The Mystery of the Fire Dragon (1961) is the 38th entry in the Nancy Drew mystery series. This time Nancy is called upon by her Aunt Eloise to investigate the disappearance of a young Chinese woman. The young woman is the granddaughter of Miss Drew's neighbor in her New York City apartment building. It soon becomes apparent that Chi Che has been kidnapped because she stumbled across something in her job at a bookstore that made her dangerous to a certain group of people. Nancy, Bess, and George set out to discover just what Chi Che found out and what these people are up to. The trail leads to Hong Kong--where fortuitously Carson Drew has business to attend to and Ned Nickerson just happens to be studying abroad. There are, in fact, several kidnappings, a couple of impersonations, and (as is to be expected) an exciting escape by Nancy. There are several of the Nancy Drew stories that I read over and over (The Clue of the Broken Locket and The Clue of the Dancing Puppet are two that come to mind). But Fire Dragon was never one of them. I haven't any idea why. It involves a bookshop that contains clues to the mystery. It has Nancy making a daring escape at the end. And--going back and reading it as an adult, I think the use of the mahjong sets as a cover for nefarious activities was quite interesting. Some of the material and viewpoints are a bit dated, but I think the adventure itself holds up rather well. It was a lot of fun revisiting this episode in the Nancy Drew adventures--particularly since I didn't remember every last detail the way I would for several of the stories. ★★★★
I was left with one question at the end of the day: Why did the bad guys steal Grandfather Soong's manuscript? If an explanation for that was given, I totally missed it.
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Finished 7/29/19
Just the Facts Silver: Animal in title
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