Nancy Drew Diaries 5 – Sabotage at Willow Woods

Carolyn Keene's Sabotage at Willow Woods is a Nancy Drew mystery for 9 year olds about a local election that turns nasty very fast.

What happens

George's cousin Carrie is running for the town council in Boylestown. At a street party for the town's champion football team, she promises a brand-new football field and sports complex. The crowd goes wild. George, who'd rather the money went on teachers, claps with a lot less enthusiasm.

Then someone slips Carrie a note in the crowd. Block capitals, black marker. Stop your campaign, it says, or you'll be sorry.

Nancy dusts it for fingerprints back at home (there aren't any). But it smells of smoke, and Bess spots the edge of a printed logo at the top. Before long Nancy is wandering into the local high school with a lighter she bought earlier that day, asking which teachers smoke.

Plenty of people would be happy to see Carrie lose. A school green club is furious that half of Willow Woods would be cleared for the new pitch. An English teacher is fed up that sport gets money while art teachers lose their jobs. And at a posh fundraising dinner, somebody plays a cut-up recording of Carrie's voice over the speakers and her donors walk out.

Who's behind it? Nancy really doesn't know, and that's the fun. She invents a fake name in about two seconds flat and a newspaper job to get teachers talking. Not all of it goes to plan!

The friendships are a joy. George and Bess bicker like only cousins can. When Nancy worries she isn't dressed up enough for the dinner, George starts calling her Fancy Nancy (and threatens to do it every day).

There's some grown-up stuff to chew over here. Should a town spend its money on sport, or on teachers and trees? The book lets both sides have their say, and the friends don't all agree. It could spark a very good chat at teatime.

It's worth knowing that it gets a little creepy in places. As well as the threatening note, Nancy has a vivid nightmare about being stuck in a dark wood with a steamroller heading straight for her. It's over in a page and she wakes up safe in bed. Nancy is at high school and drives her own car, so it reads a bit older than the youngest mysteries.

What to read next

If they enjoy Nancy working out who's sabotaging somebody in the public eye, Famous Mistakes is in the library too. A comedian's whole year of new material is shredded in his hotel room, and there's a group of protesters who want his show cancelled.