a lot of humor and levity to the series that Nancy herself could never achieve, since even in the original texts, she’s a bit stuffy. Modern readers would probably be put off by the way George constantly hounds Bess about her weight/appetite, but it’s clearly not something that actually bothers Bess, and nobody seems to have an actual issue with Bess being fat/plump/whatever. (Not excusing fatphobic humor, to be clear.)
I also just really love the story in The Secret of Red Gate Farm: it’s a good old-fashioned cult mystery, which as an adult, it something I’ve become a total sucker for. It was so great to read the original text for the first time and experience the same story I remember, but only more of it. Nancy does extra investigating, there are additional scenes with suspicious characters, and the climax is drawn out and seems far more dire.
Overall, for me, this is the perfect Nancy Drew novel.
1961 Revised Text
In my opinion, the original text was absolutely wonderful and didn’t need any updating, rearranging, or “fixing.” And, apparently, the authors agreed, because the 1961 version of The Secret of Red Gate Farm is astonishingly identical to the original text. Indeed, huge chunks of text are simply copy-pasted from one to the other.
The big differences here are that two or three names are changed, and there’s an incident where George gets bit by a snake, requiring Nancy and Bess to carry her back to the farmhouse and summon a doctor. Otherwise? The revised text is a beat-for-beat reproduction of the original text.
What’s interesting is that even though the revised text is five chapters shorter than the 1931 original text, it doesn’t feel rushed or like things are missing. All of the essential scenes are still there, all the dialogue is the same, and there aren’t any different subplots or twists or anything. I guess this is the perfect example of how to condense a book, if you’re looking for one? It doesn’t feel abridged to me, which is pretty interesting.
The Verdict
So, I have a suspicion that this might be my favorite Nancy Drew book? And luckily, both versions of the story are just as good! I prefer the original text because the expanded scenes help create more of an atmosphere to the creepy cult goings-on. That being said, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with the revised text if you’re interesting in reading Nancy on a time crunch.
[Disclaimer: cover art scans are from this site.]
