Review by Frank Plowright

Nancy Drew usually brings danger on herself via being a little careless during her investigations, but Stefan Petrucha opens The Fake Heir with a different threat. Nancy and her friends are in the wrong place at the wrong time when a sinkhole opens, draining the lake they’re sailing on.

They survive, but an unexpected consequence is the location of a sunken ship for which people have been searching for a long time. It turns out to be a valuable find, and as the owners are dead the search begins for their heir. Anton Druthers hasn’t been seen in a decade, and scurrilous rumour has it that his wife Tanya spent all his money and killed him. The complication when she turns up is her being specifically excluded from her in-laws’ will. Any further inheritance can only go to Anton.

Over the previous four books Petrucha’s viable mystery plots have been held back by artwork that tells the story in the most mundane way. The publishers, though, have opted for continuity in Sho Murase’s absence, rather than improvement. Daniel Vaughan Ross seems to have been under instruction to mimic the established style as near as possible, so draws similar angular characters and tells the story as far as possible via close-ups. What a missed opportunity.

Don’t worry too much about the title, which aside from mentioning the word “heir” actually has little connection with what happens. Petrucha uses Nancy’s clumsiness as means of disclosing her presence too often, but there’s a clever solution, and Petrucha’s done his work well in disguising how it plays out. Mr. Cheeters is Missing follows, or it’s combined with this as the second Nancy Drew Diaries.