Book: Mystery of Crocodile Island (Nancy Drew book #55) by Carolyn Keene
Edition: Hardcover
Description:
In a response to a friend’s call for help, Nancy’s father, Carson Drew, asks her to travel to mysterious Crocodile Island with her friends Bess and George to study the reptiles and try to uncover a group of suspected poachers.
Rating: 3 1/2 stars
Review:
As a story, Mystery of Crocodile Island was full of drama, excitement and suspense, it's a fast-paced thrilling adventure. However, as a mystery, it could have been so much better.
The mystery begins when Nancy Drew's father Carson Drew was contacted by an old college friend, Roger Gonzales. Gonzales is a silent partner in the Crocodile Ecology Company (or crocodile farm) and he suspected something bad was happening at the farm. Carson asked Nancy if she could investigate and find out the truth.
This had Nancy and her two best friends, cousins Bess Marvin and George Fayne off to Florida to look into the mystery surrounding the crocodile farm. However, the moment they arrived in Florida they were kidnapped. The kidnapping tipped the girls off that the crocodile farm owners knew they were in town and was trying to stop them from investigating. But nothing stops Nancy. The girls were able to escape and they eventually arrived at the home of the Cosgrove family, who are friends of Nancy's father.
It didn't take long before Nancy, Bess and George started investigating and assisting them was Danny Cosgrove. Their investigation might have been off to a good start but it was leading to more questions than clues and not to mention they were constantly being threatened and spied on at nearly every turn.
As I mentioned before this is a thrilling adventure but the mystery wasn't really there. Most of the time Nancy and her friends lucked up on clues or were told a bunch of information. I was disappointed with how this ended, it was so unbelievable how quick and tidy this mystery was wrapped up. I was also disappointed with the girls' boyfriends Ned Nickerson, Burt Eddleton and Dave Evans showing up almost near the end of the story. As much as I usually love reading about Ned, Burt and Dave, there was no point in them being in the story. They wanted to visit the girls in Florida and of course they joined the investigation. This was a last minute add-on that didn't make any sense especially since at that point Nancy, George, Bess, Danny and the police were zeroing in on the crooks.
Since this Nancy Drew book is an old story there is a little bit of racism tossed about in this. It's subtle and not so subtle but these are some of the disappointing things you sometimes find in old stories. This wasn't a bad story because it was exciting but the underwhelming mystery and the sprinkles of racism does ruin it.
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