Chelsea Cain, Confessions of a Teen Sleuth

Chelsea Cain's Confessions of a Teen Sleuth purports to be the posthumously published memoirs of titian-haired teen sleuth Nancy Drew. Nancy wrote the book to correct some popular misconceptions about herself: it seems that Carolyn Keene, Nancy's college roommate-turned-unauthorized biographer, played fast and loose with the facts. Nancy records a different adventure from her life in each of the book's ten chapters. We watch her age—while remaining stylish—against a backdrop of twentieth-century history, from internment camps to the Red Scare to hippies and feminists. Along the way, we learn some shocking information about Nancy's mother and about the Drews' long-time housekeeper Hannah Gruen, as well as about Nancy herself.

Cain writes in the earnest style of the original series, with delightfully outdated lingo. Characters never simply say things: they cry gaily, explain mechanically, and muse fretfully. Nancy, meanwhile, remains amusingly naive when juxtaposed with the real world.

"When my plane landed in San Francisco, I collected my old blue suitcase and got in line for a shuttle bus. As you may be aware, at that time San Francisco was a great gathering place for young people from all over the country."

Nancy still loves a good mystery—perhaps a little too much—and she has a habit of injecting excitement into her otherwise ordinary adult life whenever possible.

"'But how did he get in the well?'

'I lowered him. We were playing ‘rescue from the old well.’'"

Cain cleverly blurs the line between fiction and reality not only by breathing life into literary characters like the Hardy Boys and Tom Swift, but by turning Carolyn Keene herself into a character within the story.

You'd have to be well steeped in Nancy Drew lore to appreciate every in-joke, but even casual readers should enjoy this charming parody.