Nancy Drew

Created by: Carolyn Keene
First Appearance: April 1930

Nancy Drew is the kind-hearted and clever amateur sleuth that solves the mysteries that lies within her good 'ol hometown of River Heights with the help of her attorney father and her friends.

Her character is a bit complicated to discuss since there have been multiple iterations of her throughout the decades and the only core thing they kept consistent is her curiosity and passion to solve mysteries but besides that she's pretty much almost a different character for each iteration. This is because Nancy's supposed creator Carolyn Keene is actually a pseudonym for a group of ghostwriters. The concept of the character actually came from Edward Stratemeyer, who also created the Hardy Boys which is a series made for young boys and so, Nancy Drew was created as an equivalent for young girls. The early books were written by several writers, a huge chunk of the first half is by Mildred Wirt and the latter half by Harriet Stratemeyer Adams, daughter of Edward Stratemeyer.

Nancy Drew ended up becoming quite a hit especially for its target audience and even outshone its sibling, the Hardy Boys and from then on, different ghostwriters took over for later iterations of the character, adapting and making her fit with the different decades which is why there's countless Nancy Drew books making it a bit of a nightmare to collect. For now, I'll be focusing on the most accessible series in my area which is the 56 yellow-bound Grosset & Dunlap stories revised by Harriet Stratemeyer Adams since there were some racial stereotypes and Nancy was apparently more headstrong and rash in the original editions so the revision censored those stereotypes and made Nancy more prim and proper which honestly makes her feel a bit Mary Sue-ish and kind of boring to read. However, I am on the lookout for the other more modern Nancy Drew books since I'm curious to read them as well. I'll most likely create a different sub-section in the books if ever I found one.

Books

there are 56 Grosset & Dunlap Nancy Drew books

The Secret of the Old Clock

Book #1

FINISHED

Nancy meets the Turners after helping their little niece, Judy. They are a struggling family and was hoping their rich relative, Josiah Crowley, would help them. However, his last will stated that his wealth would go to the snobbish Tophams, another family who took him in. Nancy meets other relatives and friends of Crowley who were financially struggling and learns that Crowley promised to help all of them and that he intended to create a new will. Nancy then searches for this new will to help Crowley's poor relatives.

This was kind of boring... the first chunk of the book is quite repetitive as it's just Nancy meeting the relatives and learning their struggles and there's like 3 or so families so it really takes a while. This book is also intended for kids as it reads like a 60s cartoon kids show especially with how much of a girl scout Nancy is. The whole title is also pretty much a spoiler so there's not much intrigue either to the main mystery... i do like how the main motivation is pretty much Nancy wanting to redistribute the wealth to the lower class families. i guess Nancy Drew's a true proletariat icon XD