This post is part of the Nancy Drew Review Project; visit the project index here.
Nancy Drew’s tenth adventure, Password to Larkspur Lane, is an exciting and complicated story about elder abuse, carrier pigeons, and gardening. (I’m being a little facetious here, but yeah.) Two versions of the book exist. The original text from 1933 was ghostwritten by Walter Karig; this is the last of the three books he wrote for this series. The 1966 revision, which dropped “The” from the beginning of the title, is an abridged version of the original plot.
In both versions, Nancy is gathering some flowers to enter into a local gardening competition when a carrier pigeon crashes into her yard. The pigeon is carrying a strange message, related to a strange incident where the Drew family doctor is kidnapped and forced to treat an elderly woman who seems to be a captive of some sort. Nancy undertakes the case, following clues, carrier pigeons, and strange flower-related messages until she uncovers a ring of criminals trying to con old women out of their fortunes. Also, Nancy wins the gardening competition, so all is right with the world.
1933 Original Text
The original text of Password to Larkspur Lane is as described above, and I enjoyed it. I still maintain that I don’t like Karig’s prose as much as Mildred Wirt Benson’s, but there’s nothing actually wrong with it. The plot here seems more sophisticated that earlier Nancy Drews, as there’s quite a bit of actual sleuthing and deducting that Nancy has to do in order to unravel the mystery. I like this! Even if Nancy’s personality is a bit more bland, there’s certainly no doubt that Karig’s Nancy is just as capable as prior iterations of her (if not more so).
But what I found absolutely startling about this book was the way Nancy’s father treats her. In prior books, Carson Drew is utterly confident in Nancy’s capabilities and content to let her deal with her problems on her own. Here, he’s overbearing and unusually concerned about his daughter’s safety—to the point where he actually attempts to forbid Nancy from continuing on with the case. This, honestly, doesn’t seem to fit with the regular flow of the series. Is it realistic for a guy to let his 16-year-old daughter traipse all over rural Iowa on the trail of various criminals as a regular pastime? No! But, like…that’s sort of the point of Nancy Drew. Like readers themselves, Carson Drew is supposed to be in such awe of Nancy’s calm, unflappable aura and undeniable talent that we don’t second-guess her.
Overbearing dad is really not the vibe of this series, and so for that reason, I found it difficult to get into the original text.
1966 Revised Text
As is typical, the revised text is mostly the same as the original text, just with some additional drama to keep the pace up. The revised text also swaps out Helen Corning for Bess and George as Nancy’s main sidekicks (Helen is still here, though!), and the revised text also gives Ned Nickerson a much larger role in the final chapters. Honestly? This is two books in a row where the revised text changes the story’s conclusion so that Nancy is saved by Ned, and I must say that it’s not a great look.
The revised text also removes a subplot involving a pompous yet incompetent police detective, whom Nancy was delighted to show up in the original text. Another thing I wished we could have kept.
Happily, Nancy’s dad is much more like his regular self in the revised text, and although he was concerned about Nancy’s safety, he didn’t get to the point where he tried to make her drop the case or otherwise majorly alter her style of detecting for his own peace of mind.
Verdict
This is actually a really close call. The two versions of Password to Larkspur Lane are mostly the same, and there’s not a noticeable difference in style or quality of the writing. There are things to like and dislike about both versions. So…I guess I will have to call this one a tie. Really, if I were going to recommend one or the other, the deciding factor would probably be whether my recomendee likes Bess and George enough that they would be disappointed by a book where they aren’t featured at all. So, as you can see, there’s hardly a big difference between the two.
[Disclaimer: cover art scans are from this site.]
