Nancy Drew Diaries 20 – The Vanishing Statue

Carolyn Keene's The Vanishing Statue, one of the Nancy Drew Diaries, is a mystery for 9 year olds set in the very arty side of River Heights.

What happens

It starts with a gold envelope in the mailbox. Nobody in town has laid eyes on the Duchess Strickland for ten years, and now the rich widow is throwing a one-time-only Celebration of the Arts at her mansion. Nancy's invited. So is her dad, and so is Hannah, the housekeeper who makes the best French toast in town.

Why would someone who's hidden away for a decade suddenly throw open her doors? Nancy wants to know. Her dad does too (he still remembers two sad-eyed portraits of children hanging by the staircase).

That same afternoon, things get strange. At the opening of a new gallery, two young artists called the Goddess Collective put on a show built around a Roman statue of Diana. The masked dancer turns out to be the Duchess's granddaughter, who took the statue from her grandmother's house herself. But when the curtains open, the pedestal's empty. Someone has taken it again and left a note that says 'Fake Art'.

The suspects pile up fast, and they're a very colourful lot. There's Sven, Bess's performance-artist crush, who's planning to crash the party. A gallery owner in a silk turban. A poet in a green cape who writes Bess a poem and then asks her to swallow it (she does!).

Nancy tells it like a diary, so you get her eye-rolls along with her clues. She notices the tiny things, like the neat parting in a masked dancer's hair. It's the kind of mystery where your reader can play detective right alongside her.

Bess and George are great company too. Bess is dreamy and dramatic, George would rather be anywhere Sven isn't, and Nancy's the one keeping everybody on track.

What to read next

If your reader loves a puzzle with lots of chatter (and lots of food) between the clues, this one fits nicely. For another trip with the same three friends and a ghost story mixed in, try The Ghost of Grey Fox Inn, where a wedding in Charleston comes with a hotel that's supposed to be haunted.