Nancy Drew Diaries: Danger at the Iron Dragon

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.