The first book I read for Nancy Drew November was The Mystery of The Fire Dragon. The cover of this one caught my attention a while ago, so I was excited when I was able to get a copy of it and start it.

This one takes Nancy and her friends (Bess Marvin and George Fayne) first to New York City and then Hong Kong, to investigate the disappearance of a young Chinese-American woman named Chi-Che Soong.

Chi Che’s grandfather, Mr. Soong, doesn’t know his granddaughter is missing. He thinks she’s gone on a trip with friends, so he buries himself in writing a manuscript about – actually I don’t remember what the manuscript about, but I think it was about Chinese artifacts or something.

Chi-Che worked at a bookstore of antique books when she disappeared. Nancy wants to help her aunt Eloise, Mr. Soong’s neighbor, find out what happened.

At the same time, her lawyer father, Carson Drew, is preparing for a trip to Hong Kong and wants to take Nancy along.  He sends her to New York to help his sister first though because he won’t be leaving for a week. I often wonder, by the way, where Carson Drew is going to investigate cases because sometimes the books don’t say. I always imagine he’s actually the lawyer for the CIA or something and is on big spy cases. I find it weird he often sends Nancy to solve cases on her own while he goes to investigate something else. She is often sent into very dangerous situations with just herself and her friends and this one is no different.

Anyhow, as soon as Nancy and her friends arrive at Aunt Eloise’s someone sets a large firecracker off in the apartment building hallway. Nancy and her friends try to find who did it but are unable to.

While at her aunt’s, Nancy notices how much her friend George Fayne, looks like the photos of Chi Che. She decides it will be a good idea to have George dress as her and then take her to the college campus and see if anyone thinks she is Chi Che and acts suspicious.

They will eventually meet one of Chi Che’s friends who is confused when she thinks Chi Che is on campus because Chi Che also told her she was traveling. The friend, Lili Allis, will work with Nancy and her friends by taking a job at the bookstore where Chi Che used to work.

Nancy is knocked out at least once in every book and this one is no different when she gets hit in the head with a flowerpot that falls out of a three-story window during this one. Ouch.

A friend, who studied Nancy Drew books in college told me that the Stratemeyer Syndicate only allowed for one knock out per character and only for a certain number of minutes. That absolutely cracked me up. I don’t care what the rule was, Nancy Drew definitely had some major brain damage from all the hits she took to her head over the years.

Eventually, Nancy’s investigation leads her to Hong Kong to search for the missing girl and find out if she found out about a crime that was going on in New York.

Two boons to her having to travel to Hong Kong for this case is that she will travel with her dad and that she will be able to meet up with her boyfriend Ned Nickerson who is studying at a college in Hong Kong. So many coincidences in this one — like Ned going to college there and when Mr. Soong’s brother is actually the ex-police chief in Shanghai so Nancy can meet up with him when she travels to Hong Kong.

I really enjoyed the history in this one. It was released in 1961 and mentions a lot of history about Hong Kong and China which I believe is accurate, though I didn’t look all of it up to double check. What I did look up is when China received control of Hong Kong again after British rule. In this book, the island is still controlled by Great Britain and the people have a great deal of freedom. The control of island went back to China in 1997, though I thought it was much later.

While Hong Kong was able to remain mainly separate from China even after control was handed back, the People’s Republic of China has begun to assert more control in the last five years.

The relationship between Ned and Nancy is cute with Ned always excited when her sleuthing stops and they can spend time together.

Some of the history was dropped while Nancy and Ned were spending time together. At one point they take in a Chinese opera and then visit a houseboat restaurant in a village called Aberdeen, which I thought was odd since it sounded Scottish.

I did look this up online and there is a real Aberdeen on the southwest side of the Island of Hong Kong. It is a fishing village and features a floating village and floating restaurants. It turns out the town is named after the former UK Prime Minister, George Hamilton-Gordon, 4^th Earl of Aberdeen, which explains the name.

There is a scene where Ned and Nancy visit the floating village and unlike other books that don’t focus as much on descriptions, there is a more lengthy description of the village and the lights and how beautiful it all is. This makes me think that whomever the ghost writer for this book was, had visited Hong Kong at some point.

There are some rather “odd” sections in this book, such as when Grandpa Soong asks George and Bess if they believe in transference.

“They both admitted that they did. Then Grandpa Soong said” There are men in this world who are more dangerous than fire dragons. I am sure my Chi Che is being held by one or more of them and really was calling out in her thoughts to me and Miss Drew for help.”

Mmmmmkaaaay.

I also  didn’t understand the end of the book and why Chi Che was found where she was (maybe I’ve read too many darker mysteries and figured that in reality the ‘bad guys’ would have just killed her) but it was still an intriguing mystery with a lot of interesting characters.

I seem to like the books where Nancy travels out of the country or away from River Heights more than those that take place in River Heights. I think that is because the books away from River Heights feel more rounded or flushed out due to the addition of historical elements.

Another one of my favorites, before this one, was The Case of The Whistling Bagpipes, which took Nancy to Scotland.

I know a lot of my blog followers have not read Nancy Drew before but if you have read this one, let me know in the comments.

I enjoyed what Avery from True Drew Podcast had to say about this episode too. You can find that here.