4.25/5 The story that turned me into a fanatic lover of detective fiction. Nancy Drew embodies the kind of girl we all wanted to be: beautiful, beyond clever, adventurous, inquisitive, friendly, I mean she even drives a convertible at 18! The story holds up well, though I found I was quite nostalgic while reading it. The puzzle is easier to solve as an adult (esp. with the title), but it doesn't make it any less fun. ( )

I devoured these books as a middle-school student. It was always a competition between the Amish boys and myself to see who could read the most Nancy Drew and/or Hardy Boys (depending on what was in at the library) per day.

The Secret of the Old Clock is the mystery that began it all for America's favorite teenaged sleuth. The accidental rescue of a little girl who lives with her two great-aunts leads to an adventurous search for a missing will.

Reread the first Nancy Drew mystery last night and oh, what a fun couple of hours that was!

I am seriously thinking of revisiting all the way up to #54 before reading the the last two volumes published by Grosset & Dunlap after I stopped reading them...and before those freaks at Simon & Schuster got hold of her and started putting out new stories with a new Nancy...in paperback! (It is probably unfair of me to say "freaks" since I never read any of the New Nancy Drew series, and since many of the the books I read in the seventies were 1960s sanitized re-writes of the edgier books originally published anyway. But still...they put Nancy in paperback! That is just so wrong!)

Re-write or original, I had forgotten how nosy and meddlesome Nancy was before people starting actually requesting her help later in the series!

Come to think of it, those meddlesome kids, Daphne and Velma were basically just each one-half of the fabulously attractive and brilliantly smart Nancy Drew. (Which means Fred is Ned Nickerson, and Scooby and Shaggy are....Bess and George???)

Five Stars because that is what my 10-year old self would have rated it, if GoodReads had been around back then. ( )

The original Nancy Drew. I couldn't believe my eyes when I found one of the first Nancy Drew books in my local used book store. I've been wanting to pick up older classics and this fit the bill!

Did I enjoy this book as much as some of the "newer" books (circa 1970s and 80s), not really, but for a classic this was well worth the read.

Nancy Drew is quite the icon - a mystery series for girls with an independent, smart leading lady? Heck, yes! In the first book in this long series, Nancy is helping her friends try to find a will for their late Uncle, making sure those who deserve the money get it and not the rich snobs. This book has a lot of positivity in it and the story is quite engaging. It is a book published in the 1930s, so some of the language doesn't "hold up" to what our more modern definitions are. Regardless, I can easily see middle graders still picking up this book and enjoying it. For a first time middle grade read, I think this is marvellous.

I did find the book to have some chapters that really didn't need to be there, but that's just my personal opinion.

Three out of five stars. ( )