Created by Caroline Keene, and first published in 1930, Nancy Drew Mystery Stories have sold over 70 million copies and become a cherished part of our cultural landscape.The teenage sleuth has been a noted inspiration for generations of women, including Sonia Sotomayor, Sandra Day O’Connor, Hillary Clinton, and me!
Nancy Drew novels are the first novels I remember reading independently, and I think I began at around first grade. Her stories were just scary and dangerous enough, and over the years I read and reread them many times. I consider myself lucky because my mother read them first, and her mother used to buy her one sometimes when they took the trolly to the bank to deposit my grandfather’s paycheck. The books were expensive for my grandparents, and so my mother wasn’t able to collect the whole set, but she did get quite a few, and she was very generous with them, first loaning them to her friends as a child, and then to the local high school girls who used to babysit my brother and me, and then I read them. When I got my own apartment as an adult, two things from home went with me, the family dog, and the Nancy Drews. Lucky for me, my sister was never interested in either!
Nancy, what a great woman. Nancy was very smart (I always wanted to be very smart!), and she was kind, and a busybody, but in a good way. She was also wealthy, generous, and a great friend to both Bess and George. Nancy dressed well, had a convertible (I’m still waiting for mine Nancy!), and a dapper boyfriend.
I’ll share an interesting bit of trivia from my association with Nancy Drew. When I was getting my BA my college decided that all students (no matter their major) in their junior year, would have to take an English exam, and if they didn’t pass it, they would have to repeat freshman composition ( a fate worse than death!). The funny thing was, it wasn’t a writing exam, it was a vocabulary test. And it was chock full of words like divan and consommé and luncheon and vacuous; words I knew, because of Nancy Drew (or, more correctly, Caroline Keene). In my graduating class, among the other English majors, I was the only one who passed the test on the first try. Thank you Nancy!
Carolyn Keene is the pseudonym of the authors of the Nancy Drew mystery stories and The Dana Girls mystery stories (also a favorite of mine!), both produced by the Stratemeyer Syndicate. Edward Stratemeyer, the founder of the Syndicate, hired writers, beginning with Mildred Wirt Benson, to write the manuscripts for the Nancy Drew books. The writers were required by their contract to give up all rights to the work and to maintain confidentiality. Benson is credited as the primary writer of Nancy Drew books under the pseudonym Carolyn Keene. Harriet Adams (Edward Stratemeyer’s daughter) added new titles after the retirement of Benson. Also involved in the Nancy Drew writing process were Harriet Stratemeyer Adams’s daughters, who gave input on the series and sometimes helped to choose book titles, and the Syndicate’s secretary, Harriet Otis Smith, who invented the characters of Nancy’s friends Bess and George.
Are you the next Caroline Keene? Hawkshaw Press is seeking a great woman detective writer, and it could be you!
“Miss Marple is a white-haired old lady with a gentle, appealing manner — Miss Weatherby is a mixture of vinegar and gush. Of the two Miss Marple is much more dangerous.” The Murder at the Vicarage
Miss Marple first came into being in 1927 in The Tuesday Night Club, a short story pulled together into the collection The Thirteen Problems. It was first published in the December 1927 issue of Royal Magazine. Christie never expected Miss Marple to rival Poirot in the public’s affections, but since the publication of The Murder at the Vicarage in 1930, Marple’s first full length novel, readers were hooked.
While Agatha Christie acknowledged that her grandmother had been a huge influence on the character, she writes that Miss Marple was “far more fussy and spinsterish than my grandmother ever was. But one thing she did have in common with her – though a cheerful person, she always expected the worst of everyone and everything, and was, with almost frightening accuracy, usually proved right.” Mellowing with appearances (if not with age) Miss Marple graced twelve novels and twenty short stories during her career as an amateur detective, never paid and not always thanked. The Miss Marple of The Thirteen Problems is decidedly more shrewish and Victorian than the later character, who is often more forgiving.
Agatha Christie is one of the prime influences of my reading life. She wrote 66 detective novels, and I believe I read them all. I guess one of my favorites would actually be, By the Pricking of My Thumbs, which is a Tommy and Tuppence mystery. I always loved all Christie’s characters, including another one you may not have heard of, Ariadne Oliver, a writer friend of Hercule Poirot, she is large-bosomed and eats quite a lot of apples. I often imagined myself turning into a sort of Ariadne Oliver when I got old.
But, back to Miss Marple. A Miss Marple novel I particularly liked was The Mirror Cracked from Side to Side (and then she died! soooo scary!). It included Miss Marple’s cleaner, Cherry, and I always loved their relationship, as well as Miss Marple’s relationship with her nephew, Raymond. Miss Marple is always very proper, but also kind and wants the best for others, and she reminds me quite a lot of a dear and wonderful nun I once worked for.
The thing about Miss Marple is that she shows her readers that anyone, no matter how small that person’s life may seem, no matter how unimportant to the hustle and bustle of the world he or she may be, can still have a lot to contribute and be quite smart as well, often the smartest person in the room!
Raise a glass of sherry, but only a small one mind you, to Miss Marple.
Are you the next Agatha Christie? Hawkshaw Press is seeking a great woman detective writer, and it could be you!
Thanks so much for your interest in Hawkshaw Press. Why not take a read of our very first book, Charlotte, being serialized for free on author Stan Charnofsky’s blog?
Subscribe to Stan’s blog to get a notice every time a new chapter posts!
Interested in getting the second book in the series, Accident, for free? Use our CONTACT page to request a blogger copy!
Celebrating women today by thinking about some women detective novelists I have loved.
Margery Louise Allingham (20 May 1904 – 30 June 1966) was an English novelist from the “Golden Age of Detective Fiction,” best remembered for her hero, the gentleman sleuth Albert Campion.
Margery Allingham
Agatha Christie 15 September 1890 – 12 January 1976) is called the best selling author of all time, and is best known for her detective novels, short story collections, plays and famous detective sleuths Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple.
Agatha Christie
Sue Taylor Grafton (April 24, 1940 – December 28, 2017) was an American author of detective novels. She is best known as the author of the “alphabet series” (“A” Is for Alibi, etc.) featuring private investigator Kinsey Millhone in the fictional city of Santa Teresa, California.
Sue Grafton
PD James: Phyllis Dorothy James, Baroness James of Holland Park, OBE, FRSA, FRSL (3 August 1920 – 27 November 2014), known professionally as P. D. James, was an English novelist and politician. She rose to fame for her series of detective novels featuring police commander and poet Adam Dalgliesh.[2]
PD James
Dorothy Leigh Sayers (13 June 1893 – 17 December 1957) was an English crime writer and poet. She was also a student of classical and modern languages. She is best known for her mysteries, a series of novels and short stories set between the First and Second World Wars that feature English aristocrat and amateur sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey.
I have read all of these women’s books, and I love them. Women mystery writers are the best! Which of them have you read? Which female mystery novelist is your favorite?
We need more women writers of mystery! Are you the next one? Hawkshaw Press is seeking a great woman detective writer, and it could be you!
I am delighted to communicate with you about the sequel to my novel Charlotte, recently published by Devil’s Party Press. Devil’s Party Press is beginning a new imprint, Hawkshaw Press, just for murders like the kind Charlotte always seems to encounter.
The imprint will begin by republishing Charlotte in a new, remastered version, and then adding the second book in the series, Accident, in 2021!
Accident is a sad yet uplifting tale about two little girls who believe they see their father across the way and rush into the street to greet him. Alas, they are struck by a car that seems to speed up as the enter the road–was it an accident, or deliberate?
Retired, elderly Charlotte Smart is called in by the detectives to help, since she had solved the vicious murder the year prior of a woman in her retirement village. The tale around the seeming accident paints a portrait of a negligent and alcoholic mother feuding with an absent father, an unreliable stepfather, and a grandmother kept away from her grandchildren. As in Charlotte, this mystery ends up with an Agatha Christie-style climax where the detectives permit Charlotte to do her magic.
I loved writing this piece in part because I have such deep love for my own three children and shudder at the thought of anything tragic happening to them.
Luckily for my readers, Charlotte Smart is on the case to show us all that even with sadness and loss, a happy ending can happen!
I love working with the editors at Devil’s Party Press, and now Hawkshaw Press too. Did you know that their books continuously receive awards for content, editing, and design?
I hope you’ll pick up a copy of Charlotte or Accident in the new year.
HAWKSHAW PRESS HERE. Hey, flatfoot, why not take a read of Charlotte, being serialized for free on author Stan Charnofsky’s blog?
Subscribe to Stan’s blog to get a notice every time a new chapter posts!
Interested in getting the second book in the series, Accident, for free? Use our CONTACT page to request a blogger copy!
I am delighted to communicate with you about the sequel to my novel Charlotte, recently published by Devil’s Party Press. Devil’s Party Press is beginning a new imprint, Hawkshaw Press, just for murders like the kind Charlotte always seems to encounter.
The imprint will begin by republishing Charlotte in a new, remastered version, and then adding the second book in the series, Accident, in 2021!
Accident is a sad yet uplifting tale about two little girls who believe they see their father across the way and rush into the street to greet him. Alas, they are struck by a car that seems to speed up as the enter the road–was it an accident, or deliberate?
Retired, elderly Charlotte Smart is called in by the detectives to help, since she had solved the vicious murder the year prior of a woman in her retirement village. The tale around the seeming accident paints a portrait of a negligent and alcoholic mother feuding with an absent father, an unreliable stepfather, and a grandmother kept away from her grandchildren. As in Charlotte, this mystery ends up with an Agatha Christie-style climax where the detectives permit Charlotte to do her magic.
I loved writing this piece in part because I have such deep love for my own three children and shudder at the thought of anything tragic happening to them.
Luckily for my readers, Charlotte Smart is on the case to show us all that even with sadness and loss, a happy ending can happen!
I love working with the editors at Devil’s Party Press, and now Hawkshaw Press too. Did you know that their books continuously receive awards for content, editing, and design?
I hope you’ll pick up a copy of Charlotte or Accident in the new year.
Have you written a mystery? Why not send it to Hawkshaw Press?
Hawkshaw Press 