The Hidden Staircase

Finished The Hidden Staircase by Carolyne Keene, the second Nancy Drew mystery, published in 1930. Nancy sleuths alone, carries a revolver and is pretty damn bold. This book was a reissue of the original text, printed by Applewood Books.




I pulled out my childhood edition of The Hidden Staircase to make comparisons and found that the 1959 revision of the text bears little resemblance to the original. Like The Secret of the Old Clock this book is riddled with racial stereotypes that make one cringe. This second book, however, was much more exciting than the first in the series.

Carolyn Keene was a pseudonym for a number of writers who worked on the series, but most of the first twenty-five Nancy Drew books were written by Mildred Wirt Benson.