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Password to Larkspur Lane (1966) by Carolyn Keene ⭐⭐⭐
I read the kindle version of the revised 1966 edition of this addition to the Nancy Drew series for a book club.
Password to Larkspur Lane starts easy enough, but quickly gets pretty complicated as Nancy runs into mystery after mystery, having to connect multiple loose ends by the finish of the book. It’s actually kind of hard to keep track of everything if you aren’t already familiar with the other characters in the Nancy Drew world. There are way too many characters, and no one has any personality to distinguish them at all.
This being said, the story I read was the 1966 revised version of the 1933 Nancy Drew novel The Password to Larkspur Lane. You may notice in the previous sentence, the word ‘the’ has been typed before the rest of the title. The preceding article was dropped for the revised version for some unknown reason.
I read most of the original version from 1933, as well, and there was so much left out and/or switched around in the revised version. Descriptive terminology has been changed to streamline action, and a lot of personality has been taken away from the characters, so it is now hard to discern who is who unless you remember each person’s name. Characters were given bigger spotlight in the revised version, and additional situations were added to thicken the plot. Some names were even changed. Any character that has any remote trace of ethnic background has been shaped into no-personality cardboard cut-outs.
The 1966 version deals with a mysterious message from a homing pigeon, the disappearance of an old woman, a side petty theft ring going on with servant Morgan, and a mysterious blue light that keeps appearing at a friend’s house. There’s a lot more to it than that, but this is it in a nutshell.
If you ask me, it really was too much. Too much was packed into and added in this revised version. To put this into perspective, the original 1933 novel has 25 chapters, and the later 1966 novel has 20, despite the added material. It is nonstop, and some of the conclusions she comes to make no sense in the rewritten version.
I did enjoy the book, though! It gives off that quaint vibe in both versions of the story. I tend to like 1933 Nancy more than I like 1966 Nancy, due to the fact that the latter is a little too perfect in my opinion.
Like the Honey Bunch series, (one story of hers is blogged about here) the author’s name is a pseudonym. There is no Carolyn Keene. For background on the Stratemeyer Syndicate, visit the aforementioned link on Honey Bunch. I go in depth about that there.
The Nancy Drew books were written by multiple authors. The first 34 Nancy Drew books were revised in the 60s and 70s to line up more with the later novels that were to be written. The original 1933 version was written by Walter Karig (who also wrote two previous Nancy Drew novels), and the revised 1966 version was written by Harriet Adams, Edward Stratemeyer’s daughter.
I recommend reading both versions, because the differences are really very interesting. I’ll be reading more Nancy Drew in the future. There is a 1938 film based on this story, and when I watch it, I’ll post on that, too!
For those interested, this is the 1933 cover.
Interesting! I didn’t know they had done revisions of these.
Yes! The ones you get in the store will usually be the revised versions. Well, the first 34, at least.