Maybe it’s me, but I don’t get the fascination with gypsies. At times I have read books and movies that paint these people in a not-so-favorable light. The prejudice against these groups seems to have waned a bit through the years, but trotting out a book written originally in 1947 can serve to reawaken that awareness.

In The Clue in the Old Album, Nancy Drew is attending a concert when she spots a thief stealing a woman’s purse. She gives chase, but only manages to recover the purse and not its contents. The owner is a doll collector who asks Nancy to help her find her son-in-law. It seems he abandoned his family when his daughter, Rose, was little. Since her daughter’s death, Mrs. Struthers has been raising her granddaughter herself. Rose is a bit wild, and Mrs. Struthers attributes this to her “gypsy blood”.

The mystery has Nancy traveling all over – to doll shows and New York City. It also has her at odds with gypsies who are strong-arming fellow gypsies and others to extort money from them. While trying to find the gypsy violinist Romano Pepito, she also learns that there might be more to a doll stolen from Mrs. Struthers than meets the eye.

Nancy’s friends are back in The Clue in the Old Album but they do little more than tag along on Nancy’s adventure. Poor Ned gets the short shrift once again when Nancy turns a date to a carnival into a quest for the missing violinist, rather than quality time with her dutiful boyfriend. This is par for the course, but usually, Nancy’s best friends, George Fayne and Bess Marvin are a real part of solving the mystery, rather than seeming like they are just tagging along.

The mystery is pretty good. There’s a lot of intrigue and Nancy gets to have a lot of adventures in different places. The newer version (released in 1977) was rewritten a bit, mostly consolidating the story. This is shown in the ending. It wraps up entirely too quickly, going from terrible peril to happily ever after in the space of about a single page. However, the story itself up until this point was pretty good if you can get past the characterization of the gypsies.

That was my biggest problem with the book overall. When there’s something wrong with Rose’s behavior, it has to do with her “gypsy blood”. It seems to be that the majority of gypsies in The Clue in the Old Album are bad people, and the nice ones are few and far between. Even then, those people are strong-armed by the other gypsies. It seems callous and prejudicial to paint a group of people with the same derogatory generalizations. Once again, they seem to be painted with a brush of being thieves and crooked and out for their own benefit monetarily throughout the book. It’s the one part of the book that made me uncomfortable letting my daughter read it.

My daughter enjoyed The Clue in the Old Album quite a bit. She thought it was more action-packed than previous mysteries. The pace never did seem to let up, I agree, and at the same time up until the end, it never felt forced or rushed.

Would I recommend The Clue in the Old Album to others in the 9- to 12-year-old market it’s aimed at? Yes, with a caveat to discuss some of the more offensive characterizations of gypsies contained within. The pace is great. The mystery is pretty compelling. Nancy gets to do some traveling. All in all, it makes for a great read for any girl this age.

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