Not A Girl Detective Read Online Free PDF

dust jackets and yellow, wraparound covers.
    “These are the versions I read as a kid,” I said wistfully. “Of course, my mother threw them all out.”
    N O T
    A
    G I R L
    D E T E C T I V E
    29
    Edgar shook his head.
    Oh, how I’d loved those stories. Nancy was every-
    thing I wasn’t. Brave. Forthright. Not Italian. Best of all, she didn’t have a mother. Her life was a Freudian fantasy come true. Just a girl, her father, and a housekeeper. You had to love Hannah Gruen. The woman
    could take phone messages like nobody’s business,
    make a dozen different puddings from scratch, and
    pack Nancy’s bags on a moment’s notice. Day dresses,
    evening gowns, tennis skirts, scuba gear—whatever
    might be required for a teenager pursuing the truth in such far-flung spots as Hong Kong, Scotland, and dark-est Peru. What mother would do that? What about frig-
    ging homework?
    Back then, of course, I’d had no idea that the Yellow Nancys were considered highly suspect—not by
    Freudians, but by conspiracy theorists in the Society of Chums. They frothed at the mouth at the mere mention
    of them. The official, Stratemeyer-sanctioned story was that Mildred’s Blue Nancy texts needed to be revised
    because they were dated—full of forgotten colloqui-
    alisms and racist innuendoes. Villains were inevitably dark and swarthy (Jewish) or drunk and mentally defi-cient (African-American). True enough. But the con-
    spiracy theorists insisted that this was not the only reason for the revisions.
    There was also the fact that Harriet Stratemeyer
    Adams, who’d taken over the syndicate after her fa-
    ther’s death, wanted to cut the cost of production by de-creasing the number of pages in each book. And that
    she wanted to transform Nancy into a more passive, traditionally feminine heroine, not unlike Barbie. But the real reason for the revisions, the conspiracy theorists 30
    S U S A N
    K A N D E L
    claimed, was so that Harriet, by virtue of these
    changes, could once and for all lay claim to the mantle of authorship—to the hallowed name of “Carolyn
    Keene.”
    The battle between Harriet Stratemeyer Adams and
    Mildred Wirt Benson over the phantom body of Carolyn
    Keene was the leitmotif of my chapters two through six.
    “Don’t you adore memorabilia?” asked Edgar, wav-
    ing a Madame Alexander Nancy Drew doll in my face.
    “Limited release! And look!” He handed me a Nancy
    Drew jigsaw puzzle and a promotional poster from a
    1939 Nancy Drew movie starring Bonita Granville.
    “You gotta love eBay, Cece!”
    I was deathly afraid of eBay. God knows what trou-
    ble I could get myself into.
    “One of Harpo Marx’s harps was on there the other
    day. Did you know someone once gave Harpo a harp
    with barbed-wire strings? What a present! Look into it, if you don’t believe me! Wish I’d thought of it!”
    Another blue shelf held Edgar’s foreign editions of
    Nancy Drew.
    “In Sweden, Nancy Drew is known as Kitty,” I noted,
    “and in Finland she’s Paula.”
    “In France,” he said, pulling out Alice et la statue qui parle, “she’s Alice Roy. ‘Nancy,’ as you know, would never fly in France. It’s the name of an unsavory port town. Our heroine doesn’t walk on the wild side.”
    “She missed out.” Maybe I could log on to eBay just
    once. Intellectual curiosity.
    He raised an eyebrow.
    “Well, how can you be an inspiration if you spend
    your whole life never making a mistake?”
    “I am so glad you said that.”
    N O T
    A
    G I R L
    D E T E C T I V E
    31
    I smiled. “I guess you could say I’ve lived that.”
    “In which case I think I’ve got something you’ll ap-
    preciate.”
    He opened the door to the closet and pulled out a
    small oil painting in an elaborate gilt frame.
    “Mitchell Honey found this little treasure for me.
    And I have to say, he’s been beside himself ever since it came into this house. Beside himself! It’s the jewel in the crown. Look! It’s signed Russell H. Tandy !”
    “Now