Danger at the Iron Dragon is the 21st book in the
Nancy Drew Diaries series. It is a children’s mystery series by Carolyn Keene
with a more modern spin on Nancy Drew from the older Nancy Drew book series.
When Nancy Drew takes jiu-jitsu lessons at the Iron Dragon,
someone spray-paints TRAITOR on the wall and leaves a dead rat. Is this a
threat to one of the students, or something more sinister? That is what Nancy
Drew intends to find out.
The book has an interesting mystery and great suspense. One
terrible but not so dangerous threat is followed up by another more heinous
crime, raising the stakes. With the help of her friends, Bess and George, Nancy
puts the pieces together, and it is interesting to read how she finds clues.
Some twists surprised me but upon reflection made sense and explained clues and
some loose ends I did not consider. Bess and George were humorous and made me
smile at times. I liked how Bess took a liking to Jiu-Jitsu even more than
Nancy and George did, surprising Nancy and George.
The characters such as Carly and Coach Ethan were enjoyable,
and I appreciated their personalities. Ethan is tough but also kind to his
students, and Carly is a hardworking jiu-jitsu student who is nice and is the
one who invites Nancy to take lessons at the Iron Dragon. The villains were
well written too. I had suspected the villain to be evil, but I was surprised
by how calculating the villain turned out to be.
I appreciated how Nancy was trying to help her community in
the book. She works at a soup kitchen, and she also manages to get more people
to help the River Heights community later in the story. This added some depth
to her character. I also enjoyed the first-person perspective in this book.
One negative thing is that Nancy Drew and her friend Bess
lie when they go to an opposing jiu-jitsu place called Lockdown to see if there
are suspects there. Nancy and Bess lie about their names to avoid drawing
attention to themselves. Nancy lies again to try to get into a crime scene that
occurs at the Iron Dragon, and then she disobeys police orders and sneaks into
a crime scene when no one is looking. She also finds and takes evidence from
the area, fearing the officers would take it before she could get to it. While
it is understandable that Nancy is a detective and needs clues to solve the
mystery, it is never right to lie. Removing evidence from a crime scene is
illegal, and it could compromise a case. I think characters like Carly could
have used more depth, but perhaps it was because the book is brief and is
focused on solving the mystery.
Overall, I enjoyed this book, and I would recommend it to children.
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