Author | Carolyn G. Keene |
---|---|
Language | English |
Series | Nancy Drew Mystery Stories |
Genre | Juvenile literature |
Publisher | Grosset & Dunlap |
Publication date | 1953, 1969 |
Publication place | United States |
Media type | Print (hardback & paperback) |
Pages | 192 pp |
ISBN | 0-448-09530-0 |
OCLC | 38500097 |
Preceded by | The Mystery at the Ski Jump |
Followed by | The Ringmaster's Secret |
The Clue of the Velvet Mask is the thirtieth volume in the original Nancy Drew Mystery Stories series. It was Mildred Benson's final ghostwrite for the series. [1] The plot and story take place largely in Nancy's hometown of River Heights. Nancy tries to solve a mystery about a gang of event thieves robbing homes during parties, lectures, musicals, and other social occasions planned or catered by Lightner's Entertainment Company. Much of the original story contains elements of dramatic crime dramas; the villains are darker in tone than many other entries in the series.
As the story opens, Nancy and friends attempt to thwart suspicious, masked party-goers from reaching valuable objets d'art on display. At the party, Nancy finds an odd, black velvet hood, which she retains as a clue; most of the guests are wearing simpler, smaller masks as the evening is very warm. Her acquaintance, Linda, who is an employee of the Lightner company, is suspected of wrongdoing. At subsequent Lightner events, Nancy encounters other thieves, and is nearly suffocated by an evil pair of crooks. Nancy and George rent wigs to switch identities; however, George is kidnapped, her disguise removed, is put under the influence of hypnotic, mind-altering drugs, and threatened. This results in a timid, frightened characterization; paralyzed by fear, George refuses to help in the investigation and urges Nancy to stop.
Nancy focuses on the executive assistant at Lightner's, Mr. Tombar, while she attempts to decode mysterious numbers written on the lining of the mask. She realizes that the numbers actually mark dates of events at which robberies took place, and starts attending each event in person as detective and as favor to Mr. Lightner. She encounters thieves at a wedding, a musicale, where they nearly smother her, and a lecture. Finally, Nancy attends another masquerade as a coat-check girl, and she stops a robbery in process, capturing a female member of the gang. She and Bess investigate the ramshackle Blue Iris Inn in the nearby countryside, trying to find out why Peter Tombar owns the property and what secrets it hides. On a hunch, she and Bess take an impromptu visit while talking with the recovering George Fayne, and fall victim to the evil Velvet gang. Only paranoid George knows where they are, and can identify the clothing last worn by Nancy. She must overcome her mental breakdown and get on the case when the girls fail to return.
Crime noir elements feature heavily in this book, and Ned Nickerson is prominently featured as a true partner in crime solving. Nancy is accosted by a woman in the opening chapters, comes face to face with a thief at a wedding reception, and is nearly suffocated when a pair of thieves wrap her face-down in a bedspread. George Fayne is drugged and a victim of criminal threat, and Ned is involved in two physical confrontations as well. Finally, Nancy and Bess are kidnapped, blindfolded, and abused verbally (this refers to an out-of-print version of the story).
Nancy's haircolor is changed to titian, George's from black to brown, and the story eliminates subplots and extraneous descriptive vocabulary, including non-essential scenes and passages, including descriptive and humorous passages where Nancy works undercover as a file clerk and finds the work unappealing. Additionally, the revised version removes questionable (in 1969) descriptive elements of George's drugged status and hypodermics. Strangely, the revision also eliminates the importance of George's recovery; although she leads investigators to the scene of the kidnapping, Mr. Drew is nearly as instrumental in finding Nancy as George. Her discovery of a dress button Nancy has planted at the scene is downplayed. In the original version, Nancy has changed clothes, so only George knows what Nancy and Bess were wearing when they disappeared.
This book was the first promotional release for the 1959 debut of the Nancy Drew Reader's Club. The covers of volumes released in this group are two-toned pastels, featuring full color jackets and frontispieces, as well as eight double-page drawings by artist Polly Bolian. Bolian depicts Nancy as a strawberry-blond, but with the short tousled "Audrey Hepburn" hairstyle worn by many young women at the time, and tailored, preppy 1950s ensembles. These editions had internal references to other volumes removed, and contain no clues of sequencing. Bolian adapts, with less action, the same scene as the original frontispiece, for the cover art; Nancy and Bess, in vivid 1950s shirtwaist dresses, spy on Mr. Tombar from a ruined garden.
The original volume was published in 1953, and was the first book to feature cover art by the artist Rudy Nappi. Nappi would go on to illustrate the covers of many Hardy Boys and all of the Nancy Drew series from 1953 to 1979. During his long term of employment, Nappi eventually updated cover artwork for books he originally illustrated. The original artwork shows Nancy in a conservative Spanish dancer's gown, on a mansion terrace. She is watching a man climb a trellis, while a masquerade is depicted through the French windows of the house. This art was also used on picture cover editions, from 1962 to 1969. The only interior illustration, the frontispiece, shows Nancy and Bess about to be kidnapped while spying at the Blue Iris Inn.
The cover of the 1969 revised version, still in print, depicts Nancy carrying the accessories from her costume, underneath a large image of a head wearing the black velvet domino. This edition also contains five plain pen and ink illustrations.
The "capture" scene frontispiece, from the original 1953 edition, was chosen by several book-binding companies to be used as the cover illustration on re-bound or library bound editions of many Nancy Drew titles.
Note: This is a condensed plot synopsis of separate print editions of a novel; all information referenced in this article comes directly from the source material. Mildred Benson is credited as the author on her Wikipedia page.
The Secret of the Old Clock is the first volume in the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories series, written under the pseudonym Carolyn Keene. It was first published on April 28, 1930, and rewritten in 1959 by Harriet Stratemeyer Adams.
The Mystery at Lilac Inn is the fourth volume in the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories series. It was first published in 1930 under the pseudonym Carolyn Keene. Mildred Wirt Benson was the ghostwriter of the 1930 edition.
The Secret at Shadow Ranch is the fifth volume in the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories series. It was first published in 1931 under the pseudonym Carolyn Keene, and was ghostwritten by Mildred Wirt Benson. This book, as of 2001, ranks 50 on the list of All-Time Bestselling Children's Books, according to Publishers Weekly, with 2,347,750 sales since 1931.
The Secret of Red Gate Farm is the sixth volume in the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories series, written under the pseudonym Carolyn Keene, It was first published in 1931.
The Clue in the Diary is the seventh volume in the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories series, and was first published in 1932 under the pseudonym Carolyn Keene. Its text was revised in 1962.
Nancy's Mysterious Letter is the eighth volume in the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories series. It was first published in 1932 and was penned by Walter Karig, a replacement writer for Mildred Wirt Benson. Benson declined series work when the Depression forced a reduction in the contract fee provided to Stratemeyer Syndicate writers, so Karig, already an established Stratemeyer writer, took over the authorship. Due to Karig having died in 1956, the 1932 version passed into the public domain in Canada and other countries that have a life plus 50 policy, in 2007.
The Password to Larkspur Lane is the tenth volume in the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories series. It was first published in 1933 under the pseudonym Carolyn Keene. The actual author was ghostwriter Walter Karig in his third and final Nancy Drew novel and his final appearance for the Stratemeyer Syndicate. Due to Karig's death in 1956, this book and his other two Nancy Drews, as of January 1, 2007, have passed into the public domain in Canada and other countries with a life-plus-50 policy.
The Mystery of the Fire Dragon is the thirty-eighth volume in the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories series. It was written under the pseudonym Carolyn Keene, and was first published in 1961.
The Clue of the Broken Locket is the eleventh volume in the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories series. It was first published in 1934 and was written by Mildred Benson under the pseudonym Carolyn Keene. It was later revised by Harriet Stratemeyer in 1965, and the story was mostly changed with a few elements of the original.
The Whispering Statue is the fourteenth volume in the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories series. It was written by Mildred Wirt Benson, whom many readers and scholars consider the "truest" of the numerous Carolyn Keene ghostwriters, following an outline by Harriet Stratemeyer. The book was originally published by Grosset & Dunlap in 1937. An updated, revised, and largely different story was published under the same title in 1970.
The Clue of the Tapping Heels is the 16th volume in the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories series. It was first published in 1939. An updated, revised, and largely different story was published under the same title in 1970. A facsimile edition of the 1939 version was published by Applewood Books. As of 2006, this title is still in print.
The Mystery of the Ivory Charm is the thirteenth volume in the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories series. It was first published in 1936 under the pseudonym Carolyn Keene. The actual author was ghostwriter Mildred Wirt Benson.
The Mystery of the Brass Bound Trunk is the seventeenth volume in the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories series, published under the pseudonym Carolyn Keene. It was first published in 1940 by Grosset & Dunlap and was extensively revised for publication in 1976.
The Mystery at the Moss-Covered Mansion is the eighteenth volume in the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories series published by Grosset & Dunlap, and was first published in 1941. The original text was written by ghostwriter Mildred Wirt Benson, based upon a plot outline from Stratemeyer Syndicate co-owner Harriet Stratemeyer Adams. The book's title was changed to Mystery of the Moss-Covered Mansion when it was revised in 1971, because the story is completely different and not much of the investigation takes place at the title location. In the original, many plots and much investigation all tie back to the same house deep in the forest, while Nancy helps her father locate an heiress, expose an impostor, investigate a murder, and look into strange screams at the mansion; none of the action in the original story took place in River Heights.
The Clue in the Crumbling Wall is the twenty-second volume in the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories series. It was first published in 1945 under Carolyn Keene, a pseudonym of the ghostwriter Mildred Wirt Benson.
The Mystery of the Tolling Bell is the twenty-third volume in the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories series. It was first published in 1946 under the pseudonym Carolyn Keene. The actual author was ghostwriter Mildred Wirt Benson.
The Ringmaster's Secret is the thirty-first volume in the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories series. It was first published in late 1953 under the pseudonym Carolyn Keene. The actual author was ghostwriter Harriet Stratemeyer Adams.
Georgia "George" Fayne is a character in the popular Nancy Drew Mystery Stories series. She is one of Nancy's best friends and cousin of Bess Marvin. Her birth name is Georgia, although no one calls her that except her parents.
The Secret in the Old Lace is the fifty-ninth volume in the Nancy Drew mystery series. It was ghostwritten by Nancy Axelrad and first published in 1980 under the pseudonym Carolyn Keene under the Wanderer imprint of Simon & Schuster. It was later republished again in both Wanderer and Minstrel imprints, each time with a new cover. In 2005, Grosset & Dunlap reprinted it in the yellow hardback "glossy flashlight" format. The original edition cover art and six internal illustrations were by Ruth Sanderson. These illustrations were removed in the two subsequent printings.
The Greek Symbol Mystery is the 60th volume in the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories series. It was originally published in paperback in 1981 by the Wanderer imprint of Simon & Schuster. The original edition had a cover and six interior illustrations by Ruth Sanderson. The cover art was later revised by Garin Baker in 1986 for the last Wanderer printing, and again by Linda Thomas in 1989 for the Minstrel printing.