The Secret of the Old Clock

The Secret of the Old Clock, was first published in the regular Nancy Drew® series--in 1930. By 1959, it had been revised by Harriet Adams and the Cameo version is the revision. Originally, it was written by Mildred Wirt Benson, who wrote 23 of the original text Nancy Drew® books. Velvet Mask was her 23rd and the last volume she wrote for this series and was the first volume chosen for the Cameos.

In 1959, the Nancy Drew Readers Club premiered and its promotional volume was Velvet Mask. Since it was the promotional volume it is more widely available than the other 12 cameo editions. It only cost club members 10¢, while other volumes each month would be $1.49 each. Old Clock was published in the Cameo format in 1960 along with 5 others from that 1960 set. It is one of the hardest to find Cameo editions in dust jacket or without dust jacket.

The dust jacket featured the art shown at left by Polly Bolian which was also the same art used for the frontispiece. The background color of the dust jacket was a yellowish/mustard color. The covers as shown above were grey and the spine was sea green in color. The ribbon holding the Cameo was turquoise and the endpapers featured the same turqoise colored ribbon. The ink-topped pages were turqoise in color to match the ribbon. Shown below are the endpapers and an ad for the cameo editions:

There were 8 line drawings throughout the text on two pages each. The text started on page 7 and due to the larger size of the pages the pages do not match up the same with the regular book version. Click on the thumbnails below to view these fine drawings by Polly Bolian:

Pgs 28-29	Pgs 44-45	Pgs 80-81	Pgs 102-103
Pgs 120-121	Pgs 132-133	Pgs 166-167	Pgs 186-187