The Nancy Drew Files #4: Smile and Say Murder (1986)

Even though Nancy and Ned had plans to spend his spring break from college at his parents' lake house, she begs off to check out a potential case at Flash, the hottest new teen magazine. Yvonne, who started the company, recently received some threatening letters and think Mick, her art director, is behind it all. She offers to help Nancy pose as an intern to get to the bottom of things.

Ned is less than happy that she's once again blowing him off for a case and equally unhappy when she drags him along. Nancy convinces Yvonne to sneak Ned into the magazine too without telling him. She then can't figure out why he's so unhappy with her.

It doesn't help that Nancy doesn't get along with Mick very well. He keeps putting her down all the time, and his sister, Sondra, who also works for the magazine keeps accusing Nancy of being a spy. She finds out that Yvonne loves mystery books and sees a copy of a best seller in Mick's desk. He also does a photo shoot with spiders, and someone leaves a tarantula in Yvonne's desk.

Mick has a soft side too. He leaves a note for her on what to do in the darkroom and how to stay safe. Nancy notices that he misspells a lot of words that whoever wrote the threatening notes actually spelled correctly. She then learns that Yvonne's boyfriend David is the former editor in chief of a big law review. The owner of that law review keeps trying to get Yvonne to sell the magazine to them.

Ned then starts spending an uncomfortable amount of time with Sondra. She's always draping herself over him and acting like he's the hottest thing on two legs. When someone shoots at Yvonne in her office, Nancy finds Mick in his studio with a gun in his hands. She knocks him out just as the cops arrive and without bothering to take a pulse, they decide to just automatically arrest her for his murder. He wakes up, they smooth things over, and then the cops arrest him.

The main problem is that Ned comes to pick her up and has Sondra with him. He and Nancy have yet another fight, mainly because Ned comforts Sondra over what's going on with her brother and kind of ignores Nancy. She basically tells him it's over, but because he's Ned, he doesn't take no for an answer. Ned calls her all the time and begs for her forgiveness.

Nancy finds proof that Mick wasn't even in the offices on the night someone shot at Yvonne and helps get him out of jail. Yvonne then fires her because she just knows Mick was behind everything. Nancy and Mick bond to the point that he asks her to be his date for the Maggies, some big deal magazine awards show. Ned shows up with Sondra who, once again, is all over him. When Mick and Yvonne win an award, a chandelier overhead comes loose and crashes down on them.

Mick recovers and bonds with Nancy while getting treated in the hospital. He reveals that Yvonne is actually a successful mystery writer with a pen name, which causes Nancy to put everything together. She calls Ned to come and pick her up, and when he shows up with Sondra, all hell breaks loose. Sondra finally gets in the middle and makes them make up.

They go to the Flash office, and Yvonne manages to lock Ned and Sondra in the darkroom. She then confesses the whole thing to Nancy. Yvonne fired a gun into the wall after the office was closed for the night, fired her gun the day someone “shot at her” out the window, and then hid it in her bag. She wanted to drum up interest in the magazine to get the best offer and make people want to read her mystery novels when she dropped her pen name. After confessing, she takes the tape recorder Nancy hid in her bag and marches her to the darkroom.

Yvonne pushes Nancy inside and makes her tie the other two up before tying up Nancy. She mixes together a bunch of chemicals in a bowl, puts the tape nearby, and then lights the mixture on fire before leaving and locking the door behind her. Nancy saves the day by untying Sondra with her teeth, which lets the girl untie them.

The fire causes an explosion that knocks down a wall, but Sondra passes out from the fumes before they can move. Nancy has Ned carry her to safety while she goes back and finds the tape. They get outside just in time to hear the fire trucks and police cars on the way.

In the end, Ned and Nancy finally do get to go on vacation. She casually mentions having plans with Sondra for the following week. They make up, do some more kissing, and decide to try and not let cases come between them again, which will probably last until the next book.

*Mick, at one point, wears skintight black pants with a tight white shirt, shoes with a zebra print, and an ascot with a matching print. When he's in the hospital, Nancy brings him a remote control car in a zebra print.

*Nancy wears a light blue angora sweater for her first day on the job and then wears a gold dress with matching gold sandals for the awards show.

*When talking with her friends about Ned, Bess and George claim that no guy would ever matter to her the way he does. She then mentions cheating on him with some random guy in another book, and they just tell her that guy doesn't count. Uh-huh.

*I side with Ned in this fight and not just because I've read so many of these books. He points out that she blew off plans at least twice to go the lake house because of a case. It's also his spring break, and he just wants to relax and spend time with his girl. She not only blows him off for a case, but then she makes him actually work on his spring break!

*Ned's college, which I always thought was on the small side, is big enough that it plays Notre Dame in football. That's pretty damn big. Also, Ned is a good enough player to be on a football team that competes against Notre Dame!

*Want to hear the weirdest thing about this book? Mick tells Nancy that he grew up reading The Hardy Boys, which means that the boys are fictional. BUT, there are Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew crossover books. I know, because I have them and haven't read them yet...