Customer Reviews

The Password to Larkspur Lane (Nancy Drew, Book 10)

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

As I lay in bed sniffling this weekend I read Password to Larkspur Lane. Carson gives Nancy a new black and green roadster for her birthday (she gets it early as she needs to evade some thugs who have been spying on the house and they would have recognized her old maroon roadster.) Then she speeds off to Sylvan Lake to join Helen Corning and her parents at the much larger cottage they have taken this summer. Ned Nickerson is also there and Nancy is the belle of the Yacht Club dance, in addition to beating the pants off the snooty "amateur swim champion" who instigated a diving competition because she resented Nancy getting all the male attention on the swim platform. She also wins the adulation of everyone at the lake when she rescues a tot who falls in the water in front of a speedboat, but is duely modest about it, considering that the little girl fell in as a result of Nancy's having questioned her after hearing her name. Nancy and Helen enjoy a few luxurious rides in the splendid new machine as they search for a remote estate surrounded by larkspurs/delphiniums to solve the mystery Nancy stumbled upon as she happened to drive by a car that mysteriously had the windows up even though the weather was clear (actually, the book said the curtains were drawn--did cars come with window curtains in 1933?) Nancy actually falls into dire straits but, fortunately, had the foresight to call Ned beforehand so he could fly in with some burly pals (and Carson, who just happened to be at the local airport as they were about to take off in their just-the-right-size-to-land-in-the-back-yard plane) in the nick of time to thwart the evildoers who were bilking wealthy older women.

Oh, Nancy also won 1st place for her flower arrangement of larkspurs at the Blenheim Flower Show. Of course.

I desperately want this cold to go away so I can drive around in my splendid machine and stumble upon adventures. I will need some new sport frocks though.

"Password" and "Larkspur Lane" -- these terms echo each other as much as "Lenore" and "Nevermore" do in Poe's "The Raven." It is fitting, then, that this is one of the better Keene books in the Nancy canon. I am reviewing my childhood reading, made possible by Applewood reissues and the continued availability of the Grosset & Dunlap revised titles. It is a truism that the early books (despite their out-of-fashion references and language, and their social stereotypes) are always better than the revisions, and it's often true that the originals are more satisfying, stylish stories. I enjoy the mysteries screeching to a halt while the girls indulge in their noon "luncheon." However, in this title I have to go with the revision. It's a masterful rewrite, condensing and reorganizing the early story while cutting out a lot of leisurely pacing that slows the story down. Perhaps Nancy's greatest strength as a detective is her unwillingness to give up; when she has no clues or prospects of any in this novel, she drives the roads outside of her midwest town until she finds one (a crude sign on a tree with "L. L." posted on it). Can't get into a prison-like old folks' home? Impersonate an elderly lady. Get thrown into a deep cistern? Use the pieces of a ladder thrown in after you to claw your way up the wall. The criminals are getting away in a small plane? Let the gas out of it before they can take off. Meanwhile she still has time to win first prize in a flower arranging competition. Nancy is simply too much, and knowing her has been one of the delights of my life.

This review concerns the original 1933 edition and the revised 1966 edition which has a story similar to the original version. Nancy finds a carrier pigeon which contains a strange coded message. Later, the family's doctor tells Nancy of how he was kidnapped and taken to a large home to treat an elderly lady, whom he believed was being held against her will. Armed with a bracelet the doctor managed to slip off of the old lady's wrist as her only clue, Nancy sets off determined to find the house and free the old woman. The revised edition has an added mystery concerning a spooky, blue circle of fire which has been appearing recently in the woods outside of the new home of Nancy's friend Helen's grandparents. Personally, I liked the original edition much better than the revised edition. The writing was better and the book flowed along a lot better than the revised edition did. The extra mystery in the revised edition seemed out of place and really didn't make the book more interesting. The main mystery of the book, Nancy trying to find the elderly woman, was good and is typical Nancy Drew, with Nancy risking her life attempting to help someone else. Both editions were fairly suspenceful and had exciting endings; although again, I prefered the ending in the original story. Either edition is worth reading, but I give the original 3 1/2 stars, while I give the revised 3 stars.

I am a Nancy Drew fan...for over thirty years..as my mother was before me and my daughter after me. This rewitten version is not up to the thrills and chills of the edition by Mildred Wirt Benson in the 1930's. This edition lacks the intrige of the first..it is more "up to date" and P.C. than the first, but I suggest that anyone who loves Nancy and has only read this book obtain a copy of the original that has been published by Applewood Books..it even has the fantastic old illustrations.

I really liked this book!! I have about 16 other Nancy Drew Books and I love them all, but this was one of my favorites!
I became unaware that I was even reading a book! I was like I was watching a movie in my head.In this book, Nancy discovers a carrier pigeon that has a note attatched to it's leg it says something about Larkspurs and Bluebells so she becomes suspicicious and finds a............. well, you'll just have to see!!! YOU WILL LOVE IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

it is a very good book. nacy keeps you in such suspense. you keep on reading and reading.i finish it in i day.

I like this Nancy Drew book because it is so well written, and the auther makes you feel like it really happened! You may not like this book, but I like the series because there are so many books to chose from. I like the way Nancy thinks. All of her friends are nice. They they are not weird or mean. The books can be funny, but not the funniest books in the world, so if you only read very funny books, do not read this series. Nancy Drew are very complicated books, so I do not recommend it for kids under six because it is so complicated, and it may be too scary. The book I read was The Password to Larkspur Lane. In the book Nancy finds a bird, and it leads her to a mystery. The last part is the part that is scary, because she gets trapped. I think you should....READ THIS SERIES!!!!

I have read BOTH versions of Password to Larkspur Lane, AND have seen the movie Nancy Drew Detective (1938) on televsion more than once. I have always liked this Nancy Drew like many others that I have read; though I have liked both versions. I have in general liked the originals better than the "new stories for today's readers". The original Nancy Drews paint a picture of life in the Thirties and early Forties, when there were no automatic transmissions, dial phones, transistor radios, or televsions, much less DVD's, audio CD's, automated teller machines, PC's. Indeed, in the era when the original Nancy Drews were written, THERE WERE NOT EVEN MUNTZ TV'S! Two facets of Password to Larkspur Lane stand out, and are particularly funny. One is the use of the phrase "singing horses" as password, changing it from "blue bells". Imagine horses singing into microphones! I can see WHY those gangsters chose "singing horses" as password, as larks are associated with singing, and spurs with riding horses.
That is NOT the REAL origin of the word "larkspur", but the gangsters knew that Dr. Spires HEARD the word "blue bells" used, so changed it to something SUGGESTING larkspurs. Nancy at first could not figure out why the flowers were called larkspurs, as horses do not sing and larks do not suggest horseback riding, but THEN could see why "singing horses" was chosen. (Mister Ed can sing, but that's about all.) The other funny part was Dr. Bull's use of a dummy telephone to pretend to call the cops.
Dr. Bull, called Bell in the new version, could not see why Nancy WANTED him to call the cops, or why she called it a dummy telephone. Nancy wanted him to call the police to get the racketeers arrested, and she declared "the telephone is a dummy because there are no___" but stopped short of saying "wires"
as the quack nut-doctor saw HIMSELF that this telephone was not hooked up to switching machinery, and ccould not fool Nancy. As there were no cell phones in 1933 or even 1966, such a phone as Dr. Bull/Bell used WAS a dummy telephone! (Whether this counterfeit sanatorium HAD a real phone is not clear.) At all events, a friend of mine called a dummy telephone a BULL TULLOPHONE, Bull Tull for short, and drew pictures of pairs of phones, one hooked up with letter-number phone number, the one with no wires all-digits, to show dislike for digitization! Then there was the happy ending when police, her father, and Ned flew in to arrest the participants in this racket, and Mrs. Mary Eldridge's reunion with her nephew John, his wife, and little Marie. ALl in all, a very good Nancy Drew.

Wow, this audiobook read by Danica Reese is truly awful. ESPECIALLY after having listened to the wonderful first books so artfully narrated by Laura Linney. I bought the Password to Larkspur Lane set of the book and CD read by Danica Reese for my young son who has loved the Nancy Drew Cds from our local library. The original books were performed by Laura Linney. I didn't realize until we received this set that they weren't all performed by Laura Linney. I have to say the Danica Reese versions are just really bad by comparison. This version sounds like it was given to the local high school drama class for recording, complete with mispronunciations such as, all g's are missing from every word ending in 'ing'. And anything ending in 't' or 'd' is way over-pronounced. The word 'didn't' becomes 'dinnint', etc. The voice tone is very melodramatic, forced and unnatural. And when the narrator tries to vary her voice to sound like different characters, it gets even worse. A young child's voice becomes positively squeaky. I'm thinking either they didn't want to continue to pay for the services of an award-winning actress of Miss Linney's caliber or the boss's granddaughter was foisted upon them. It's hard to explain just how bad it is. Be sure to listen to the sample audio which I, unfortunately, missed. You'll get the idea.

Intrepid sleuth Nancy Drew has two mysteries to solve. It begins when a homing pigeon crash lands on her property. The message the pigeon is carrying is strange, if not a little ominous. As more unusual developments happen, Nancy realizes that the message is connected to the mysterious absence of an elderly woman named Mrs. Eldridge. The second mystery centers around a frightening ring of blue fire showing up near the home Helen Corning's grandparents after dark. When Helen asks Nancy to find out what's causing the fire ring of fire, she agrees, of course. It isn't long before she discovers that the two mysteries could be related.

Password to Larkspur Lane is one of my favorite Nancy Drew mysteries, and perhaps the one I remember most from forty years ago, when I first read this series. It was a treat to step back in time and remember why I loved these mysteries. The plotting is pretty good in this one, and Nancy's resourcefulness in solving her own problems is one of the book's best aspects. Young readers will find the language pretty corny. Still, mystery buffs curious to know why this series was so successful should give this one a read.