Girl Detective Forever

AO: Another thing that interested me about Nancy and characters like her is that she never seems to age and so much of her little world stays the same. Girl detective forever. But she keeps solving these new mysteries.

SG: Yes. It’s this weird static never-changing suspension, almost like a Shangri-La. Like a spell has been cast over them in a fairy tale… The cyclic, repetitive nature of those stories was interesting to me.

—An Interview with Sara Gran on Little Mysteries

There is a room I have known since childhood. The room never changes. The walls are crowded with framed photographs and paintings; a desk in the corner bears candles and correspondence, maybe even a secret compartment. A television perches to the right of the majestic fireplace, offering up a fuzzy gray cloud of static if you manage to find the remote. And a soap opera script rests on a table beside a cozy patterned armchair, forever open to the same page.

While my own childhood bedroom is long since lost to time, this is a room to which I can always return. The room exists inside an apartment that belongs to a woman named Eloise. She is the aunt of a detective who I have known for as long as I can remember. I work with this detective to solve mysteries.

Her name, of course, is Nancy Drew.

While I age, Nancy remains a teen girl. There is always a new mystery waiting, and we are compelled to solve it. One after the next after the next, as if by some force that exists outside of us. I admire the fact that Nancy never seems to second-guess her calling. It’s as if she cannot even imagine what it would feel like to want anything other than solving mysteries.

In Nancy’s world there is no question without an answer. Justice exists as something consistent and reliable; it may just need a little push every now and then from a certain girl detective.

I have known Nancy in books and in film and here, these games, the place where our worlds merge and I choose where we go, who we talk to, what we say. And I feel safe here, with Nancy, knowing each story has a natural conclusion. After all, we never give up until the mystery is solved.

But who is Nancy Drew?

My longstanding fascination with the iconic girl detective dovetails nicely with my ongoing interest in adaptation. I’ve watched and read a lot about her recently — trying to understand her, searching for who she is. I feel like I know her, having spent so much time with her over the course of my life, and yet it’s hard to pin her down across all these different stories.

Sometimes Nancy works alone. Other times with Bess and George, or maybe she’s assisted by her boyfriend Ned, or even the Hardy Boys. Her father is a criminal, or her father is a saint. He supports her work or he wants her to stop taking cases. Over the years Nancy has shed her longterm relationship; even her hair changed color. But there is always a mystery.

I like to think that each creator leaves a little piece of themselves behind in art — intentionally or not — so maybe that’s why Nancy keeps shifting. Each new story just one more alternate universe for our beloved girl detective.

I guess that’s the funny thing — amid all these different iterations, I know who she is for me. Practically minded and admirably focused, independent and strong. My patron saint of stringing the clues together to figure out what it all means.

Once I started looking for Nancy in life, I found her everywhere. It’s true that there are certain characters we carry around with us — printed on our tote bags, our book pages, our hearts. And she’s here, too. In a way, everything I write is a mystery. I’m just following the clues.

• A public domain experiment: The first four Nancy Drew books entered the public domain this year, which means they can now be repurposed and reused by today’s creators. I included the opening from The Hidden Staircase in the blackout poetry zine I made for last month’s workshop, and folks had a lot of fun with it! One attendee even decided to embark on a longform blackout poetry project using a Nancy Drew book as her source text.

• Wikipedia rabbit hole of the month: Carolyn Keene is not a real person, but rather a pseudonym shared by the ghostwriters who collectively brought Nancy Drew to life. Nancy’s Wikipedia page is a great starting point for learning the truth about Keene’s identity.

• Book: If the Wikipedia page gets your curiosity going, I’ve been enjoying Melanie Rehak’s Girl Sleuth: Nancy Drew and the Women Who Created Her: an incredibly researched deep-dive into Nancy’s origin story.

• Film & TV: Had the opportunity to check out a few different adaptations via the library this month: 1939’s Nancy Drew… Reporter, 2007’s Nancy Drew, 2019’s Nancy Drew and the Hidden Staircase, and the 2019-2023 Nancy Drew TV show pilot. It’s interesting to see how the character does (or doesn’t!) shift in response to changing times.

• Video games: This Microfascination is very much inspired by all the time I spent playing HeR Interactive’s point-and-click Nancy Drew games growing up. Stay Tuned for Danger was my entrance into the series and will always hold a special place in my heart; other favorites include Danger on Deception Island, Last Train to Blue Moon Canyon, The Phantom of Venice, Ghost of Thornton Hall, and The Silent Spy. A dedicated fanbase exists to this day, with a growing number of players now trying their own hands at game development in effort to create new interactive mysteries that might capture others in a similar manner.

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• A new zine: Begin at the Museum is dedicated to the memory of Ellen Arnstein, a talented zinester/artist/poet/ray of sunshine who left us far too soon. To put it quite simply, Ellen changed my life. I wrote about her a bit here, and I hope you’ll read it.

• Events: May’s Write-in is happening on the 18th! As always, if you’re in Connecticut, come join us at Wesleyan RJ Julia Bookstore to meet fellow writers and get some writing done.

• My birthday was this month! And same as last year, I’d love it if you celebrated by telling someone that you love their art. (I even made a zine to help!)

See y’all again in May!