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...
Yeah, that's crappy of Nancy to make Ned work on his spring break?
ReplyDeleteThe cops didn't check a pulse?
Ned played against Notre Dame? Wow, that's impressive!
Does Ned seriously not get better with every book? I feel like starting a blog that's all about how awesome Ned Nickerson is!
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