The Clue in the Diary is the seventh volume in the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories series, and was first published in 1932 under the pseudonym Carolyn Keene. Its text was revised in 1962.

This is the last manuscript Mildred Wirt Benson wrote in her initial run. She would return for volume 11, The Clue of the Broken Locket, and remain with the series until 1948, then return for a final ghostwrite in 1953.

Summary (original edition)

In The Clue in the Diary, a half-charred diary rescued from a factory fire’s ashes sends Nancy Drew spiraling into a Depression-era world of industrial sabotage and stolen dreams. Penned by Mildred Wirt Benson as Carolyn Keene, the story ignites when Nancy witnesses the blazing destruction of the Felmer Chemical Works, pulling a water-stained leather journal from the wreckage just before the fire hose spray would have obliterated its cryptic contents. The diary’s frantic entries belong to missing chemist Felix Raybolt, whose scrawled formulas and increasingly paranoid margin notes suggest his revolutionary fertilizer discovery attracted deadly attention.

Nancy’s investigation becomes a journey through the stark contrasts of 1930s America—from the soot-stained tenements where laid-off factory workers whisper about Raybolt’s disappearance, to the manicured estates of chemical company executives who seem oddly eager to declare the man dead. She deciphers his coded entries hidden in mundane shopping lists, recognizing how measurements for “2 cups sugar” actually describe chemical ratios, and discovers the heartbreaking final page addressed to his daughter Anna: a warning about roses that won’t bloom, written in trembling script as if the pen had been clutched by a terrified hand.

The diary’s physical condition tells its own story—water warped pages preserving impressions of missing banknotes, acid burns suggesting someone tried to destroy specific formulas, and peculiar indentations revealing Raybolt kept a second, now missing notebook. Nancy’s forensic examination of the journal leads her to a boarded-up greenhouse where experimental plants still struggle toward sunlight years after their caretaker vanished, and ultimately to a chilling confrontation in the ruins of the factory basement, where the true reason for the fire becomes horrifyingly clear.

This 1932 original stands as one of the series’ most socially conscious cases, its pages steeped in the era’s economic desperation. Unlike later revisions, it retains Nancy’s dangerous masquerade as a factory girl to interview workers, and the unflinching scene where she finds Anna Raybolt scrubbing floors to pay her father’s alleged debts, her reddened hands still tending his beloved roses in what little spare time she has. The diary itself becomes a testament to persistence—its surviving fragments holding truths that fire and water failed to erase, much like Nancy’s determination to see justice bloom from the ashes of corporate greed.

Nancy Drew #7 – The Clue in the Diary First Edition Book Identification Guide

Only the first few printings of the first/second year are included. Printings codes are based on the Farrah Guide, 12th printing. Please refer to the guide for later printings.

Note: Glossy+: Glossy frontis + 3 glossy internals.

Nancy Drew #7 –The Clue in the Diary First Edition Dust Jacket Identification Guide

ao: Among other titles.

Reference:

• Farah’s Guide to Nancy Drew, 12th printing