Nancy Drew Clue Book 14 – The Big Island Burglary

Carolyn Keene's The Big Island Burglary is a sunny holiday mystery for 8 year olds, and it drops the Clue Crew into a Hawaiian resort with one day left to catch a thief.

What happens

Nancy Drew is on the Big Island with her two best friends, Bess and George, and George's family. It has been a brilliant week. Surfing lessons, a long hike through the jungle, and a night swim where manta rays flip over and over underneath a surfboard strung with blue lights.

Then comes the luau. A whole roast pig, a bowl of something purple made from taro root, a man spinning fire a few yards from their table. Bess sticks her hand straight up to join the hula and drags Nancy onstage with her.

And while the two of them are up there dancing, a man at the next table has his camera taken.

His name is Harry. He's the family photographer, and the pictures from his in-laws' fiftieth anniversary party were still on it. He never got round to saving them. The hotel manager is perfectly polite and no help at all. She isn't going to question guests who came here to relax.

So out comes the Clue Book. Nancy writes MOTIVE at the top of a fresh page and the three of them work through it. Accident. Stolen to sell. Lost. Then they start crossing things off.

That's the real pleasure of it. This is a proper little investigation. The girls ask people what they noticed, write the answers down, and keep running into the same problem, which is that the one description they've got is useless. An older woman. Possibly sunglasses. Half the resort is wearing sunglasses.

The book also teaches your reader a fair bit without ever stopping the story. What plankton actually is. Why manta rays get called the butterflies of the ocean. What goes on a luau table. Nancy asks the things a child would actually want to know, and somebody answers her.

It's American, by the way. Everyone is on vacation and Nancy's notebook says "MOTIVE" in big block letters with a helpful explanation underneath. Nothing a confident reader will trip over, although you'll hear it if you're reading aloud.

Nobody is in danger here and nobody is frightening. The upset is a family who saved for a whole year for this holiday, and a dad sitting with his face in his hands. That's a very manageable kind of sad.

What to read next

If they take to Nancy's list-making, the Clue Crew have another case waiting in The Great Goat Gaffe. A television crew turns up at a goat farm, a yoga class descends into chaos, and one small goat is behaving far too badly to be an accident.