Super Sleuth

My only reservation about the wonderful Nancy Drew is the soft spot she has for Ned Nickerson.

 

Nancy goes to the movies

Tots to Teens
By DAPHNE LEE

WHEN I was 11, RTM started airing the The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries television series. The first episode, I remember, was shown on the day my family and I moved into a new house. I was in despair because our TV wasn’t hooked up yet and I would miss the show. Luckily, my sister arranged for me to watch the programme at a neighbour’s house.

Pamela Sue Martin (who went on to act in hugely popular soap, Dynasty) was Nancy Drew. She was totally unlike how I had imagined the teenage amateur detective, but I grew to like her and didn’t miss a single episode of the series. (I can still hum the series theme!)

I started reading Nancy Drew mysteries when I was about nine. My sister had a few hardcover 1960s editions, published by Grosset and Dunlap. On the covers, Nancy is depicted as a buxom strawberry-blonde with a tiny waist and a frequently surprised expression – probably because she is often shown happening upon a clue or some shocking revelation.

The Clue in the Old Stagecoach was a favourite, as was The Secret in the Old Attic. I re-read those books goodness knows how many times, and I recently bought re-issues of those titles, the covers sporting the original artwork.

I used to study the list of Nancy Drew mysteries that was printed on the back of every book and wish I owned the complete set. The titles were intriguing, verging on the creepy, promising all sorts of thrilling adventures involving mysterious masked men, spooky houses, cobwebby rooms, antique jewellery and haunted artefacts. The Secret of Shadow Ranch, The Hidden Staircase, The Ghost of Blackwood Hall, The Spider Sapphire Mystery, The Witch Tree Symbol ... to this day, those titles make my spine tingle.

The reason for this trip down memory lane is, of course, the new Nancy Drew film. It stars Emma Roberts (niece of Julia and daughter of Eric) as Nancy. Although the movie is set in the Noughties, its heroine dresses like a preppy teen from the 1960s. (She doesn’t quite fill out a sweater in the same way those illustrated Nancys do on the book covers, though.)

The movie is called, can you believe it, Nancy Drew! That, in my opinion, is just lame. Nancy Drew? Sorry, but no, I don’t feel any tingles, anywhere! Admittedly, the book titles got progressively more boring from the 57th mystery onwards (the original series ended at No. 175). As for the subsequent series (The Nancy Drew Files), titles like Secrets Can Kill, High Marks for Malice and Scent of Danger seem to be inspired by episodes of 1980s TV detective series like Remington Steel and Murder, She Wrote.

Nancy has always, however, been clever, pretty, well-dressed, brave and good-hearted. It seems, though, that in the first 34 books, Nancy is rather less levelheaded than she appears in later books.

Of course, it’s now common knowledge that the Nancy Drew novels were not written by a woman called Carolyn Keene, but by several people using that name. Nancy Drew was, in fact, a product of the Stratemeyer Syndicate, the same book-packaging company that that produced the Hardy Boys books.

Book-packaging companies are sometimes used by publishers to write, edit, illustrate, research and even print books. They act like middlemen between the publishers and writers, illustrators and editors.

For example, a publisher might come up with a story idea and then leave it to the book-packaging company to find an author or authors to turn the idea into a book or series of books. Some book-packaging companies also generate their own story ideas. Famous series that are the products of book-packagers include Sweet Valley High and Goosebumps.

Large-volume series are more often than not written by a whole stable of writers. The stories are formulaic and the characters usually stay strictly in character throughout the series.

Nancy Drew does change quite a bit through the various books, though. In The Nancy Drew Files and Nancy Drew, Girl Detective, she is portrayed as impulsive and impatient. She reverts to her sassy, flippant self, from the first books, and is even known to take boyfriend Ned for granted. In fact, in Files, she and Ned argue a great deal and break up a few times in the course of the series. 

In the movie, Nancy is back to being calm, cool, collected and super nice. It hasn’t opened here yet but the novelisation makes her out to be something of a freak. I’m not sure how old she’s supposed to be but she looks 14 or thereabouts, and resembles a performing monkey, an over-achieving teen in fancy dress, not the capable young woman of the classic series.

In those books, Nancy had a wide range of useful and practical skills, which she used with flair and efficiency. You would never have caught her carving a near-perfect model of the Notre Dame de Paris in woodwork and then remarking that she had only time for 12 flying buttresses (the actual cathedral has 26). The “real” Nancy, no matter how many people had a hand in her creation, has more class.