Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys

by Peggy Herz

Vintage TV tie-in

76 pages, Mass Market Paperback

Published January 1, 1977

Reviews

[Gilbert Stack · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I dug out the box of my old blue hardback Hardy Boys series, I found this small paperback in the box and just finished rereading it. While it’s really about the television series starring Sean Cassidy, Parker Stevenson, and Pamela Sue Martin, the first two chapters area all about the books. The Hardy Boys were invented by a man named Edward Stratemeyer who also invented Nancy Drew, the Bobbsey Twins, Tom Swift, and a host of other adventure series for young boys and girls. His ideas were bigger than his ability to get the stories written so he created a company, The Stratemeyer Syndicate in 1906 to farm out the work according to what is now called the Stratemeyer Formula. He built outlines for his stories and hired ghost writers to fill in the pages. Each chapter had a tense point in the middle and ended on a sort of cliffhanger to keep the reader turning pages. By the 1970s, when Peggy Herz wrote this little book, Nancy Drew books had sold more than 60 million copies and the Hardy Boys 50 million more.

The rest of the book is about the creation of the television series—which my sister and I watched religiously as long as it aired. It includes interviews with the three stars and ends with a discussion of the production of the series, fan reaction, and an exploration of why these three characters continue to be cherished by people around the world.

This is a very quick read but if you have any interest in literature’s three most famous “kid” detectives, it’s worth reading.

[Debi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading this one was like visiting with old friends. I used to love this show. Shaun Cassidy was my first crush. Nice memories.