Doris Force and her friends embark on a thrilling summer vacation to Cloudy Cove with the promise of adventure. With the anticipation of settling John Trent’s estate and claiming her inheritance, Doris is the epitome of a determined heroine. However, her journey takes an unexpected turn when she finds herself in a constant battle of wits with a persistent traveling magician named Ollie Weiser, who seems to have a mysterious agenda.
Doris gives Ollie Weiser the slip by letting his snakes out of his briefcase outside a train station. She reboards the train and hopes never to see him again. She and her friends arrive at Cloudy Cove and settle into their quaint hotel. Doris sets out to start settling the estate but makes an enemy of the lawyer who is supposed to help her when she defends Ollie Weiser from him after Ollie is wrongly accused of burning down the hotel.
When faced with the possibility of returning home, Doris is gripped by a growing suspicion towards the lawyer handling John Trent’s affairs. Her investigative instincts kick in, leading her to uncover clues that hint at a startling revelation-John Trent might be alive and in hiding, adding a new layer of mystery to the story.
She investigates and finds clues suggesting John Trent is still alive and in hiding. Doris attempts to find John Trent to restore her lost uncle to the family fold and discover why he went into hiding.
The Review
Doris Force at Cloudy Clove is a direct sequel to Doris Force at Locked Gates, but strangely, it takes time to get into the meat of the story, which took an entire book to set up. There was a lot of momentum built into the ending of Doris Force at Locked Gates, which was ruined by a bunch of antics about getting to Cloudy Cove and trying to avoid Ollie Weiser—all of which culminate in sort of befriending him and defending him from a corrupt lawyer.
The corrupt lawyer element directly repeats the previous book’s events and leads to the same obstacles that must be overcome. The re-treading of plot points seems odd because they were written so well in the first book, leaving Doris and the reader spinning their wheels for about 60 percent of the plot. When clues to John Trent’s whereabouts resurface, we are in the same spot at the end of Doris Force and the Locked Gates.
The shady lawyer and his desire to steal the fortune are also retreads from the first book in the series. Overall, Duncan seemed at a loss for how to advance the story and bring it to a satisfying conclusion with new obstacles for Doris to overcome in the sequel.
Duncan, a psedonym for Nancy Drew author Mildred A. Wirt was writing several successful girl detective series and was quietly replaced after this lackluster sequel by a new ghostwriter for the subsequent novels. I’ll be curious to see where the series will go under the direction of a new writer, but Doris Force at Cloudy Cove is a definite flop.
Doris Force Series Reviews
Golden Age of Detective Fiction 
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