When competition for lucrative prizes ranging from money to placement on the Olympic Team escalates to the point where one desperate participant drugs horses at the River Heights Horse Show, Nancy, Bess and George track clues to identify the culprit. Simultaneous.
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Before I get to the meat of this review, I'd like to preface by saying a couple of things. First, I am somewhat older than the intended demographic for this book. However, I did grow up reading Nancy Drew books. Because of my age, I am also more experienced with mystery novels that I would imagine the intended demographic is. I don't really think that should matter though, because I think a well crafted mystery is a well crafted mystery no matter what age it's directed towards.
This book is significantly better than the previous two in the series. Nancy knows what the case is she's sleuthing and there's fewer blatant contradictions - though I still have a knee-jerk reaction to Nancy and Co. using ‘red herring' unironically to mean coincidence.
That being said: Nancy isn't a very good sleuth in this book. About halfway through I latched on to the culprit and there were two or three distinct moments after that that the culprit seemed to be waving a big red banner above their head saying ‘me! I dunnit' and Nancy just... willfully ignores their suspicious behavior.
(I think I should grab a few of the older - maybe even the few yellow hardcovers I've still got - Nancy Drew books, because I seriously remember her being a lot better at the sleuthing aspect than this.)
Other notes:
It was nice to see the parental Nickerson's - I don't ever remember Ned parents even being mentioned in a series before. As such, it was also nice to see parents that weren't either absent or incompetent.
The major impression of the title is somewhat misleading and, to me, screams that it's attempting to capitalize on the popularity of ‘Secret of Shadow Ranch.' A more accurate title would have been ‘Mystery of Midnight's Rider' but it doesn't have the same level of interest and excitement in the wording. (And also looks grammatically incorrect, but actually isn't.)
All in all, not a terrible choice to listen to while I was at work today - and it has also left me a little more interested in continuing the series.
