More than fifty years later, I can still remember the thrill of poring over the cover illustrations. Just seeing Nancy as she pushed open a secret door made me want to jump out of our three-bedroom brick ranch and into the dusty hallways of some creaky old house (preferably haunted) as I followed in the footsteps of Nancy Drew.

And that’s exactly what I’ve done—not as an amateur detective, but as a mystery novelist. In pursuing my writing career—through journalism, nonfiction, short stories, and full-length fiction—I have gravitated toward mystery as my genre for telling stories at the intersection of the ordinary and the extraordinary. “Nancy Drew, for grownups,” a friend of mine called my Ohnita Harbor mystery series, and I couldn’t have been prouder.

I am among the generations of women who have found inspiration in the Nancy Drew mysteries; to just name a few: Supreme Court Justices Sandra Day O’Connor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Sonia Sotomayor; Hillary Clinton; and my friend Laura’s mother who named her dog Nancy Drew.

Nancy Drew mysteries—penned by a series of writers, all under the pseudonym Carolyn Keene—first appeared in 1930 and continued through 175 novels until 2003. Over the years, the series was updated to eliminate racist stereotypes and misogyny. The Nancy of my vintage 1950 mysteries grew up in a household of decidedly white privilege (her father, Carson Drew, was a lawyer). Yet in other ways she was ahead of her time. As Katryn Bury, author of the Drew Leclair mysteries, wrote, “Nancy and her friends made me believe in a better world. … If she could face danger on the reg, and be the hero who saves cis dudes rather than a damsel in distress, maybe things would get better for people who didn’t ‘fit.’”
 
 

At least part of Nancy’s nonconformity was rooted in her relationship with her father, who clearly saw her capabilities. For example, in The Hidden Staircase (second in the series, published in 1930 and revised in 1959), Drew Carson explains one of his current legal cases to his daughter, then listens as Nancy relates her case. In fact, the story makes a point of how seriously he takes his daughter’s sleuthing: “Mr. Drew had listened with great interest. Now, after a few moments of thought, he smiled. ‘Go by all means, Nancy. I realize you’ve been itching to work on a new case—and this sounds like a real challenge…’”

This type of empowering father-daughter relationship is one of the most endearing elements of the mysteries; coincidentally it also illustrates one the factors cited by women CEOs as helping to propel them to the top. As authors of a landmark study by the Rockefeller Foundation and global consulting firm Korn Ferry wrote: “Many specifically gave credit to their fathers who believed in their ability, pushed them to speak up about what they knew and thought, and looked past traditional notions of gender.”

This dynamic has always resonated with me. As the youngest of three daughters in a household with no sons, I experienced my father’s confidence in my abilities. When I started my own communications consulting practice at age thirty-nine, my father told me. “Every time you got a job with a bigger company, I thought, ‘There, she’s set for life.’ But then you’d quit it and go somewhere else. Now you’re going off on your own. You know what? I think you can do anything.’” Best gift he ever gave me.

I pay homage to that conversation with my father—and, perhaps unconsciously to the Drew duo—in a scene in my first novel, The Secrets of Ohnita Harbor. My protagonist, Gabriela, frightened by the murder of someone close to her and beleaguered by a host of other pressures, summons her courage as she recalls a childhood memory of fishing with her father—the only girl along the riverbank.

“‘She’s got a bite.’ The cry from one the fishermen had made her jump. Instinctively she had grabbed the pole tightly. Imagining the scene now, she could feel her father’s calloused hands over her tiny ones as he set the hook and helped her reel in a perch that measured almost a foot long. My little girl—she got the biggest fish… The echo of his voice made her smile.”

Nancy and her father, Gabriela and her dad, me and mine—this is the legacy that reminds women that gender does not define, or confine, our abilities.
 
 

As a nerdy and nervous preteen, I admired Nancy for being smart and able to do things (and, I’ll admit, for being pretty and having manageable hair). In Nancy, I saw a capable young woman whose detective prowess was matched by her courage and intellect. She stumbled upon the right clues because she’d had her eyes open for them. This is why I followed Nancy as a young reader—and it’s the same reason I tag along with Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot, and Miss Marple, and Louise Penny’s Chief Inspector Gamache. I trust them to take me beyond the fearful and inexplicable and into the safety of knowledge and justice.

Here is the real value of mysteries, far more than mere escapes to Christie’s St Mary Mead or Penny’s Three Pines—or my own Ohnita Harbor, New York. To keep pace with the protagonists, readers must rely on their critical thinking and hone observational skills to distinguish fact from obfuscation. And if ever there was a time to exercise these capabilities, it is now—amid political insanity that shows no sign of stopping and a world spinning out of control into escalating violence and environmental destruction.

Mysteries may not change the world, but they do reinforce the power to take control of our own actions and reactions. We can find the evidence, seek the answers, and act bravely, even boldly, as we follow the next clue and determine what to do. That’s what happens when we put ourselves in the shoes of Nancy Drew.
 

The Secrets of Still Waters Chasm

by Patricia Crisafulli

The Secrets of Still Waters Chasm by award-winning, bestselling author Patricia Crisafulli is the eagerly awaited second book in the Ohnita Harbor Mystery Series from Woodhall Press. A hike through pristine wilderness suddenly enters much darker territory... The Secrets of Still Waters Chasm opens with the discovery of two people on the beach of a secluded lake—one dead, one dying. Gabriela Domenici runs back up the trail for help and returns to find the bodies are gone. Soon, from suspected poisoning deaths to a nefarious development that threatens to destroy the chasm, Gabriela is caught in a web of danger.

If Crisafulli keeps setting her mystery thrillers in Ohnita Harbor (and I hope she will), that fictional little Upstate New York town will not only have as many bodies to bury as Midsomer County, but will be as famous as Louise Penny’s Three Pines or even Agatha Christie’s St. Mary Mead - and justifiably so. - Jean Zorn, Publisher, Persimmon Tree

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