The Haunted Showboat

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The Haunted Showboat is the thirty-fifth volume in the Nancy Drew mystery series. It was first published in 1957 under the pseudonym Carolyn Keene. The actual author was ghostwriter Harriet Stratemeyer Adams.

[edit] Plot Summary

In this story, Nancy and her friends are to travel to New Orleans during the Mardi Gras season and explore a mystery surrounding an old river showboat. The boat, "River Princess" was beached during a storm and has simply set and rotted since that time. The goal is to move and restore it before Mardi Gras so that a Southern belle can host her engagement party. Strange things have been happening on the boat, leading many to believe that it is haunted. Of course Nancy and her friends delve right into the thick of things, despite the apparent dangers. Their car is stolen and someone is following them trying to scare them off the case.

The story involves old black people who are servants and practice voodoo in the swampland around New Orleans. While they do speak in "black-speak", they are intelligent, proud, capable people and there is no racial stereotyping. One plot element that is an improvement over the 1932 story was when Nancy jumped out of the boat into the Mississippi River to swim for help. Later, she must take a great deal of time to clean the mud off. This is not consistent with the behavior of the Nancy Drew of the 1932 story, where she always seemed to need the intervention of her father. That improves the story dramatically, if Nancy is going to chase criminals, then she must be willing to "get dirty" in the process. Of course, the mystery is solved and the criminals apprehended.

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