I’ve never read a Nancy Drew book (or, for that matter, the Hardy Boys), but it didn’t keep me from greatly enjoying GIRL SLEUTH: NANCY DREW AND THE WOMEN WHO CREATED HER, Melanie Rehak’s history of the kiddie-lit pop-culture phenomenon.
Nancy Drew, of course, was the teenage good-girl sleuth who starred in a string of successful “fifty-cent juveniles.” Created by children’s book mogul Edward Stratemeyer in the late 1920s, she made her debut in 1930, barely escaping being saddled with the name Stella Strong. Speaking of names, the books were credited to Carolyn Keene, but that was merely a house pen name for Mildred Wirt, a stay-at-home mom who managed to crank out manuscripts at a breakneck pace despite all her other obligations (and eventual tragedies). She’s the unsung hero of the whole Nancy Drew affair – a wrong GIRL SLEUTH seeks to right.
Though a hit from the start, the series was waylaid by a one-two punch soon after its debut, with the onset of the Great Depression and then Stratemeyer succumbing to pneumonia. This left Nancy – as well as his other properties, like The Hardy Boys and The Bobbsey Twins – in the hands of his daughters, Harriet and Edna. Though lacking business backgrounds, they inherited a readymade cash cow. However, the arrangement soon would cause irreparable damage in their sisterhood.
Much of GIRL SLEUTH reads like a mystery, as one wonders how the Keene pseudonym became exposed, how Wirt came to prominence and how Harriet managed to keep things afloat despite a slew of bad business decisions, including selling off all movie rights rather than by the book, and taking out expensive ads in Playboy to decry the magazine’s nude pictorial of Pamela Sue Martin, then the freshly ex-Nancy Drew of a short-lived TV show.
Harriet comes off as both shrewd and prude; Wirt a bit naive and loyal to a fault. Somehow, these two managed to bring Nancy Drew to life, thereby bringing joy to the hearts and minds of generations of American girls. Aside from an overly lengthy account of the ladies’ college educations and women’s rights issues at the time, which causes Rehak’s magnifying glass to lose its focus temporarily, GIRL SLEUTH is an engaging and lively chronicle of one of publishing’s most enduring icons. –Rod Lott
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