Without a Trace

February 2, 2004
Seventy-four years after solving her first mystery in The Secret of the Old Clock
, super-sleuth Nancy Drew (daughter of handsome, renowned attorney Carson Drew) is still searching for clues with the help of her loyal chums: tomboy George, dimple-cheeked Bess and Nancy's oh-so-tolerant beau, Ned Nickerson (who still stands politely on the sidelines). In this first book of the updated series, Nancy has squash and eggs on her mind. More specifically, she is trying to find out who vandalized Mr. Geffington's zucchini patch and who stole a priceless Fabergé egg from under the nose of Simone Valinkofsky, Nancy's exotic new French neighbor. Following a series of conspicuously dropped clues, readers will have little trouble uncovering the answer to the first riddle, but the egg mystery proves a bit harder to crack. Nancy suffers a nasty fall and is hospitalized for a concussion before she nabs the culprit. Modern inventions (computers, Web sites and cell phones) and fashions (such as Bess's white capri pants) now exist in Nancy's world; she drives a blue hybrid car rather than her blue Mustang convertible; and she has a nemesis, Deirdre Shannon, whose father is also a "very successful local attorney." But the teenage detective remains the same wholesome Midwestern girl. Her new, relatively tame, formulaic adventures may draw a smaller audience than they did three-quarters of a century ago but, unblemished by time, Nancy remains an attractive role model for young wannabe detectives. Ages 9-12. (Mar.)

FYI
: Books 2, 3, and 4, also being released in March, will be priced at $4.99 and feature mystery bookmarks; if readers solve the mystery, they will be entered in a sweepstakes to win a trip to New York City.

May 1, 2004
Gr. 4-7. Nancy Drew gets an update--sort of. True, she's now using computers instead of driving a roadster, and the text is now written in the first person, but neither the writing nor the plotting screams twenty-first century. In " Trace," there are two mysteries. The first--Who is stealing or bashing the neighborhood's zucchini crop?--will hardly have kids on the edge of their seats. The second, about a stolen Faberge egg, has slightly more bang for its buck because several teenage boys from France come with it, but it still has lines like "I thought American detectives were old gruff men, like Humphrey Bogart." Bogie isn't exactly a middle-grade icon. In " Race," Nancy, the captain of the Biking for Bucks charity road race, has to find the stolen bucks. Kids love mysteries, and there is a shortage of them, so these offerings, for slightly younger kids than the last Nancy series, will find fans, but as with so many series titles, the writing here is stilted and the characters generic. Try Wendelin Van Draanen's Sammy Keyes books for mysteries with more substance as well as better style.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2004, American Library Association.)