The Clue of the Black Keys

The Clue of the Black Keys, was first published in the regular Nancy Drew® series in 1951.

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. Black Keys was published in the Cameo format in 1960 along with 5 others from that 1960 set. Volumes from the 1960 set are harder to find than those from the 1959 set.

The dust jacket featured the art shown at left by Polly Bolian which was also the same art used for the frontispiece. The dust jacket background was yellowish/mustard color. The covers as shown above were yellow and the spine was grey in color. The ribbon holding the Cameo was turquoise and the endpapers featured the same turquoise colored ribbon. The ink-topped pages were also the same turquoise color. 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. I do not have scans yet of the line drawings inside this book but when I do they will be added here.