Nancy Drew Diaries #4: Once Upon a Thriller (2012)

Nancy, Bess, and George are off to the small town of Avondale, where they rented a cabin on Moon Lake for the weekend. Nancy and George can't wait to hike and canoe, but Bess wants to just kick back and relax. After getting to the cabin and realizing that Nancy forgot the food at home, they head into town for supplies and arrive just in time to see that the local bookstore burned down.

Mandy, one of the girls standing out in front, whines about how she won't get to meet Lacey O'Brien now. Lacey is the town's resident mystery writer. Though she lives in town, she seldom spends time there and only makes one appearance each year for a meet and greet at that specific bookstore. Alice Ann, owner of the Cheshire Cat Bed and Breakfast, sells Nancy a few of the writer's books and lets it slip that not everyone is a huge fan.

It turns out that the writer's most recent book is about a fire, and the police think the fire at the bookstore was arson. They then learn that someone stole a sculpture done by a local artist who is conveniently married to Lacey. Oh, and one of her older books was about an art theft. Alice Ann helpfully tells Nancy where Lacey lives, which gives the girls an excuse to sneak over and check things out.

While on the way, a storm suddenly pops up when they're on the water, and their canoe capsizes. They see someone on the beach watching them who then runs away. The gals manage to get the boat to shore and empty it of water, but then the cops show up. They claim they got a call from the couple who owns the property about someone sneaking around. The cops take them back to their cabin, and Nancy learns that Lacey wrote a book about someone rigging a boat to capsizes.

Thinking this is all a little weird, Nancy calls Ned, who now works at the newspaper his parents own, and get permission to do a story on all the crimes. Bess and George head back home, and she checks into the Cheshire Cat for the rest of her trip. Nancy questions everyone in town, including Paige, the owner of the bookstore. She reveals that Lacey is the pen name used by a woman she went to high school with and claims she has no idea why anyone would burn down her store.

While on her way back to the B&B, someone comes close to running Nancy down. The couple apologize a bunch of times and give her a card with their names on it. It turns out that the couple is actually Lacey and her artist husband. Nancy does question Nancy and tells her how someone based their crimes on her book, but the writer just gets flustered and starts thinking that Nancy is blaming her.

Nancy then gets a threatening letter on her door that warns her to stay away. She meets with the owner of the art gallery and learns that his insurer canceled his policy a few days before the theft and never told him, which means he's screwed. He also tells her that Lacey and her husband bought the building next to his to use as an artists' colony thing and that the two buildings actually share an entrance.

My future husband Ned comes up to help her out and sleuth around with her. In the middle, Nancy actually solves the case. She runs back to talk with Alice Ann and to get a look at her high school yearbooks. There's a big fundraiser going on that she gets an invite to, and she sneaks away to check out the colony building. That's where she finds Paige just chilling with the stolen sculpture.

We then find out that Paige and Lacey were ultra competitive in high school and that Lacey almost always won. Paige was in love with the artist and even went to prom with him, but he later dated and married Lacey. She did everything in an attempt to make Lacey look guilty in the hopes he would come back to her or something. Lame.

*This is the second to the Nancy Drew Diaries books I've read but the first that actually works with the Diaries name. Nancy writes a short intro and then writes another entry at the end of the book.

*Paige is literally just chilling when Nancy catches her and doing nothing but holding a piece of evidence in her hands. How dumb is she?

*The cop that picks them up after the boat accident is older and really mean, but he has a hot nephew who is also a cop. Nancy asks Bess to use her charms on him to find out if he knows anything. Ian, the younger cop, develops a thing for Bess and talks about seeing her again but then disappears from the book.

*Nancy briefly suspects Alice Ann because after the newspaper story runs, people keep calling in to book stays at her B&B. She's all excited because she was having some financial issues and was thinking about closing before it happened. There really aren't any other suspects though.

*The girls sum up the case while eating treats that Hannah made: butterscotch and chocolate cookies with apple pie. If that combination wasn't disgusting enough, they drink lemonade with it.

*Ned working at a newspaper is a little strange. I know he does in the Girl Detective series, but I still think of him as the insurance guy.