Nancy Drew Mystery Stories #51: Mystery of the Glowing Eye (1974)

 

Nancy is less than enthused about a recent mystery involving her father. Carson is working on a case about a glowing eye and initially asked for her help but then turned to Marty, a new and pretty associate working for the firm. Nancy calls her friends and asks for help. Not long after they get there, a helicopter comes out of nowhere and lands on the front lawn.

By the time they get outside, no one is there. They do find a note inside from Ned that warns Nancy about the cyclops. The cops and neighbors then show up along with Carson. They realize that it was a robot copter, as in one controlled by someone else with no pilot. George calls Burt at Emerson College and learns that not only did Ned go missing, but there are rumors that someone kidnapped him!

They then get heavy ropes and tie down the copter, but it somehow still gets away the next morning. Nancy and her friends decide to go to Emerson and look for Ned. They run into Carson and Marty at a restaurant on the way. Marty tells her not to worry about the glowing eye as she has it all under control. They then take a trip to the local museum and learn that Marty was there earlier. When they ask to see what she saw, they go to an exhibit where a glowing eye appears when the lights go down.

Ms. Wilkin, who runs the museum, explains that the engineering department brings students to the museum and asks them to find the source but no one has yet. Nancy then learns that Ned came there with his class and went missing at the same time as this guy Zapp, who conveniently is a pilot. They find another pilot who takes them on a ride. He says that an executive named Crossley recently hired him to fly over River Heights. Crossley is actually Zapp.

Bess and her guy Dave stay behind and explore an abandoned farmhouse. After finding a penny from 1923, they stumble on a weird room where the floor collapses and drops them to the bottom story. Nancy finds a matching penny when she gets off her flight and then meet Jerry, the only pilot in town with a robot copter. His copter is clearly not the one that landed at her house. They also go to a party at the college where a suspicious man calls and asks for Burt or Dave and refuses to give his name.

Professor Titus of the engineering department agrees to let Nancy and her friends look around. She finds some files that interest her, but when she opens the next drawer, it explodes and catches a bunch of papers on fire. The fire department has to come along with the bomb squad because it turns out that there was a bomb in the drawer. Nancy then finds a weird gadget that emits a warning that it is cyclops and no one should touch it. The professor takes it as evidence.

Nancy goes over some of the papers that she took and finds a bunch of drawings. The Latin words on them stand for cyclops. She then calls Ned's house and learns from his mom that he recently sent home some papers from school. All she can remember is that they showed a lot of technical drawings. When Nancy calls to talk to Hannah, she's shocked when Marty answers the phone.

It turns out that Hannah had a family emergency and had to leave town at the last minute. Marty stuck around to let Carson know. Since Hannah couldn't make him dinner, Marty was there cooking. She hints around about her insider who went missing and how she's interested in someone special. Even Bess and George know not to tease Nancy about this new development.

After meeting his parents and finding nothing of use, the whole gang sees a copter and follow it. They lose it but find a note from Ned in the road and then a cabin in the woods where they find a full laboratory. Nancy then discovers a notebook that Ned left behind where he documented his kidnapping, including how he dropped the note for Nancy out of the copter in the hopes that someone might find it. When they get back to the college, Nancy comes up with a plan to save Ned and catch the kidnapper.

Nancy calls Bess and George's parents to tell them that they'll be away from home for a bit longer. George's dad reveals that he stopped by the museum to see the eye and that it was missing. Ms. Wilkin first denied that it was ever there and then admitted that someone from Emerson took it back. She also learns that Zapp was Marty's insider and that she thinks he's a red-haired nutso, the same term Ned used in one of his letters to describe the guy.

When Nancy goes back to the museum to investigate, something pins her arm to the wall where they eye was. George has to get the janitor and have him turn off the power to the museum. Both Titus and Wilkin then show up. While Wilkin apologizes for what happened, Titus makes sure that she's okay and then discovers that someone hid an electric current in the museum. It's what trapped her in place.

Everyone splits up, and Titus finds a notebook from Cyclops. He talks about all of his experiments and how his aunt, Wilkin, allowed him to sleep on the second floor. A repairman shows up to interrupt them with the claim that people complained about the phone not working. He finds that someone cut the line. After he leaves, a glowing eye appears that stops them from moving. Titus claims that the voice sounded like Zapp and that doctors did similar experiments with hypnotism.

The whole group along with the professor head to an abandoned house and split up. Nancy hears a scream and realizes that her friends are paralyzed by the glowing eye. She then finds Zapp locked in the attic and gets the professor to identify him. Zapp says he'll only tell them about Ned if they help him first. When they release him, he just laughs and says he'll never tell them what he knows.

Just as she's about to fall asleep, she hears the robot copter and runs outside to see Ned climbing out of it. He reveals that Zapp held him on an abandoned military base and used the glowing eye to experiment on him. Apparently, Zapp was the one who made it. The dude also planned on using his invention to hypnotize people and planned on selling it. Ned then tells her that he'll explain everything else later.

Apparently, Ned and Zapp worked close to each other in the lab. When Ned got close to figuring out the glowing eye, Zapp kidnapped him and stole all of his work. He also stole some ideas that Ned had for other experiments. After Zapp left one last time and didn't come back, Ned stole the robot copter and headed home.

Nancy then calls home to tell Carson that she solved the mystery. It turns out that he had a client who visited the museum and hired the firm to find out more about the glowing eye. She asks to talk to Marty and learns that she got fired. Carson says that while her legal work was excellent, she kept changing his schedule to be alone with her. The last straw was when she proposed to him. Nancy takes a deep breathe and asks him to promise that if he ever gets married again, it won't be to someone who tries to solve her mysteries.

*Both Ned and Burt are referred to as Nancy and George's “special friends.” I love that this book came out in the 70s and still used outdated terms!

*Marty refers to Bess and George as Nancy's “little friends” who help her solve crimes. I knew I wouldn't like her after that. And seriously, hasn't Nancy solved like 50+ crimes at this point while Marty has absolutely no experience?

*Professor Titus tells the bomb squad that Nancy is an amateur detective with professional skills, which is kind of sweet.

*I think this might be the first Nancy Drew book I read where Ned's parents pop up.

*Even though Ned often drives back and forth from River Heights to Emerson, it's now so far away that they have to fly there. It must be like Sweet Valley University.