I have been holding off posting this one because I was waiting for our Central Florida Sleuths group to have its discussing meeting on this book. We have had to reschedule a couple of times due to various issues, but we finally managed to hold a meeting and discuss the fifth Nancy Drew mystery! And this time around, I was inspired by the articles Pam Hancock wrote for The Sleuth a couple of years ago digging into the history behind The Clue in the Jewel Box to actually do some digging into the history surrounding the book and the time period in which it was written, and it is utterly amazing how much one can discover about the elements of the story when you look into what was happening in the world at the time the book was written (and this likely applies to not just Nancy Drew books, but pretty much any book you pick up and read!). The more I started looking into things I was reading in this book, the more excited I got and the more research I wanted to do. And this, my friend, is one of the many things I absolutely love about reading!
The Secret of Red Gate Farm, the sixth Nancy Drew mystery story, was originally published in 1931. The credit for the outline is given to Edna Stratemeyer Squier, while the book was actually ghostwritten by Mildred Augustine Wirt Benson. The story was later revised by Lynn Ealer in 1961 during the period when the Stratemeyer Syndicate was revising all of the first 34 books, to shorten them from 25 to 20 chapters, heighten the action in the stories, and remove dated references and stereotypes. The story centers around Nancy, Bess and George helping out a young woman and her mother save their farm, and along the way, they put a stop to a group of counterfeiters who are generating false bills on the woman's property (keeping their criminal activity a secret by pretending to be a nature cult). The original story was actually pretty engaging, and Nancy's determination to not only help Millie Burd and her grandmother save their farm, but to also figure out just what that nature cult is up to, truly shines in the story.
It would be interesting to learn where Edna Squier came up with the plot for this mystery. The Syndicate had previously used counterfeiters in one of the Hardy Boys' mysteries (
The Secret of the Old Mill, written by Leslie McFarlane and published in 1927), and perhaps that inspired Edna with this plot. What is coincidental is that in 1930 (likely the same year this book was plotted), an infamous counterfeiter, Victor Lustig, began counterfeiting hundreds of thousands of dollars in counterfeit notes, using associates to get the bills in circulation. This is similar to the criminals in
Red Gate Farm,who use their "nature cult" members to get the fake $20 bills into circulation. Lustig was eventually caught when his love interest made an anonymous tip to the police, which led to Lustig being arrested in 1935. Interestingly enough, in Red Gate Farm, it is the leader's wife who warns Nancy away and gives away the fact that something criminal is taking place near the farm. While it is unlikely Lustig's story inspired
Red Gate Farm (since he was not arrested until four years after the book came out), it is interesting to note the similarities in the criminal actions and ultimate outcomes!
Another interesting aspect of this book is the use of codes. The Black Snake Colony (more on that later...) uses number codes to pass on information among its members.Nancy is able to copy down part of one of the codes in Chapter Three (00308 06420 23145 06548 30061), but try as she might, she is never able to decipher the code. By Chapter Fifteen, having been unsuccessful at cracking the code, even with the help of a code book given her by her father, Nancy ultimately does something very uncharacteristic for her - she turns over the code to the authorities (pp. 133-35). What is even more unusual for this book is the fact that the actual key to the code is never revealed! While government agents tell Nancy they deciphered the message (a special meeting was to be held in a cave near Red Gate Farm - p. 197), they never actually say how the code worked. So, the reader is left with a real mystery of how to unravel the code itself. FUN FACT - the agents inform Nancy that the code she gave them was turned over to the "Bureau of Cryptography" (p. 196), who cracked then code. This is likely a reference to the real cipher bureau created back in 1919 after World War I by Herbert O. Yardley, which agency was known as the Black Chamber, or sometimes as the Cipher Bureau.
Now, with respect to the name of that so-called nature cult in the book: The Black Snake Colony. Where wold such a name come from? One of my fellow book club enthusiasts suggested it might stem from a criminal organization at or around the time the book was plotted and written. Some research reveals that it is possible the name could have come from a number of different places: (1) perhaps from the snake-handling ministers who became popular in the 1920s and into the '30s, who garnered some large followings - with the "Black Snake" in the book a reference to the nefarious nature of the cult leaders; or (2) perhaps the Black Snake Affair from the 1800s, in which smugglers off the coast of Vermont used a ship named the Black Snake to conduct their criminal activities; or (3) perhaps from the nature cults that were becoming quite a major fad in California in the 1920s and into the '30s, with leaders who focused mainly on getting rich, with the "snake" reference in the name simply alluding to the fact that the leader of the cult was a "snake-in-the-grass." Whatever the reason, there is no doubt that Maurice Hale and his cohorts were, indeed, "snakes" for the way they took advantage of and used their followers!
Moving on to a more surprising and funny element in the story ... in Chapter Sixteen, George and Bess tease Nancy about the son of one of the other boarders at Red Gate Farm, who seems to have taken a shine to Nancy. When George pokes fun at her, Nancy retorts with, "Oh, go climb a sour apple tree!" (p. 141). This was a phrase I had never heard before, so I looked it up. According to Robert Hendrickson in his book Talking Turkey: A Food Lover's Guide to the Origins of Culinary Words and Phrases, this particular phrase comes from the early 1900s (or possibly even before that) and means "go to blazes" (or "go to hell")! I have to say, that's quite a strong phrase for Nancy Drew to be using, especially towards one of her best friends. I'm guessing this would be like saying "darn" instead of "damn," or "heck" instead of "hell" - a more polite way of saying something that would otherwise be considered vulgar. Which, thinking about it, actually fits with the original Nancy Drew as written by Mildred Wirt. That original Nancy was very outspoken, super-determined, and not afraid to speak her mind to authority figures or anyone else.
Another humorous moment from the book is found in Chapter Ten. When Bess tries to milk one of the cows at Red Gate Farm, she ends up trying to milk it from the "wrong" side. Like Bess says in the book, "Whoever heard of a cow with a right or wrong side?" (p. 90). Well, color me surprised that this is an actual thing - although not exactly "wrong vs. right" as much as "left vs. right." According to a Norwegian author, Aslaug Engnaes:
According
to Engnæs, you milk the cow from the right – simply because you always
use your strongest arm on the teat farthest away from where you are
sitting. This means that for a right-handed person, sitting on the
right-hand side of the cow is the usual choice. But to follow her logic:
a left-handed milkmaid should sit on the left.
The cow herself has no preference. For her, the key elements are
kindness, regularity and the fact that the milkmaid knows what she is
doing. Twice a day. Every day of the week.
(Thanks for Kevin Denis for providing the source:
Homestead - how to hand-milk the cow). And this only goes to show - you're never too old to learn new things, even if it does come from a Nancy Drew book!
One last thing I want to mention is the timeline for this mystery. In most cases, it seems Nancy and her friends manage to solve each mystery in a few days, or in some cases, few weeks. In this book, however, Nancy, Bess, and George basically spend all summer (or more!) at Red Gate Farm while solving this mystery. By carefully following the days referenced in the book, it would seem the following is the timeline for Red Gate Farm:
DAY ONE - Chapters I - IV
DAY TWO - Chapter V
DAYS THREE & FOUR (Raining) - Chapter V
DAY FIVE - Chapter V
DAY SIX - Chapter VI (the girls leave for Red Gate Farm)
DAY SEVEN - Chapter IX (the girls wake up on their first day at Red Gate Farm)
DAY EIGHT - Chapter X (the other boarders arrive)
DAYS PASS - Chapter X ("the days at Red Gate Farm passed very pleasantly)
DAY (one day) - Chapter XI
DAYS PASS - Chapter XI (the girls "bide their time for a few days")
DAYS PASS - Chapter XII (the days "passed swiftly and were very pleasant ones...")
DAYS PASS - Chapter XIII (the "next few days at Red Gate Farm were quiet ones...")
DAY (one day) - Chapter XIV
DAY (one day) - Chapter XXIV
WEEKS PASS - Chapter XXV ("Nancy's weeks had stretched on and on...")
Thus, as it can be seen, it is likely that Nancy and her friends spent an entire summer, if not longer, at Red Gate Farm helping Millie and her grandmother save the farm and rid them of those pesky counterfeiters. And, since they were paying the Burds to stay there, that would have been a considerable sum that the Drews, Marvins, and Faynes would have shelled out for the girls to remain at Red Gate Farm for three months or more.
Finally, let's talk about the cover art. The original art was provided by Russell Tandy, who was not only painting the covers for the series, but he also provided the interior illustrations as well. The original cover features Nancy hiding in some shrubs, watching a group of cult members perform some kind of ritual in the distance. The cult members are wearing white robes and hoods, and in all honesty, the way they are depicted, they resemble the KKK more than anything else! The hoods on the internal illustration are square, as if they were cut from pillow cases (which Nancy does at one point in the book); but on the cover, they are tall and pointy. In 1931, when this book was published, the KKK had been using those infamous white robes and hoods for approximately 10 years, so perhaps Tandy had seen them and used them as reference for the ones in the book. When the cover art was later updated by Bill Gillies, Nancy went from kneeling in shrubs to standing behind a tree, and the large group of cult members was reduced to just two, shown only from their back as they entered the cave, and their robes look more ghostly and less like the KKK. Leads one to wonder if either Grosset & Dunlap and/or the Stratemeyer Syndicate realized the connection people were making and had Gillies change it so that people who saw the cover would not assume the KKK were involved in the story. Gillies' cover is still used on this book today, being one of the few books that Rudy Nappi did not update when he was hired to do new covers for the series (The Clue in the Diary being the other book).
Overall, this book proved to be an interesting and entertaining read, with a story that holds up well even under today's standards. I personally think this is one of the books in the series that is an example of why Nancy Drew has endured for nearly a century now and continues to inspire her readers, both male and female alike!
RATING: 10 postmarks from Round Valley out of 10 for proving once again that a female detective can be just as daring, just as determined, and just as delightful to read as any male detective!
