Fall is here and so is the Fall Festival that River Heights Elementary puts on to raise money. Every kid in town has been working hard to earn money to buy themselves tickets for games, rides and goodies to eat. In Nancy Drew and The Clue Crew’s Ticket Trouble by Carolyn Keene the girls find themselves on the job again. Nancy and her friends have worked just as hard to earn their tickets as everyone else so when their friend Ned finds that his tickets have gone missing they just can’t turn down the case. They promise Ned that they will find his tickets before the end of the day, when the fair closes until next year.

With her notebook in hand, Nancy and the girls start looking for clues and possible suspects but there really isn’t a whole lot to go on. The three of them do remember seeing Deirdre and two of her friends with more tickets in their hands than anyone could ever really use. But why would Deirdre steal Ned’s tickets when her parents giver anything and everything that she wants?

The only clues they have to work with is the tickets themselves and a scratch mark that was left on the flat surface where the tickets were sitting. If the girls do find Ned’s tickets, they’ll know for sure because Ned wrote “NN” on the backside of each and every one of them. The girls split up to find Deirdre and her friends to try and sneak a peek at their tickets and ask some questions. To keep Ned busy, each one of the girls takes turns offering him one of their tickets to go grab some goodies. The first place Nancy heads is over to the tree where she saw Deirdre and her friends hanging out last.

Nancy, George and Bess are one step closer to solving the missing tickets case when under the tree where Deirdre and her friends were, she finds a ticket on the ground. It is ripped in half just like all the rest when you use them to get on the rides at the fair. On the back of the ticket Nancy finds the letter “N” and knows who the ticket belonged to, Ned. Buy why would a ticket he already used be all the way out under the tree? Time is running out and people are starting to head home for the evening. Nancy better work hard so The Clue Crew doesn’t let Ned down and break a promise.