#1 The Secret of the Old Clock
My copy of #1 is copyright 1959. I assumed they all would move forward from there but they jump from early 60s to 1968 and then back. These low numbered ones are all my original childhood editions so I don’t know how that happened. These were all bought in the late 70s/early 80s so I guess there were many different editions floating around wherever we bought books back then (Waldenbooks?).
I’d run across the fact that Nancy didn’t start out “titian haired” somewhere on the internet but had no personal memories of it. But right here on page one we are introduced to Carson Drew’s “blond, blue-eyed daughter,” an attractive girl of eighteen in her dark-blue convertible, a birthday gift from her father.
Also missing from #1 are Nancy’s BFFs, cousins Bess Marvin and George Fayne and her boyfriend Ned Nickerson. Instead, Nancy hangs out with her school friend Helen Corning.
She is already almost supernaturally self-sufficient and accomplished, fixing a flat tire and a boat motor while tracking down a lost will in order to help out the downtrodden but kindly people she randomly meets.
Shocking conclusion: the will is in an old clock.
