It only took over a year and browsing through Internet archives to get to the final two Nancy Drew books that escaped my grasp-The Clue of the Whistling Bapipes and The Strange Message in the Parchment.

Oddly enough, they both involve a lot of sheep.

The Bagpipes have Nancy heading to her ancestral Scotland homeland after witnessing a carjacking back in the US. It’s suspicous, but she hasn’t cracked the case yet. She figures she can save it for after her Scottish trip, but being Nancy, these rouguish characters assume that she’s followed them overseas to foil their plans and with their bumbling and attempted murder, she does!

I always enjoy the travel books and this was no different even though I felt the whole mystery aspect to be convoluted. Let’s say it involves sheep smuggling which makes sense because Scotland is famous for its wool but it also feels very Scooby-Doo. I was complaining about the constant missing treasures and jewels so I should be happy with the change but it all strikes me as comically out there.

Still, it did give me another reminder of why Ned Nickerson makes a good BF for Nancy. I always forget how helpful he is. I know Nancy wouldn’t want to date an idiot but he was actually a vital part to the mission.

I also love how ride or die George is when she offers to plow down the carjackers on Nancy’s behalf. She doesn’t play.

The other mystery was convoluted in a confusing way. First we’re introduced to another of Nancy’s never-before mentioned (and will probably be forgotten) friends, Junie. Her father, a shepard (I told you there was a lot of sheep in these two books) recently bough a parchment with pretty pictures but then he gets a creepy phone call instructing him to decipher the message and that’s when all the trouble starts.

A flock of birds is sent to attack Nancy and Junie. A random girl tries to steal Nancy’s bag. Someone tries to rob Junie’s home, obviously on the hunt for the parchment. One of the fellow shepards is framed for the robbery, and there’s a sad little Italian boy whose uncle won’t allow him to talk to anyone.

So much was happening yet it did not speed up the story, it felt longer than other books in the series for some reason like she was dragging this out with the sheer number of things happening to the girls. Although the bird thing was really crazy, it made me wonder if she wanted to get a Hitchcock reference in there even though I can’t imagine a robber would spend all his time training a flock of attack birds on short notice.

Plus at the very last three chapters, the author shoves Bess, George and Ned into the story to blot the cast and provide some humorous meta jokes about how do they manage to get into another one of Nancy’s crazy cases in less than a minute.

It was like Keene was trying to make it more mysterious parchment to the little Italian boy but it just mae it last longer and I wanted Nancy to wrap it up and reveal how she figured everything out. So not my favorite.

And yep, I finally finished!! The OG series at least. I know it continued onwards but I think I feel satisfied for now in getting to know the wild and convoluted mysteries of the first girl detective. Moreover, the creative mind of the ghostwriter that showed that no plot or locale was too big for Nancy to get her nose in.