Nancy Drew: Socialist Detective

In February, I co-developed a Nancy Drew game with Gwen Katz for the annual public domain game jam. In 2026, the first four Nancy Drew books went into the public domain. I’ll write more about developing the game next week. Today, I want to talk about Nancy Drew, the character and the books. The first book caught me entirely off-guard. I loved it! The second entry, often considered one of the series’ best, left me flat by comparison. Looking for hot takes on a public domain properties? You’ve come to the right newsletter!

As the game writer for our project, I wanted to capture the spirit of the character and the voice of the authors who collectively wrote as Carolyn Keene. Sleepover Confession: I’d never read a Nancy Drew book before. I read a lot of classic kids lit series growing up: Encyclopedia Brown, the Boxcar Kids, and Babysitters Club all come to mind. Mysteries were one of my favorite genres. In middle school, I thoroughly inspected Agatha Christie’s bibliography and raided my dad’s bookshelf for noir classics like The Maltese Falcon and The Big Sleep. So it’s not inconceivable that I would’ve read Nancy Drew, but for some reason I didn’t. Consider it an unsolved mystery.

So I came to Nancy Drew with 2026 eyes. The thing that struck me most about Nancy’s characterization in the first book is her stunning altruism.

In The Secret of the Old Clock, Nancy meets poor and struggling folks everywhere she goes. It was 1930, so that tracks. All the unfortunate souls she meets in her travels are suffering due to the shady actions of The Tophams, a family of rich snobs. Or seemingly rich. It turns out they’re counting on receiving the considerable inheritance of the late Josiah Crowley to keep them afloat. Every empathetic stranger Nancy meets was a relative or friend of Josiah’s, who kept telling them he would take care of them in his will. Strangely, Josiah’s fortune went entirely to The Tophams, whom he stayed with until his death. The strange part is that The Tophams treated Josiah poorly, according to rumor.

We would like Nancy if she was kind to the struggling strangers. If she treated them with grace, instead of disdain and superiority like a dreaded Topham. But Nancy goes well beyond what’s expected of her. She volunteers her services as a detective for no money to every stranger she meets. In the end, when she cracks the case (sorry to spoil a 96-year-old book), she takes no money. She even defers much of the credit, and keep in mind, Nancy risked her life sneaking into a gangster hideout to get a key piece of evidence.

Why doesn’t Nancy want money or credit? It’s because Nancy’s driving motivation to solve the mystery is redistribution of wealth. Nancy wants The Tophams’ ill-gotten inheritance to be distributed to the sick and destitute people Nancy believes deserves that money on multiple levels. Nancy Drew is sixteen in the book. She’s smart, determined, brave, and committed to making the world a better place. If she went to college in 2026, I could imagine her joining the DSA club at school. President by sophomore year.

When I think of motivations for similarly popular fictional detectives, here’s what comes to mind: to get a paycheck, to prove their superior intelligence, to heighten their fame, to indulge their curiosity, to inspire their next mystery novel. Nancy is the first fictional detective I’ve encountered who explicitly uses her talents to chip away at income inequality. There’s only one other comparable detective I can think of and that’s Columbo. In every episode of the show, Columbo investigates a high status murderer, often of considerable means. But as a member of the LAPD, I don’t think Columbo has the same agency as Nancy. Columbo has a knack for getting under the skin of the well-to-do, which is satisfying and hilarious, but not as socialist as volunteering your time to aid an elderly stranger who’s too sick to leave her home by solving the mystery of a forged will. (And risking her life to do it!)

Hell, forget detectives. I can’t even think of a superhero who takes on income inequality and they’re supposed to be the ultimate do-gooders. Superman will battle Lex Luthor to prevent him from ripping a hole in the planet, but what about the thousands of daily injustices against marginalized people billionaires like Lex commit every day? It’s not hard to imagine Bruce Wayne lobbying against a wealth tax.

The Secret of the Old Clock will read as hoary to many. When I close my eyes, I can picture a Hollywood screenwriter in the 90s pitching a Nancy Drew movie in the style of A Very Brady Movie, where Nancy’s innocence and earnestness are played for laughs against a jaded present. In the real world, we focus on wealthy, powerful people who say and do outrageous, destructive things. We reward them with money, attention, and accolades. I think the present feels jaded partly because we don’t elevate figures like Nancy, who are honest, hard working, and motivated by love for her fellow humans.

So what was my problem with The Hidden Staircase, which is considered one of the best in the series? (My mom, a fan of the first four books, insisted I read it.) My biggest letdown is that Nancy, while still generous enough to donate her detective services, is motivated strictly by curiosity. She wants to understand why items are spookily disappearing from a house and what the strange noises are about. That’s logical. It’s fine, but not as fascinating. In the first book, there’s a whole community of underprivileged victims who Nancy lifts up through sleuthing. In the second book, she investigates a “haunted” house because she’s curious about it. Now that it’s public domain, someone could publish a new edition where Nancy drives a psychedelic van and has a talking dog.

Not to get too negative, but I wouldn’t give either of these books five stars. The first book is more of a scavenger hunt than a whodunnit with clues to solve, and the second is essentially a howdunnit where the answer is apparent very quickly. There are racist stereotypes in both books. I found the servant woman character in the second book, who is never referred to by name but often called “negress” derisively, to be a particularly tough read. The second book’s main antagonist, Nathan the “miser,” was probably meant as a dig on my people, which is cool. The way police are portrayed is perplexing and could be a post by itself. In the first book, Nancy purposely withholds evidence from the police knowing they’ll jeopardize her investigation (rad), but in the second book Nancy rails on the cops for incompetence when they say they won’t bust into a guy’s house without a warrant or evidence (huh). They end up doing it anyway solely because Nancy is the daughter of a prominent lawyer in town. As I said, lots to discuss!

I’m now a Nancy Drew fan, but not a Nancy Drew Mystery Stories fan. I love the idea of a socialist detective, which is how I choose to read her. We must come together to fight the oligarchy with every tool at our disposal. Some of us have money. Some of us have platforms. Some of us have community organizing. Nancy does it with a flashlight and a blue Roadster.

And sometimes a gun! Her dad gives her a gun! Encyclopedia Brown never packed heat. Just saying.

🎲 Your Turn: Have you read Nancy Drew? Am I giving her and her books a fair read? Are you a mystery fan? Any good whodunnits to recommend? How do you propose we overthrow the oligarchy? Let’s solve that last one right here on Equip Story! Reply directly to this email or comment by hitting the orange button below.