The Phantom of Nantucket: 08/15/18

The Phantom of Nantucket by Carolyn Keene is the seventh book of the Nancy Drew Diaries series. Nancy and friends are in Nantucket for a vacation and to visit Bess's long time friend Jenna. She has an exhibit opening soon at the local whaling museum but everything seems to be going wrong: pieces are missing, other things are being sabotaged, and Jenna's afraid her job is on the line.

There's something about Nantucket (and similar Atlantic Coast locations) that inspires writers to tell certain kinds of stories. There has to be a lighthouse. There has to be a museum or a library. There has to be missing treasure. There has to ghosts or mysterious disappearances. The ghosts can either be real (such as in the Missing Pieces series by Joyce and Jim Lavene or they are red herrings such as in Lighthouse Library Mysteries by Eva Gates.

Book seven, written for upper elementary school readers uses all of the conventions and probably for most of the intended audience, these tropes will be new. For me, they were more like a well lit roadmap to unravel the plot well before it happened. I still enjoyed the book; I love the dynamics of Nancy and her friends, but the book held no surprises for me like previous ones did.

Three stars

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