"Doggone Town"

Nancy Drew finds a stray. The doggie leads the girl detective to a new mystery, and her boyfriend Ned Nickerson calls shotgun.

Petrucha and Kinney evolve a very complex story that has at its heart a simple motive: Greed. They start the ball rolling with the discovery of the little dog named Togo, and he leads the reader on a merry chase to areas that simply do not make sense.

This mystery stumped me, I must admit. At first I thought the writers were entering The Avengers territory of Bazely-by-the-Sea. Then I thought of "Android Invasion" from Doctor Who when Ned mentions The X-Files; an inside joke thanks to Petrucha's involvement with the comic book tie-in. Finally I concluded that Nancy was entering the "Finny-Foot Affair" from The Man from UNCLE. In the end I conceded.

The mystery, while not going as far as those three other series did, takes Nancy to unexplored regions. The clues add up, and it's fascinating to watch how the story develops. The twists and turns all seem outré, but they fit the geography of the story.

Even if you find that the mystery doesn't crystallize the way it should, Petrucha's and Kinney's characterization for Togo, Ned and Nancy, as well as the cousins Bess and George who all too briefly appear, are bound to shine in the reader's eyes.

The key to believing that the culprit was capable of perpetuating all of the trappings of the crime lies in the energetic performance and the almost Disney like design artist Rachel Ito bestows. If not for the character's desperation and animation I doubt Petrucha and Kinney would have been able to convey such substance to the enigma.

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