Golden Age of Detective Fiction

The Mystery at Lilac Inn was initially published in 1931 by Mildred Wirt Benson, a.k.a. Carolyn Keene, for the Stratemeyer syndicate. It’s the first Nancy Drew book written under the direction of Edward Stratemeyer’s daughters after his death and has a marked decline in quality. The original version of The Mystery of Lilac Inn was re-written due to the racist plot of the book in 1961 due to public outcry. A good write-up discussing the original 1931 text can be found at The Romantic Parvenue Book Blog. In today’s review, I will primarily discuss the revised 1961 version of The Mystery of Lilac Inn because that is the version I have access to. Still, I hope to read the original text to compare the two versions.

On a chilly May morning, Nancy Drew and her friend Helen Corning are paddling a canoe down the river to visit their friends Emily Willoughby and her fiance Dick Farnham, who have sunk almost their entire combined fortunes into remodeling The Lilac Inn, which they will run together after their impending nuptials. As they paddle, they chat until they run into an acquaintance of Nancy’s who is surprised to find her on the river since she had heard she was shopping in downtown River Heights. Nancy reassures her friend that it “must be a look-a-like” and paddles on. Further down the river, the canoe suddenly capsizes. There’s nothing visible in the water to explain the capsize, and Nancy, an experienced skin diver, decides to come back another day to investigate what could be in the water. 

Having made it ashore and to Lilac Inn, Nancy and Helen begin pumping Emily about her upcoming wedding plans. Nancy and Helen are so excited to be attendants to Emily’s wedding that they are surprised by her nervous and stressed demeanor when they visit. Emily recounts that there have been several strange incidents during the remodel of the Lilac Inn, and she is worried that she and Dick have made a bad investment. If Lilac Inn fails, the only financial security she has left is some diamonds she will soon inherit. Restoration of Lilac Inn is proving to be more costly than anticipated. Emily will probably have to sell a few smaller diamonds to cover the cost of starting Lilac Inn.

Nancy and Helen try to ease their friend’s mind and decide to stay at Lilac Inn until her wedding in a few days and make plans to help around Lilac Inn where they can. However, Nancy received a distressing call from her housekeeper, Hannah Gruen, that their house had been broken into and ransacked. Hannah Gruen is terrified, and Nancy rushes home to River Heights to comfort Hannah and see if anything has been stolen.

When Nancy returns home, she receives a phone call from a downtown department store saying that her charge plate was used to purchase $2000 worth of merchandise. She pleads with the store owner, saying it must have been an impersonator who stole the charge plate when her house was robbed. The store owner needs to be more convinced since several people recognized Nancy. When she files a police report, they are skeptical of her story and alibi: that she was at Lilac Inn during her supposed sightings in River Heights.

The skeptical police allow Nancy to go free, and she vows to investigate whatever is happening to clear her name. Nancy packed some clothes and returned to Lilac Inn for supper, where Emily was presented with her diamonds. However, it’s not long before someone mysteriously cuts the power to the Inn and steals Emily’s diamonds! Nancy vows to find the diamonds and begins searching the Inn and the grounds; she soon discovers a secret passage and several suspects who might not want Lilac Inn to be successful. Helen, who is faithfully helping Nancy, soon suspects the brusque and derisive Social Director of Lilac Inn, who has a mysterious and robust hold over Emily’s aunt.

Now, Nancy must clear her good name, discover what is happening at Lilac Inn, and investigate what caused her canoe to capsize. Nancy and Helen, who are staying at a cottage on the grounds of Lilac Inn, are soon threatened by a bomb left in their cottage. Nancy is lured out to the river to skin dive alone, where she is nearly killed, and a mysterious young woman seems to be fooling everyone in town into thinking that she is the honest Nancy Drew. 

The Review

The Mystery at Lilac Inn is a genuine mixed bag for me, and it is not colored by nostalgia. I often skipped this one in my constant re-reads of Nancy’s adventures during my girlhood; I didn’t remember the plot at all, so it was like reading it for the first time.

I initially liked the story thread about Lilac Inn and the upcoming marriage of Emily and Dick. It was a sweet, relatable story, even if getting a Diamond Inheritance is too British country house detective fiction for my taste. I liked Helen’s laser focus on the Social Director. I even liked that the book explored how a woman can manipulate a friend for a job and money and how older women can be unnecessarily catty towards their younger peers, especially in the workplace. Learning to navigate that was an interesting enough plot for me. However, when we get not one, but two bombings and a weak motive for the stealing of the diamonds- with very few suspects, the bottom falls out for me.

I liked the secondary plot of the Nancy Drew impersonator running around ruining her good name. I liked that the police were initially skeptical of Nancy’s story and that, for once, her money and privilege, or her father, could not get her out of a jam. An angry girl who used to be an actress decides to impersonate Nancy after Nancy’s father sentences her to prison. This is fine in itself, but then, this girl joins a gang, and they have been stealing secrets and planting bombs, which is patently ridiculous and a bridge too far in what is supposed to be small-town mysteries for tween girls to solve.

Nancy’s investigation, which culminates in a disastrous skin-diving expedition and kidnapping, where she is hustled onto a submarine that is anchored in a small body of water, is unbelievable. Nancy must then outwit her captors and escape a submarine. This sounds less like a Nancy Drew mystery and more like a Jonny Quest cartoon.

The whole thing is so over the top, and Nancy is quite the Mary Sue at everything from skin diving to interrogations to overpowering several kidnappers that it caused several eye rolls on my part. This is irrelevant, but I also hate the term skin diving- it makes my skin crawl, and I hate that it was used to bring the A & B plots together. It is so random, and for some reason, the rewrite spends a lot of time on this subject and even has Nancy win a skin diving competition at the end, just to prove how exceptional she is at skin diving.

The whole skin diving element stole time from developing the Lilac Inn sabotage. This diamond mystery was batted away with an unsatisfactory conclusion- given that the book is titled The Mystery at Lilac Inn, I want that to be the story’s primary focus. 

There were too many mysteries for Nancy to solve, and none were fleshed out well, although the impersonation and Lilac Inn plots could have warranted their own separate novels. Three rushed, barely coherent mysteries with a bombastic ending make The Mystery of the Lilac Inn my least favorite Nancy Drew in my re-read so far.

The Mystery at Lilac Inn Reviews

Thoughts From the Mountain Top

Carstairs Considers

Book Girl

My Nancy Drew Reviews

The Secret of the Old Clock (Nancy Drew #1)

The Hidden Staircase (Nancy Drew #2)