Review by Frank Plowright

With his sixth Nancy Drew story Stefan Petrucha introduces a very minor point of continuity for the first time, establishing River Heights has a new resident who’s purchased an estate. Its previous owner featured in The Haunted Dollhouse. The new owner is every bit as unusual, pampering a pet chimpanzee to the extent of providing it with luxury quarters in the house and having it wear a diamond necklace. This is the Mr. Cheeters who’s gone missing.

After missing The Fake Heir herself, Sho Murase is back on the art along with all the problems accompanying that. The sample page is intended to reinforce supporting character Blanche Porter as eccentric, already established via her climbing a tree to talk with Nancy in the first place. Instead of subtlety, Porter is drawn as if suffering from some pernicious form of muscle spasm. Murase is now varying her viewpoints a little more, but her people remain very posed, and their angular and stretched presentation is unattractive and distracting.

As ever on this series, the undesirable art diminishes Petrucha’s clever mystery. Once Nancy starts investigating she meets Porter’s disagreeable brother, learns Blanche has been seeing a therapist, and that no-one connected with the household has ever actually seen Mr. Cheeters. The investigation takes Nancy to some interesting places, which would be transmitted with more imaginative art, and Petrucha makes good use of the allergies suffered by Nancy’s friend Bess.

In terms of the actual mysteries these Nancy Drew graphic novels are on an upward creative curve, but while the art has improved for reducing the close-up panels slightly, it still drags the plots down.

This is combined with the previous book in the third Nancy Drew Diaries, and The Charmed Bracelet is next.