This version tells essentially the same story, eliminating some detail and subplots, downplaying Nancy's initial response to Ned, eliminating a country club dance not essential to the plot, and adding a new subplot involving mail fraud. Raybolt, it turns out, swindles inventors like Swenson out of their patents and copyrights, and used one such invention to start the fire. To top it all off, the owner of the burned house, Felix Raybolt, is missing, and his wife claims Joe Swenson has murdered her husband. Swenson's husband is missing, and she identifies his diary as the one picked up at the fire. Ned proves to be a good friend, and is a perennial admirer of Nancy's from then on. At first suspicious of Ned Nickerson, Nancy warms to him when he helps her out of a jam. She picks up this clue, and as firefighters and gawkers arrive on the scene, she notices an attractive young man moving her car away from the flying embers. In doing so, Nancy sees someone fleeing the property, and discovers an anonymous Swedish diary on the ground. The girls park the car and make sure that no one is trapped inside.

Swenson, and her daughter, whom the girls have just helped to enjoy the carnival attractions by being their hosts for the evening.Īs they are driving, a luxurious roadside estate bursts into flames.

Nancy and her friends Bess and George, on their way home from a carnival, discuss a financially struggling Swedish immigrant, Mrs. She would return for volume 11, The Clue of the Broken Locket, and remain with the series until 1948, then return for a final ghostwrite in 1953. This is the last manuscript Mildred Wirt Benson wrote in her initial run. The Clue in the Diary is the seventh volume in the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories series, and was first published in 1932 under the pseudonym Carolyn Keene.

Nancy drew the clue in the diary