The Case of the Independent Women
13 THE CASE of the BY MELANIE REHAK INDEPENDENT WOMEN Nancy Drew, girl sleuth, continues n the spring of 1930, just as designed to delight. Of course, America was plunging deep there were also her soon-to- to be one of America’s most into the Depression, a brilliant, be-famous blue roadster, her beautiful, and, most impor- doting lawyer father, her popular literary characters. The tantly, intrepid young woman fashionable wardrobe, and appeared on the scene to her unerring sense of right reason? Her creators were two lighten young America’s load. and wrong to recommend Her name was Nancy Drew, her. But most of all, it was women who imbued her with and even the price of her her independent, enterprising mysterious adventures—fifty spirit that made her a hit their own trailblazing spirit. cents a book, an amount that from the very first moment could almost always be gotten she landed on bookshelves up even in hard times—was across the country. Over the course of her first I three stories, published simul- taneously as a “breeder set” to ensure immediate addiction among the ranks of her readers, Nancy investigated a missing will, saved a drowning swimmer, explored a haunted mansion (discovering a secret underground tunnel in the process), and restored a stolen fortune to its rightful owner. She was also locked up in a closet, knocked unconscious several times, and forced to escape by climbing down a prickly rose trellis in a skirt and heels. The Secret of the Old Clock, The Hidden Staircase, and The Bungalow Mystery introduced to America the bold sleuth who would become a mainstay of juvenile reading forever after.
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