The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew

Extollager

Extollager

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Many months ago I invited interested people to write about visiting again books from "Way, Way Back in Your Reading Life." I expect soon to go very far back indeed, about 50 years, to give one of the Hardy Boys books a look. If I do that, I will probably say something about it at the "Way, Way Back" thread. However, I thought (a bit whimsically) that it might be worthwhile to start a thread on these two series and see if other people here remember these books from their youthful reading. Their relevance to science fiction and fantasy is marginal indeed, but there may be a connection in that the books traded on a sense of the mysterious, and some of us may have liked that and sought it also in our exploration of sf and fantasy. Of course many sf authors have also written mystery fiction. So... let's see what happens.

I'd suggest that this thread remain confined to the series indicated. If someone wants to write about Tom Swift books, a separate thread would be appropriate; and earlier this week I started one for the Winston (publisher's name) Science Fiction series that was aimed at young fellows in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
 
I grew up on the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew. I spent my childhood solving mysteries in the back yard with my chickens. And I had this tiger cat that I liked (as a small child) to torture by waking him up when he was happily sleeping. His answer to that was to wait until I was curled up in a chair, chewing on my fingernails and trying frantically to find out if Nancy or Frank or Joe was going to survive (like I hadn't read the next book too), and jump on me with his claws out, sending me screaming through the roof. Good times. :D
 
The history of who wrote which when is nearly a good story in its own write. There is no Franklin Dixon or Carolyn Keene.
Stratamyer had other quite readable series too.
 
I loved the Nancy Drew books when I was a child. Nothing made me happier than getting a new book in the series. Though any relationship to fantasy or science fiction is tenuous indeed, I am sure they helped to nurture my love of reading. Back then, the price of a each book was one dollar, and the sales tax was four cents. I'd save up money from my allowance (which was a quarter) or small change scrounged from under the couch cushions, and the next time I went shopping with my mother I would buy a book. I'd read it right through as soon as I got home, and sometimes turn back to the first page and read it all again. And one of my most memorable Christmases as a child was the year I found a brand new bookcase—the bookcase in my bedroom already being crowded and most of the top shelf was already Nancy Drew—and six or seven of those little blue books to start the new bookcase out. To have so many new mysteries to read at once was thrilling.

I believe I only read one or two of the Hardy Boys books, but like many of my generation I well remember the Hardy Boys serials on the Mickey Mouse Club. Whatever my friends and I were doing, we'd all rush home and sit in front of our TVs in time to watch each episode.

There were other series for girls being written by the Stratamyer syndicate, and I collected many of those, too, but Nancy Drew was always my favorite.
 
I would have said, off the top of my head, that I liked the Hardy Boys better, but when I think about that, I realize that I named toy alligators (my version of dolls) Nan and Ned, and I didn't have Frank or Joe. Possibly Nancy Drew was my favorite when I was younger, and then the Hardy Boys later on -- although we had a full set of those, from my brothers. I remember the two sets as being pretty much all the same to me -- perhaps because, well, they were all the same. :D I knew, of course, that they were all written by people who weren't either one of the authors, and the Bobbsey Twins too.

I was thrilled when the Hardy Boys were coming to TV (though we didn't have a TV), but when I saw those actors in the parts, I was so disgusted that I hated it on the spot. Parker Stevenson, Shaun Cassidy, Pamela Sue Martin, bah. They didn't look a thing like Frank, Joe and Nancy. If I had been old enough to realize what hot studs they were, it's possible I might have gotten used to it. :p
 
Bah. Parker Stevenson and Shaun Cassidy? Too old, too glossy. Tim Considine and Tommy Kirk were the only conceivable Frank and Joe. Ask any American child growing up in the 1950s.
 
I think in the kitchen we have a full shelf of Bobbsey Twins, Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys. We liked them as kids and my older boys and girl liked them.
The youngest of course never read "kids" books. He wanted to read and play what ever the eldest was doing, so has missed out on the wonderful "Adventure" series, "secret seven", "Famous Five", "Finder Outers" etc. Ha! Enid Blyton WAS only one person! Of course none of her "heroes" had cars, motorbikes, powerboats etc, though bicycles and the odd sailing dingy are in evidence, as well as torches that had pesky batteries always going flat.
 
Teresa Edgerton said:
Bah. Parker Stevenson and Shaun Cassidy? Too old, too glossy. Tim Considine and Tommy Kirk were the only conceivable Frank and Joe. Ask any American child growing up in the 1950s.
Click to expand...

I just looked them up. I wish I'd been able to see that! They do, indeed, look like a proper Frank and Joe. :D
 
For us kids growing up in the mid-1960s, it was obvious that the Hardy Boys books were intended for boys and the Nancy Drew books for girls, but I wouldn't be surprised if quite a few of us read both. I'd have preferred Hardy Boys, but it seems we'd inherited some old Nancy Drew books when we moved into one or other of the houses we rented or bought, and so I read several of the latter. Now, so many years later, I wonder if, in point of mysterious mood, the Nancy Drew books would not turn out to be more accomplished. For the Hardy Boys books, there was probably going to be more emphasis on chases, physical danger, camping with danger from wild animals, occasional fights, and so on, but (I suspect) for the Nancy Drew books, more scenes of eerie sights, suspenseful creeping around in old attics, puzzling over clues found from honest detection and also delivered by coincidence, etc. I don't know if anyone could bear me out on that.
 
I read one this afternoon.(Hardy Boys Mystery of the Aztec Warrior).

I have never stopped reading the Hardy Boys. Although when I hit 30 had to acknowledge my crush on Frank was indecent. The new first person series started in 2005 is really good. It did take awhile to get used to Aunt Trudy and the resurrection of a previously bumped off character. And I particularly enjoyed the casefiles series.

When I started writing my detectives Joe and Tim once I realised they weren't serial killers I had grown up Hardy Boys in mind.

I liked Nancy Drew but not as much as she had Miss Marple to live up to and didn't quite manage it.
 
I read many of the Nancy Drew books in elementary school, but that never turned into an lifelong love of mystery stories. I also never got into the Hardy Boys.

I think as a kid I saw Nancy Drew as a role model (though actually I'm probably more like Bess). Nancy was a "perfect" person - she was independent and took initiative, but always had her friends for support. She could solve any problem and things always turned out well for her and her friends in the end. She reflected my desire to explore and figure out my world. But I outgrew those stories when I no longer needed Nancy to be an example.
 
Just started reading Willard Price. They seem more dated than Gerald Durrell's books, but of course Durrell was writing semi-autobiographically, though the father in the Willard Price books seems a little based on Willard Price and like Durrell, he was in real life some sort of Naturalist. My wife picked up seven Willard Price (1960s / 1970s reprints) in a charity shop and thought I might be interested. They seem weak on plot compared to Hardy Boys or Enid Blyton's Famous Five.

At least unlike the supposed authors of Nancy, Hardy and other Stratameyer Syndicate books, Willard Price was a real person!

One amusing thing is how in the Hardy Boys one or other or both gets captured by baddies, Baddies blab their whole story, boy(s) get rescued.
 
It never bothered me they were a syndicate. I figured that was how we got so many consistently imaginative stories. Nobody complains about comics having several writers.

The Babysitter's Club also comes from the same stable and there were one or two others.
 
AnyaKimlin said:
It never bothered me they were a syndicate.
Click to expand...
I only discovered it since Wikipedia. I naively thought they were real people till a few years ago, as you say, it doesn't matter, except perhaps to writers that were poorly paid and not recognised. The American comics usually credit the writers?

Most or all of them
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Stratemeyer_Syndicate_series

Origins
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratemeyer_Syndicate

Pseudonyms

Victor Appleton
Captain James Carson
Franklin W. Dixon
Alice B. Emerson
Laura Lee Hope
Carolyn Keene
Margaret Penrose
Roy Rockwood
Chester K. Steele
Frank V. Webster
Jerry West (author)
Clarence Young

In particular Mildred Benson should be recognised for Nancy Drew books.
 
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I never really got into the Hardy Boys apart from the 1970s TV show, but I really enjoyed the Alfred Hitchcock And The Three Investigators books, which were roughly equivalent.
 
I remember the 'Famous Five' was it British? Were they the ones had a parrot along on their adventures? I remember really liking them a lot.
 
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