An Interview and Giveaway with Debra Marvin!

I’m so excited to welcome my friend Debra E. Marvin to the blog! Deb has graciously offered to give away an ebook of her newest title.....The Clobbered Cad! Welcome Debra!

The Girl Detective

While many of us automatically think of Nancy Drew, there were plenty of sleuthing heroines in the early part of the 20thcentury. Horatio Alger provided a model of stories providing young readers with a protagonist they could relate to. In his case, young boys learned through experience and lots of adverbs! But those tales became the catalyst for a number of youthful heroes and heroines written for youth.

Nancy Drew was the most famous of the girl heroines but there was also Vicki Barr, Trixie Belden, Ginny Gordon, Kay Tracey and Cherry Ames. Do you remember them?

Many of us fondly recall reading one book after another in these series. Why? Our heroines used their wits, had an interesting lifestyle full of adventure and—oh my—a touch of danger. They found a way to live by the rules yet outsmart the villain and they often did it on their own without having to hand over the decisions to their male counterparts, or getting a run in their hosiery. These mostly teenager heroines rarely dealt with murders and were kept busy by 'misadventure': stolen goods, missing persons, low-life villains. Thankfully there were charts, maps, old diaries and letters to help them along the way!

Have any of you gone back to read these stories? I did. While working on the plot and characters of The Case of the Clobbered Cad, I listened to a series of audiobooks read by the actress Laura Linney.  My warm memories of Nancy Drew books were altered as I (now a grandmother) traveled along with Nancy!

Nancy had unlimited funds, very little in the way of rules, far too much good luck, and a father who might now be considered quite lax.  Nancy wouldn’t have had much luck finding adventure if she wasn’t able to hop in her sports car and drive off to remote, touristy areas. She didn’t have to take time off of work, or check her debit card balance before paying for gas, or forget to charge her cell phone. Other than worrying her housekeeper, she only had to occasionally check in with a busy father who kindly admonished her to be careful!

The writing was predictable, full of clichés, and over the top. Just like Banana Splits, we ate it up! Nancy went from danger to danger with hardly a concern of being injured(again) or facing the villain alone (again). And she had Ned Nickerson, her friend George, and those really cute skirt and sweater sets!

My publisher Jennifer Farey, author Lisa Richardson, and I talked quite a bit about how we could incorporate that world of girl detectives into stories for a modern audience. I hope you find The Nosy Parker Mysteries an entertaining read!

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