Longtime Nancy Drew fans looking to see how Ms. Drew fares with modern technology will be disappointed to read how stiff and dated her adventures come across in The E-Mail Mystery. Although the book is barely fifteen, the slow and careful attempts to explain the Internet seemed to have aged at three times the pace. Granted, some credit is due to author Carolyn Keene, who published this story when mass home use of internet was still relatively new and certainly thought that she would be introducing many of these topics to her readers. She takes time to cover considerable ground regarding internet safety, reminding the readers several times to protect phone numbers, addresses, passwords, etc from strangers. Unfortunately, time has flown since Nancy uncovered The E-Mail Mystery’s culprit, and today’s audience is far too savvy and impatient to wait for Nancy to discover what is clear to them within the first 30 pages of the story.
Much of The E-Mail Mystery takes place in Nancy’s father’s law office, where she is helping him with filing while she investigates a slew of her father’s clients that had hurriedly decided to settle their cases. Sadly, even if the technological aspects of the story were up to date, the rhythm would still feel bland and the intrigue would largely remain missing. The premise reaches remarkable heights of silliness when the story’s villain makes a cliched proclamation akin to, “...But you’ll never catch me!” before, sorry to say, getting caught. ( )