Nancy Drew Books

With the help of her two friends (Bess Marvin and George Fayne), Nancy Drew is on her way to Los Angeles to investigate "three cases of extortion and arson involving Napoleonic relics"--a mini portrait, a manuscript, and a gown appropriately referred to as the Flame. However, Nancy and her two sidekicks barely leave the airport before their lives are threatened when someone plants a bomb in Nancy's purse--and that's just the beginning.

Despite the cliffhangers at the end of the chapters and the relatively fast pace, "Playing With Fire" wasn't a very suspenseful or interesting book; but I suppose if you're a Nancy Drew fan and history buff, then you might like this 26th case. There are the usual shameful plugs of other cases from The Nancy Drew Files, like the previous one in "Rich and Dangerous" and #13: "Wings of Fear," as well as the customary case overview at the beginning of the book, which is useful since there are so many characters; it's hard to determine who's a suspect and who's not until the last few chapters--but possibly earlier on if you can differentiate between the characters.

It was good but I guessed in the middle only who was the culprit. So,I guess I can't give 5 stars to it.

While I have a fond spot in my heart for the first book of the series, The Secret of the Knight's Sword, it's not the best. Secret Cargo is. All three teenagers are given equal opportunities to shine, and so the books are appealing to all Nancy Drew or Hardy Boys fans. The mystery and its varying conclusions are good as well.

Nancy and George are in San Fransisco to protect violinist Soong An from kidnappers. They meet up w/ Frank and Joe at the airport. The boys are in San Fransisco to stop a saboteur at the university. Frank spends the book crushing on Soong An while Nancy is jealous. It's a good book. Don't miss it!

Bess is excited. TV Rock, a music video network is broadcasting a never before seen tape of her favorite rock star's last concert. Jesse Slade had disappeared three years earlier with his manager on the night of the concert. How could a musician with two Grammys, a gold and a platinum album, suddenly disappear without a trace as he was nearing the climax of his career?
While Nancy, Bess and George watch the concert on TVR, Nancy catches a glimpse of a shadowy object falling off a nearby cliff.
Convinced that Jesse was murdered, Bess calls TVR and gets Nancy on the case. Soon the girls are jetting out to L.A. to look into an unsolved Hollywood mystery.
Going undercover as a veejay at TVR isn't as easy as Nancy thought it would be. Her boss, Renee, seems to be sabotaging Nancy's work at TVR.
Nancy interviews Jesse's old friends and coworkers to see if she can glean any tidbits to help her unravel the mystery. Come to find out, Renee was Jesse's girlfriend, and she was secretly seeing a member of Jesse's band before he disapppeared. Nancy also runs into a Slade memorabilia collector who knows too much.

This adventure takes Nancy Drew and her friends Bess and George into Amish country. To them, the ways, dress and speech of the Amish are strange but they adapt quickly. They make some friends, but they also make some enemies among the more superstitious of the Amish. Nancy is accused of being a witch, which lends a layer of unreality to the story. Even the most superstitious people would not seriously believe that a young girl is a witch, even though she is around such symbols.
The book opens with the theft of some antiques and the trail leads Nancy to the Amish areas. While there, they eat a lot, learn some Amish ways and track down the thief and his wife, who are posing as Amish. The man grew up in that area, so he knows the language and mannerisms. Of course, Nancy solves the mystery, learning the primary reasons why the thief was so interested in the antique furniture.
To date, I have read a few Nancy Drew books, making comparisons between the different time frames. This story was written in 1955, so it was interesting to contrast it to an earlier one that I read that was written decades earlier. Nancy is much more courageous in this one, relying much less on males to assist her. When it appears that the thief is in the attic above them, she does not hesitate to climb up to investigate. It was easy for me to see how Nancy would be such a heroine to young girls, she is bright, brave and independent. While she has a boy in her life, he is not a major factor in the plot and she certainly does not rely on him to "do the man's work." Given the portrayal of women in the television and radio shows of the fifties, this was a breath of fresh air.

This book had a lot of action. It was pretty good in that department, but Nancy and the Hardy Boys are suppose to be together. If you want to see a lot with them together, this isn't the book for you. They don't actually meet up till the very end of the book, and then they don't even solve it together. I was dissapointed. There are better books out there to start with. I've been reading the Hardy Boys books and Nancy Drew books for ages. There are much better ones out there. Good luck!

This has to be the best book in the series. Its the first one I read, and got me completely hooked on the series. A must read for anyone. Will the Titantic be raised? Will the Hardy boys actually get to relax on a vacation? Is Nancy dating a Millionaire? Read and find out

This book was OK, but I did not understand the mystery or crime until the middle of the book. I think the plot was a little bit weak, because I don't think the United States plans to ever raise the Titanic. The story goes like this: Nancy Drew is on a mission to discover the plot behind a scam selling tickets to see the raising of the Titanic. While on the hunt for the main seller, she witnesses him get murdered. This book is basically trying to find out who murdered him and why. Frank and Joe Hardy are on a pleasure vacation until they get mixed up in the same case that Nancy is involved with. The characters were very vague.

Operation Titanic starts out with Nancy on a sort of stakeout, trying to capture a guy who is cheating in a radio contest, the prize being tickets for a cruise on which the Titanic is being raised from the depths. However, the stakeout takes on a deadly twist when the suspect is fatally shot. Meanwhile, the Hardys are on their way to the Wedge Grove Oceanography Institute for a vacation, invited by their friend, Eric. A group of armed foreigners ram their car off the road and begin hunting them.
The plot of this book is really great, but the book iself is VERY sloppily written. Characters Nancy works with at the beginning vanish into thin air without a trace, and most of the book is incomprehensible. There is really no real detecting done in this book at all; no clues are found until the very end and even those just appear, it is not told where they come from. There are also a few false facts floating around the book. Ex.Joe seems to lose his head when near Bess. Nancy also appears to have to have an admirer, the thirtyish billionaire who is raising the Titanic. Nancy, in this book, is rather cold and, um, mean. I also agree with other readers, the Hardys showed up way too late.
Although I expected more from this book, it was enjoyable to read. There is a very funny scene between Frank and Joe on page 154-157. For the Nancy & Frank fans, there is really not much material except on 173 & 215.

The book that I read was Operation: Titanic. Carolyn Keene, one of my favorite mystery writers, wrote this book. As you already have guessed this book is a mystery. I loved the suspense in this book especially because this book contains two mysteries all rolled into one. I would recommend this book to kids ten or older.
This book is about Nancy Drew, a detective who shares a lot of her stories with her best friend Bess Marvin. Two of the other main characters are Frank and Joe Hardy, who follow their Dad's footprints. They too are detectives, and their father is a detective who is known about nation wide. These young detectives help find the thieves that are planning to attack the Hampton. The Hampton is a cruise ship bound to raise the Titanic from her watery grave. This book sure has a lot of surprises.
In the beginning Nancy Drew is invited by the ever so handsome billionaire, Walter Welsh, to see the Titanic be raised. She accepts the invitation and Bess Marvin tags along. On the boat she spots some thieves that caused a murder back in Chicago, and has an exciting time trying to track them down. When the ship gets attacked she leads the way to the scene of the crime.
All the while Frank and Joe are trying to enjoy a nice vacation until their car gets run off the road by a van. Finally Frank and Joe escape but find other strange happenings at their stay at Wedge Grove Oceanography. During these strange happenings Frank and Joe are hired to work for the Network, a government security team. Their job is to ride in a helicopter to the site of the Titanic and board the Hampton, who is owned by Walter Welsh. Frank and Joe are to pose as journalist and try to find a man who they think is aboard the ship and is very dangerous.
On the ship Nancy, Bess, and the Hardy boys get together and exchange stories. They soon find the needed information to stop the Hampton from going under. They even get to enjoy dinner and a dance on board one of the nicest cruise ships in America.
I truly enjoyed this book and would rate it a nine on a one to ten scale. So if you like suspense and thrill this would be a great book to read!

Okay I think this book was okay not the best just okay but that is how i think of all nancy drew books here i will tell you why well in all of the books they mention how pretty and attractive and slim she is and thats not very nice to other girls because it makes them fell ugly also this book wasn't one of my favorites because it wasn't very mysterious but other than that it was fine but they are kinda old

The Nancy Drew mystery stories are great books. They are perfect if you want a light but interesting read. But for some reason, I did not really enjoy this one that much. I was O.K but to me, it was not up to the standards of Carolyn Keene. The title seems to be a bit of a misnomer. It is not really about a hunted bridge. It is mostly about Nancy tracking down a woman who is involved in a international ring of jewel theives for her father. But it is a good book and even if you don't really like it, it will probably keep you reading in order to find out what happens in the end.

I really liked this book!
In this one, there is a lot of stolen jewlery, a rumor about bridge being haunted near the Deer Mountain Hotel where Nancy is staying, etc., and on top of it all, a man who constantly follows Nancy and who might be a forger! Nancy also enters a golf tournament and even though it sounds really boring (unless you like golf), it wasn't boring.
This book is very exciting! Read it!

The older version of The Haunted Bridge was published in the late 1930's. It is a wonderful book with the wrong title name; which is easily noticed by the mid-section of the book. Although this book is not as full of action as many other books in the series, it still contains much fun. It has an obnoxious man who likes Nancy, a parted romance, a burned down mansion, and a stolen jewelry case. This book is obviously like no other book in the Nancy Drew collection and is recommended for any one who likes a great book.

This is the best Nancy Drew story of the entire series. My daughter and I have read both versions, my older copy published in the thirties and the newer version I purchased for her for her birthday. She prefers the newer version, while I like the older one, but we both agree this is the best of the series. I remember reading my copy four or five times in my youth.

I understand this series was written by many different people using the same pen-name. They really knew what they were doing. A ghostly scarecrow, a mysterious jewel box, an obnoxious admirer, and girls on an unsupervised vacation. What a way to appeal to girls of all ages, even grown-up ones. I think they got the formula just right for this one. This is still one of my favorite feel-good, read-again books. My daughter is reading her copy again as I am writing this.

I am an avid Nancy Drew reader and I was looking for some material for older kids to try. I bought this one and was a little disappointed with it. First of all, the plot was a little amature. I mean stealing? And second of all, the fact that Nancy just ditched Ned was a little mean! You can't just drop a couple after they were together for practicaly the whole series. That's just what I thought of it.

Nancy Drew is now starting her freshman year in college with her friends George and Bess. Here they have to face new people, new loves and new mysteries. A thief is loose in the dorm and it is up to Nancy to find him.

Good book, I liked it a lot.

New Lives, New Loves is a great book. It is a great beginning to the new Nancy Drew series. It is exciting, happy and sad at the same time. I would recommend everyone to read it.

I agree with Jessica Cook. Nancy Drew changed! Why did Carolyn Keene start to write this, what I think, horrible series? The originals were the best, then she did the Nancy Drew files and they were pretty good. But in this series, Nancy and every single other character has changed!!!(I'm writing this after I've read all of the ones published.) Burt and Dave are gone. You're not believe going to believe what happens between Nancy and Ned, and there really are no mysteries! It's become one of the things I hate most, a soap opera! I apologize if anyone is offended, but I think Carolyn Keene should have stopped after the Nancy Drew Files.

... I was thrilled with the vocabulary levels, plot devices, and character depictions in the original series (I read #3, "The Bungalow Mystery"), and fairly impressed also with the "Nancy Drew Files". However, the "On Campus" series is a travesty. It is a sensationalized,... and dumbed-down version of a classic series. ...

This descriptive book shows great book photos from the '30s and later and describes what life was like back then! It describes TV shows of the time, and how Nancy Drew sparked interest in female sleuths like Jessica Fletcher of Murder She Wrote! Teens of the time are described, and how Nancy Drew became an important positive role model for all young women. Hat off to the authors!

This book is fun to look at. Dozens of photos, large and small, pay tribute to the most popular series characters in English-language fiction. As a child I used to stand in front of rows of these books in bookstores, poring over the covers, for hours at a time. The covers have a talismanic quality this book neatly captures. Interior line drawings (including the "frontispiece" illustrations in each book) also appear throughout this large-format book. Unfortunately none of the Drew/Hardy pictures are labelled, so unless you know the originals you can't pair them to the book. The potted history of the Stratemeyer syndicate is clearly if breezily presented, with excerpts from letters indicating the tensions behind the scenes between publishers and Harriet Stratemeyer Adams, who assumed control of the empire after her father died in 1930, just as the Drew series was about to start (three years after the Hardy series had taken off). The authors document almost nothing, though, so you can't easily use the book for research purposes. Still, these authors condescend to the series characters far less than most academic writers have -- it's nice to read complimentary things about the power of the books on kids who have literally read them to pieces over the decades. The main problem with this book is that it goes far afield to encompass a general social history of the last century. We get inset mini-essays on adolescence, "model dads" (from FDR to MLK), juvenile delinquents, "Seventeen" magazine, the influence of TV, etc. The inset coverage is superficial, reading like canned newsmagazine features. Anyone who picks up the book to read about Drew/Hardy is unlikely to care about this material. Fortunately, there is still plenty about Drew/Hardy, with generous quotes from both the original books and updated rewrites of the Grosset and Dunlap series. The authors treat each series as one long book, looking for trends in plots and characterizations -- Nancy is "locked in closets, attics, gymnasiums, cisterns, caves, and submarines," they note. They're also good on the media and pop culture variations of the characters, from Disney TV adaptations to board games. The paperback watering-down of the characters in the 1980s gets softer treatment than it deserves, since this book's publisher (Simon and Schuster) owns the Stratemeyer Syndicate now and published them. The book is worth seeing, as long as readers knowit lacks full focus on Drew/Hardy, and often doesn't reveal its sources.

GREAT info for the Nancy Drew lover. This would get 5 stars for the inclusion of photos from the books alone. The writing could have been more detailed and written a bit better. I DID like that the authors included information from the period during which the NDs were written -- the '30s through today -- and how teens were changing over the years. Nancy Drew changed and grew along with today's teens, although die-hard fans wish the syndicate hadn't changed a WORD.

I was a little disappointed with the reading of the book, but had just finished "The Nancy Drew Scrapbook" which is AWESOME, so that might be why I was expecting more from this book. I LOVED all the photos, tho, lots of nostalgia!

"The Mysterious Case of Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys" takes the reader back to the origin of the Hardy Boys Mystery Series and the Nancy Drew books. While the two series have Franklin W Dixon and Carolyn Keene listed as the authors, neither author actually exists are a person. They are both creations of the Stratemeyer Syndicate. The Stratemeyer Syndicate was the "writing factory" started by Edward Stratemeyer as a means to churn out book after book in a series that he conceived of. He would contract an author to write a book with the requirement the author sign away all rights to the book and to remain anonymous. This led to the birth of Franklin W Dixon and Carolyn Keene (as well as the Tom Swift series, among others).

This book is the history and evolution of these two iconic series for children. The reader is shown how society has influenced the content of the novels, both in the language used as well as the plots. When the Hardy Boys first began in the late 1920's and into the 30's, there early volumes contained numerous racial stereotypes, both among the bad guys as well as the Hardys' friends. Later editions would edit these stereotypes out. This book follows the series through their various authors as well as the change in the focus of the Syndicate after the death of Edward Stratemeyer.

One thing that the authors of this book try to do is tie both series into the society of the time (whether it is the 1930's of the early series, the 1950's or the 1980's). This attempt is what I found less successful or interesting about the book. There are numerous sidebars and pictures and captions about the America's youth during each era and how the books impacted the youth and I felt that this information was extraneous and unnecessary.

What is most interesting about this book is the evolution of the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew. The characters changed over the 75 years and the books continue to sell. This coverage was the best part of the book and is what I would recommend for the reader. Nothing would be lost by just skipping the sidebars. I do feel that the authors have overstated the influence of these characters, but I cannot question the popularity of the Hardys or Nancy Drew.(...)

This beautifully packaged, colourful, but thin paperback unearths the long history of the Stratemeyer Syndicate's greatest heroes, the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew. Blown-up covers from both series liven up the book, triggering memories of adrenaline surging through the veins of teenagers everywhere.

The material on how the books changed over the years -- especially the evolution of racial stereotypes of "Negroes," Jews, and Italians -- is truly fascinating. I never realized that the books I read in the seventies had been homogenized by a factory of authors. I now want to read the original books, if I can find them (eBay here I come!).

I could do without most of the overlong and annoying sidebars. Again and again they fill us in on how teens have changed over the last century, but seldom are the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew even mentioned in them!

I give this book an "A" for the terrific images and accurate and enlightening history, but overall, marred by some poor editorial decisions, the book deserves a "B." Still, this is required reading for those interested in pop culture and the literature of our youth. Now I'm off to solve the Secret of the Caves . . .