Girl Sleuth: Nancy Drew and the Women Who Created Her » (Reprint)

MELANIE REHAK's Girl Sleuth: Nancy Drew and the Women Who Created Her earned both Edgar and Agatha Awards. She has written for the New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, and others; her column on food books, “Paper Palate,” appears in Bookforum.

In 1930 a plucky girl detective stepped out of her shiny blue roadster, dressed in a smart tweed suit, ready to restore a stolen inheritance to its rightful owner. Tied up by the villains, she managed to free herself and bring them to justice - all while wearing a pencil skirt and high heels. Eighty million books later, Nancy Drew has survived the Depression, World War II, and the sixties (when she was taken up with a vengeance by women's libbers), and emerged as beloved by girls today as she was by their grandmothers. Now, in a narrative with all the fast-paced thrill of one of Nancy's adventures, Melanie Rehak solves a page-turning literary mystery: Who created Nancy Drew? And how did she go from pulp heroine to American icon?

With ebullience, wit, and a wealth of little-known source material, Rehak weaves a behind-the-scenes history of Nancy and her groundbreaking creators. Taking us from The Secret of the Old Clock to The Secret of the Spa, Rehak tells all about our fearless sleuth - including the fact that both Nancy and her "author," Carolyn Keene, were invented by Edward Stratemeyer, a dime-novel genius who also created the Bobbsey Twins and the Hardy Boys. But Nancy Drew was actually brought to life by two remarkable women: original author Mildred Wirt Benson, a convention-flouting Midwestern journalist, and Harriet Stratemeyer Adams, a wife and mother who transformed herself into a CEO to run her father's company after he died. Together, Benson and Adams created a character that has inspired generations of girls to be as strong-willed and as bold as they were.

Melanie Rehak will send you back to your old Nancy Drews—but thanks to GIRL SLEUTH you'll never read them the same way again.

The New York Times - Kate Arthur

As a literary biography, Girl Sleuth is necessarily tangled, since the Nancy Drew mysteries, now 75 years old, had numerous parents. But Rehak does a terrific job of bringing to life the writers and editors who constituted Carolyn Keene, the pseudonymous author of the series.

The Stratemeyer Clan 1

Mildred 33

Alma Mater 48

Hawkeye Days 73

Nell Cody, Helen Hale, Diana Dare 90

Nancy Drew Land 110

Syndicate for Sale 126

An Unfortunate Break; or, The Cleveland Writer Comes into Her Own 140

Motherhood and Nancy Drew 168

"They Are Nancy" 197

The Kids Are Hep 224

Nancy in the Age of Aquarius 254

Will the Real Carolyn Keene Please Stand Up? 288

Acknowledgments 315
Notes 318
Bibliography 351
Index 355