Nancy Drew Mystery Stories # 143 - Mystery on Maui

 "Surf's up - and so is the crime on Nancy's Hawaiian holiday!" (cover blurb)

 

"Nancy rides a wave of danger in pursuit of a surfing saboteur!" (back cover blurb)

 

Published in June 1998, it turns out this particular Nancy Drew mystery was written by the same author as the last book - Elizabeth Nugent (or so it says on Wikipedia, so take it for what it's worth).  While I can find no real information regarding this particular author online, it does not surprise me that the same person wrote books 142 and 143.  Both books have more of a Nancy Drew Files feel to them, rather than the standard digest stories.  Both books have considerably more high-stakes danger, and the mysteries themselves are definitely more adult themed - with villains who will not hesitate to kill in order to keep their activities from being brought to light!  Since the Files series ended in 1997, it makes sense that there were some left over stories, perhaps even some completed manuscripts, that simply got repurposed for the digest series in order to meet deadlines.

 

Mystery on Maui takes Nancy, Bess, and George to Maui, the second largest of Hawaii's islands, for a vacation (and we all know how vacations always turn out for Nancy!).  They were invited by an old friend of Nancy's, Danny Takemura, "who had spent his junior year of high school in River Heights" (p. 3).  The author indicates Nancy and Danny had become good friends and stayed in touch as "E-mail pen pals" (p. 3).  This poses an interesting question - if Nancy and Danny have stayed in touch via e-mail since they completed their junior year (and if Nancy is eighteen, as stated in the previous book, which means they just finished their senior years), then they would have been in communication via e-mail for a little over a year.  So, in all the time that Nancy has been solving mysteries (142 of them in just the span of a year!), why was this "good friend" of Nancy's never mentioned before?  Of course, this series boasts countless "good friends," for whom Nancy solves mysteries, and who we never see or even hear mention of ever again - so how good of friends could they really be?  But, I digress...

 

Now, about the mystery itself. It involves the Golf Coast Surf-Off, in which one of Danny's friends, Josh Brightman, is a contender (p. 5).  Nancy indicates "Golf Coast" is what the western part of Maui is called, and Josh tells them it is also the name of a big chain of stores in Hawaii and California; however, neither of those things are true.  (While the book does contain fictional locations, the city of Lahaina, used in the book [p. 17], is an actual city, located on the northwest coast of the island of Maui; however the reference to the run-down harbor town of Point Guerre [p. 116] is purely fictional.)  Nevertheless, Josh is predicted to be the big winner of the contest, with the chance to win $75,000!  When Josh explains that his two top competitors have both had to back out - one due to food poisoning, and the other due to a fall that injured his leg - Nancy starts to wonder if someone is eliminating the competition in the hopes of winning themselves.  Josh scoffs at the idea until his surfboard is stolen ... and then he receives a note warning him to drop out or else ... and then he finds a deadly snake in his gym bag ... and ultimately he is kidnapped before he can finish the tournament!  With a huge and potentially deadly storm ready to strike Maui, Nancy realizes she must race against time to find her new friend before someone decides to eliminate him from the contest - permanently!

 

Nugent (a/k/a Carolyn Keene) provides the readers with several likely suspects.  First is a fellow competitor, Hank Carter, who is cocky and determined to win at all costs, even if he has to use underhanded tactics to do so.  Second is Manny Monolo, a lifeguard who has an ax to grind with Josh after a fight they had that cost Manny his chance to become a paramedic.  Third is the stranger who tries to steal Josh's surfboard, a man they refer to as "the Snake" because of a tattoo he has of a snake going around his arm.  Fourth is Ruby Blackwell, a former surfer who has opened a surf shop on the beach and is trying to market a new surfboard - and who also happens to be a former girlfriend of Hank Carter.  Last, but not least, is the unsavory Russell Frye, a boat captain who takes tourists out for shark watching, illegally dumping chum into the water to attract sharks.  It seems Josh had reported him to the police, and Frye is none-too-happy with him, vowing to get revenge one way or another.  Thus, with all these suspects, Nancy must find out every thing she can about each of them in order to narrow down her list to the real culprit.

 

As with the last book, the danger levels and violence in this book definitely give it the feel of a Files rather than a standard digest Mystery Story.  For instance, near the start of the story, George is out surfing and gets pulled out by the riptide and knocked unconscious in the water.  By the time they get her to shore, she is not breathing and it appears touch-and-go for a moment before a lifeguard is able to revive her (p. 35).  Later in the story, when Josh finds the snake in his gym bag, it turns out to be a death adder (p. 87), a very venomous snake that originates from Australia (as accurately referenced in the book).  Near the end of the book, when Nancy is tracking down the Snake, she finds him facedown on the floor, with a knife next to him and "a tiny trail of blood" (p. 118).  Finally, near the climax of the mystery, when the real villain has Nancy and her friends trapped, the villain splashes kerosene all over Nancy's clothes and holds a plastic lighter with the threat of burning her alive (pp. 134-35)!  These type of scenes are definitely not the kind one would normally find in a standard Nancy Drew Mystery Story.

 

The cover art, yet again, is provided by Ernie Norcia.  The scene appears to be taken from the moment near the beginning when George is knocked out while surfing, with Nancy running to her aid.  The scene does not really have any connection to the mystery, other than to provide a way for the author to introduce the lifeguard, Manny Monolo.  It truly amazes me how life-life Norcia is able to paint Nancy and her friends.  The art almost appears as if it were a photograph taken at a real beach, with those waves crashing down on the sand. Simon & Schuster definitely picked the perfect artist for these covers - it is a shame they eventually moved on to a different artist.

 

RATING:  9 squadrons of shadowy sea creatures with dorsal fins out of 10 for a fast-paced mystery filled with ever-increasing danger and deadly villains! 

Tree of Evil - a Paperback Library Gothic

This is one of those books where, from the very first page, there is tension and suspense that holds strong throughout the entire story!  I was not familiar with the author Roberta Morrison prior to picking up this book, and it turns out this is Morrison's only book - although it is NOT the author's only book.  How, you ask, can that be?  Well, obviously, "Roberta Morrison" turns out to be just one of many pseudonyms used by prolific author Jean Francis Webb III (1910-1991), which is a name I have seen before.  Webb wrote mysteries (1930s), nurse romances (1950s), and a number of Gothics (1960s), using not only the pen name Ethel Hamill (his mother's name), but also his own name (which many probably mistook for a woman's name).  He also wrote a short story for the first issue of Dell's Gothic Romances magazine published in 1970.  You can find out more about Webb from this vintage nurse romance novel blog page (Jean Francis Webb III).

 

Tree of Evil was published in 1966 by Paperback Library, Inc. as "A Paperback Library Gothic."  This is the only Gothic that Webb wrote using the pseudonym Roberta Morrison, which was  play on his maternal grandfather's name (Robert Morrison).  The story is set on a remote island in Hawaii, where young Nell Jordan goes to perform research for a book she has been hired to write about the history of the Drakewood family.  The family patriarch, Calvin Drakewood, has hired her to go through all of the family's papers and compile a comprehensive history - but upon her arrival at the isolated Drakewood mansion, she is met with outright hostility by members of the family who clearly do not want her there. Calvin is back on the main island, and the only person who could possibly help Nell, Roy Walker (a friend of Calvin who ferried Nell through the treacherous waters to the remote island), is unable to stay on the island.  Thus, our poor heroine is left to face the regal yet austere Cornelia Drakewood, her adopted son Dr. Horton McGrath, and her niece Bernice "Bunty" Drakewood, all by herself.

 

Despite the resentment towards her intrusion into their private lives, Nell is determined to move forward with her work.  But, from the moment she arrives at the dark estate, she is plagued by uncertainty and fear.  The horrific screams that haunt the night ... the cloaked figure that seems to stare up at her room from the garden ... that dark, foreboding tree on the lanai that seems to keep the house in darkness ... the strange drums that sound at night, frightening the native staff ... and the ghost of Bunty's dead sister, Lila, who seems to haunt the halls of the mansion.  Nell realizes there is a deeper mystery to be solved here on the island, and the longer she stays in the house, the more danger she finds she faces!  Soon enough, Nell starts to suspect that accident that took Lila's life was not necessarily and accident - and perhaps it did not even take her life at all!

 

Webb (a/k/a Morrison) truly plays up Nell's fears throughout the whole story, using the bumps in the night, shadowy figures, and the menacing tree to increase the terror of what his main character faces.  The isolation she feels in a house where she is not wanted, surrounded by strangers who seem to menace her at every turn - the morbid curiosity that continually grows within her concerning Lila Drakewood's death and the possibility that the girl may be alive, yet somehow mentally damaged by her accident - and the mystery surrounding the Drakewood's history and exactly what it is within those family papers that could warrant the deadly attacks on her person - all of it combines to make for a very suspenseful tale of true Gothic terror.

 

The author does a nice job of misleading the reader in a number of ways; however, any true fan of these '6s and '70s Gothic novels will immediately start to pick up on the clues and figure out that the real villain or villains will not be the most obvious suspects (rarely does it play out so conveniently in these books). The  mystery surrounding Lila Drakewood (is she, or isn't she, alive?) is very well done, and the climax provides the readers with some nice and somewhat unexpected surprises.  

 

The cover, with its heavy use of black shadows, features Nell looking back tentatively at a house barely visible through the branches of that ever-menacing tree.  A light is visible in an upstairs room (of course, what Gothic cover would not have that?), and the sky is a dark shade of blue.  There is no signature on the cover art, and the copyright page does not identify the artist.   

 

I definitely want to find more of Webb's books, as this was a fantastic read, and I suspect his other books will be just as enjoyable.

 

RATING:  10 garnet-colored, velvet gowns out of 10 for a wonderfully crafted tale of Gothic horror and mystery that keeps the readers on the edge of his or her seat until the very end!