The Phantom of Pine Hill

Gooood mornin y'all and welcome to our forty-second Nancy Drew Challenge!  Today we are on the trail of The Phantom of Pine Hill:

This is not one of Rudy Nappi's better covers in my opinion, but maybe I'm just biased by the cultural appropriation happening here (more on that in a minute).  We had such a vivid sky on Moonstone Castle so it seems extra weird to just have white on this cover.  Nancy is once again in her signature color of pale blue.

Casel file:  Nancy, Bess, and George are at Emerson College for June Week festivities and thanks to a clerical error end up staying with "Uncle John" Rorick near the school, who has a phantom problem.  Despite the fanciest locks money can buy, someone keeps sneaking into Uncle John's library and stealing money he keeps in between the pages of the books and then breaking into his safe.  While looking for the phantom, Nancy also tracks down a family heirloom that went down in a shipwreck, digs up a First Nations grave (really), and is pretend kidnapped by Ned who was apparently cosplaying the Chief in Disney's Peter Pan, down to the offensive speech patterns.  I don't think it was meant to be disrespectful, but it absolutely is by today's standards.  Not my favorite book.

Here's my card:

Obviously I decided not to touch the cultural appropriation and I stuck with pine trees and a hill.  And I gave my card a colorful sky, incorporating the color of Nancy's dress and hair.

How is this the first time that I've ever used the In the Pines bundle?  I must have gotten it right when it retired.  Have to say I like my card better than I liked the book.

We do have a secret passage and one of the boys gets stuck in a chimney a la Santa Claus, so there are some fun things about this book, so I give it two stars.  Still better than the hot mess that is Ivory Charm, which might just be the lowest point out of the entire series but we'll find out.  It's still the low point as of #42.  Anyway, if you're inspired to create a Nancy Drew card, leave me a comment so I can oooh and ahhh over it!  And stay tuned for next week, when we investigate The Mystery of the 99 Steps.