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The Mysterious Case of Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys
Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys have woven their spell of teen intrigue over more than 150 million readers, beginning in 1927 and continuing today. With its marvelous text and brilliant design, The Mysterious Case of Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys uncovers why the fearless young crime fighters remain beloved icons.
From The Secret of the Old Clock to Rock 'n Roll Renegades, the popular teen sleuths have deduced and detected their way through hundreds of adventures. Although the plots have changed with the times, the books have always starred the same clean teens with justice and generosity in their hearts. Hip and nostalgic at the same time, this richly illustrated study tracks teen culture and values and provides surprising insights into the lives of kids over the past 70 years.
136 pages, Paperback
First published October 20, 1998
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Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews
May 30, 2015
Nice illustrations. Entire paragraphs repeated from chapter to chapter. Had the feeling that authors preferred the Hardy Boys over Nancy Drew because they were real boys unafraid to fight their way through or take daring adventures. Yet Nancy Drew outsold The Hardy Boys.
I agree that sometimes Nancy is too good to be true, but considering that the original books began in the 1930s and ended in the 1970s. Of course she was shown to be an adventurous girl that wore dresses. Most people did wear dresses during this time period. Illustrations of her climbing ladders in heels, I will admit I have not reviewed all the books to find out if she actually did climb a ladder in heels or not. Girls were not allowed to do many of the things that Nancy Drew did and that's what made them exciting to read.
The Hardy Boys followed in their father's footsteps and as boys were allowed to go almost anywhere with a quick goodbye. Something that boys were more likely to be able to do during the same time frame.
I have read both series and found that while the authors compared the books and delved somewhat into the time period, there was a lot to be desired.
If you are a die-hard Nancy Drew or Hardy Boys fan, it is worth the read. However if you have only a passing knowledge of the books it lacks serious scholarship. A quickly put together book.
I agree that sometimes Nancy is too good to be true, but considering that the original books began in the 1930s and ended in the 1970s. Of course she was shown to be an adventurous girl that wore dresses. Most people did wear dresses during this time period. Illustrations of her climbing ladders in heels, I will admit I have not reviewed all the books to find out if she actually did climb a ladder in heels or not. Girls were not allowed to do many of the things that Nancy Drew did and that's what made them exciting to read.
The Hardy Boys followed in their father's footsteps and as boys were allowed to go almost anywhere with a quick goodbye. Something that boys were more likely to be able to do during the same time frame.
I have read both series and found that while the authors compared the books and delved somewhat into the time period, there was a lot to be desired.
If you are a die-hard Nancy Drew or Hardy Boys fan, it is worth the read. However if you have only a passing knowledge of the books it lacks serious scholarship. A quickly put together book.
September 9, 2015
This was a great history of the whole Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys business. Extremely interesting. Full of little-known facts.
November 28, 2020
Beautiful illustrations from the original books! This book brought back precious memories of my time reading Nancy Drew and Dana Girls mysteries---My youthful heroines!
February 19, 2019
I just reread this book about Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys and really got a chuckle out of the descriptions. I knew Nancy was talented, but I found out that Nancy “can whip up a dress, interpret a Chopin etude with subtle understanding.” She can repair a damaged painting as good as a pro, fly a plane so well her instructor is awed, has a photographic memory, is the lead in many school plays, is great at golf and tennis, is a sure shot with a gun, is a ping pong champ! This is just the beginning!! She is also a great tap dancer who gets rescued in The clue of the tapping heels by tapping in Morse code! How times have changed.....
December 13, 2017
I would call this a "coffee-table" book, meaning you can pick it up at any time for some light reading! What a great book filled with pictures and small columns of other popular things in the 1930s-1980s, along with the actual story itself! Solid 5/5 stars and would recommend to any Nancy Drew or Hardy Boys fan!
This book really goes in-depth with describing just how the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew mystery stories became famous. There are great statistics, writings, photos, and interviews relating to both teen detective squads!
This book really goes in-depth with describing just how the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew mystery stories became famous. There are great statistics, writings, photos, and interviews relating to both teen detective squads!
March 1, 2015
This was a Fantastic book!! I read tons of Nancy Drew as a child and this behind the scenes look of how the books were written and changed through the years was incredibly fascinating. I never read the Hardy Boys but after reading this i'd love to read them as well as reread the Nancy Drew Mysteries.
February 28, 2020
This is a pictorial history of the Nancy, Frank and Joe that begins before their "birth" with an exploration of who Edward Stratemyer was. It was well written with various inserts about the mores of the day or how teenagers came into power. I very much enjoyed the overview and I particularly learned a lot about Nancy, when I thought I already know a lot.
March 27, 2025
After being disappointed with the fake Bond I was hoping for some redemption with a brief history of Nancy Drew & the Hardy Boys by Kismaric & Heiferman. I knew that Carolyn Keene, Frank Dixon, et al., were serial nomdeplum authors and not one person writing for years and years but I was unaware of just how formulaic and assembly line the entire industry was. And what an enlightening look into that industry! Unfortunately, the authors explain this process once for the Hardy Boys, once for Nancy Drew, and once again for the reboots. So it’s the same text three times in increasingly repetitive, unvaried, and monotonous ways. Not dissimilar to a high school student's essay that needs a larger word count (see what I did there?). But redemption was had! Every other page held a historical sidebar that really neatly pieced the sociological mindset of the times, the serial books, and how one fed into the other through the decades and social mores. The main text about the book industry itself is a boring, flat, read; however, the book included fascinating sociological sidebar connection discussions throughout. Now THAT is where the authors should have focused their next efforts. I went looking for their other works and Kismaric has passed, but she had a background in psychology which explains the solid insights. The pair wrote quite a bit together, particularly about 1950s American life and the impacts of art, advertising, and graphic design. If you dig those topics, check them out.
January 13, 2021
This book is at its best when giving nice, fairly succinct summaries of the history of the Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys series. It's not as detailed as other books, so this is an ideal book for someone wanting a quick intro. It's also got nice, big reproductions of images and covers from the books, as well as of real teens from the 20th century. Visually, it's a feast.
Where the book falters is when it lapses into lengthy lists -- all the different ways that Nancy gets trapped, for example. One or two lists like this would be fun but after a while they get tedious and don't add much to the discussion.
More problematically, the book is filled with lengthy sidebars and big photographs of the real lives of mid-20th-century teenagers, with only modest connection made to Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys. I wasn't even clear if these things were supposed to add insight into the characters in the books -- or the readers of those books (and if it's the readers, that makes little sense since the target readers were not teenagers but kids 8-12, as the book points out). For the most part, you have to draw your conclusions as to what the point is.
An OK introduction to the topic of these book series, but not as good as some others.
Where the book falters is when it lapses into lengthy lists -- all the different ways that Nancy gets trapped, for example. One or two lists like this would be fun but after a while they get tedious and don't add much to the discussion.
More problematically, the book is filled with lengthy sidebars and big photographs of the real lives of mid-20th-century teenagers, with only modest connection made to Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys. I wasn't even clear if these things were supposed to add insight into the characters in the books -- or the readers of those books (and if it's the readers, that makes little sense since the target readers were not teenagers but kids 8-12, as the book points out). For the most part, you have to draw your conclusions as to what the point is.
An OK introduction to the topic of these book series, but not as good as some others.
April 12, 2022
Boring, everyday life turns into an exciting case to be solved, once you start to live like Nancy or Frank and Joe.
Adolescents are the perfect audience for books in which slightly older teen characters have one close call after another and rise above challenges that come their way.
This was interesting look at the history of the Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys books and how they changed society and the way that kids (and young people) read. Frank and Joe Hardy were brothers that young boys could look up to, having adventures without hesitating in the least. Nancy Drew, on the other hand, made girls that they could do anything. The authors also go into teen culture throughout the years that these books were popular. Very interesting although it was a tad too short in my opinion. More topics could've been delved into (but I realized this was written in the 1990s, so if it were written today it probably would've been longer).
Adolescents are the perfect audience for books in which slightly older teen characters have one close call after another and rise above challenges that come their way.
This was interesting look at the history of the Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys books and how they changed society and the way that kids (and young people) read. Frank and Joe Hardy were brothers that young boys could look up to, having adventures without hesitating in the least. Nancy Drew, on the other hand, made girls that they could do anything. The authors also go into teen culture throughout the years that these books were popular. Very interesting although it was a tad too short in my opinion. More topics could've been delved into (but I realized this was written in the 1990s, so if it were written today it probably would've been longer).
June 20, 2021
Some parts were more interesting than others. I liked how the books started, but was less interested reading brief details about characters and what the characters like. There is also a lot of information about historical topics that go along with what was happening with these two series. It does go back and forth between talking about Nancy Drew and The Hardy Boys and I think it made it harder to read. It also assumes that only girls like Nancy Drew and only boys read The Hardy Boys which isn't true for me.
September 12, 2019
This book suffered from the same problem that Growing Up with Dick and Jane did: it doesn't know what kind of book it is. It's too short to be a thorough examination of anything, instead glossing over a long and complex history that intertwined with the cultural birth of the teenager.
October 18, 2018
A nice overview of the series history but rather unimpressive. Not very helpful for academic research. It did have a lot of nice pictures.
December 27, 2019
3.5 stars
January 12, 2025
This was a fun retrospective of both series, highlighting the progression of teen youth and the alterations to the eponymous characters through the decades. The illustrations throughout are gorgeous.
September 3, 2014
This is an amazing book that details how mystery adventure books targeting young adults started. The book takes us on a journey to the origins of the first YA novels, the mystery genre for young people, and the beginnings of the one of the greatest book "syndicates" in the history of literature.
Edward Stratemeyer's vision created tons of iconic characters that changed and grew with the times. These are the pop-culture stories that never go out of style and even now, the Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys stories still attract millions of readers. It certainly is refreshing and surprising to read about a fan who later on became one of the "ghostwriters" of his beloved series. Leslie McFarlane loved reading about YA adventure novels and soon wrote more adventures himself. He was the first Franklin W. Dixon. Meanwhile, Mildred Wirt Benson wrote the first few Nancy Drew novels as Carolyn Keene.
The book delivers a clear and fun jaunt through time to explore how YA novels developed, why they're such a hot commodity, and how literary novels influenced and has been influenced by culture and society.
Edward Stratemeyer's vision created tons of iconic characters that changed and grew with the times. These are the pop-culture stories that never go out of style and even now, the Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys stories still attract millions of readers. It certainly is refreshing and surprising to read about a fan who later on became one of the "ghostwriters" of his beloved series. Leslie McFarlane loved reading about YA adventure novels and soon wrote more adventures himself. He was the first Franklin W. Dixon. Meanwhile, Mildred Wirt Benson wrote the first few Nancy Drew novels as Carolyn Keene.
The book delivers a clear and fun jaunt through time to explore how YA novels developed, why they're such a hot commodity, and how literary novels influenced and has been influenced by culture and society.
October 12, 2019
Actually a pretty nice nod to the role Nancy and buddies played and continue to play in America childhood.
Re-read update: This is nearly as much about the evolution of the American teenager as it is about Nancy and the Hardy Boys. What's particularly interesting is the book was written in the 1990s, pre-cell phone, pre vast Internet culture, so some of the fears discussed and the radical changes almost seem cute in comparison. Harriet Adams is treated a little more sympathetically here than in some works I've seen. The interplay of the Hardy Boys and their later "sister" Nancy is interesting. Also, I remember the 1980s/1990s versions of the books, which basically became romance novels for junior high students; wow, I hated those things.
Re-read update: This is nearly as much about the evolution of the American teenager as it is about Nancy and the Hardy Boys. What's particularly interesting is the book was written in the 1990s, pre-cell phone, pre vast Internet culture, so some of the fears discussed and the radical changes almost seem cute in comparison. Harriet Adams is treated a little more sympathetically here than in some works I've seen. The interplay of the Hardy Boys and their later "sister" Nancy is interesting. Also, I remember the 1980s/1990s versions of the books, which basically became romance novels for junior high students; wow, I hated those things.
Read
May 15, 2014Loved this book. I recently picked up a "new" Hardy Boys book. This caused me to start researching and looking into the Franklin W. Dixon guy. Well it was a number of guys and women that wrote under this pen name. I went back to read a couple of the first in the series and then I read the first editions (1929) of a couple of the first in the series. I found this book that told more of the story and the evolution of the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew. Fascinating stuff.
November 3, 2008
I liked the parts of this book that talked about the specific history of the books -- it was good to learn more about "Franklin W. Dixon" and "Carolyn Keene." The graphic design, with lots of old pictures from the book, was also really neat. A lot of the book was general ideas about the rise of teen culture, though, and I found that stuff less interesting.
January 14, 2014
This was a fun little expose on a cultural phenomenon and an interesting look into the cultural and sceintific development of the concept of adolescence, which we often forget is a fairly new concept. It was a quick and informative read. A must for a grown up fan of either series.
December 31, 2015
Nice history, but much of the information repeated throughout. Interesting from sociology standpoint, but could have been far more concise.
December 12, 2007
History of the series with relation to world culture (20s-now).
June 19, 2012
I didn't agree with everything said, but I really enjoyed the information
July 10, 2018
This book could have been 100% shorter and conveyed the same amount of information.
Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews