The Cozy Mystery List Blog

Once again I’ve decided to go on a trip down memory lane, this time to revisit another favorite of mine, this time one who doesn’t quite fit into the “Cozy” mold as easily as the majority of my most beloved authors – Ruth Rendell. I’ve just finished re-reading From Doon with Death, and I’m pleased to realize that I love it as much now as when I first read it.

Ruth Rendell is one of those authors I sometimes have difficulty calling “Cozy.”  There are a lot of elements to Rendell’s novels that don’t exactly fit into the “Cozy” mold as neatly as someone like Ngaio Marsh or Agatha Christie. Certainly her Inspector Wexford isn’t the typical Cozy sleuth – he’s a police inspector through and through, not an amateur who just happens to stumble into murder time and time again. Rendell even makes it a point to describe him as fitting into the mold the average person would imagine if asked to think of a police chief, at least by the standards of the day.

All that said, From Doon with Death is perhaps the Coziest of her novels that I can recall, and serves to show why I ultimately think her Inspector Wexford books can usually be considered… well, if not Cozy, at least somewhat Cozy-adjacent. The murder itself is quick, off-screen, and relatively painlessly conducted, while the backdrop of Kingsmarkham, England, feels very much like the comfortable Cozy settings we’re all familiar with. Old relationships are unearthed between most of the members of the cast of suspects, most of whom had made some attempt to distance themselves from the unfortunately departed.

That said, there are also elements present, even in From Doon with Death, that may certainly put off many Cozy-minded readers. However, these elements have mellowed somewhat with age, and what must have been considered ground-breaking at the time is no longer such a shock.

(As a side note, Rendell’s stand alone novels and the books she has written under the pseudonym Barbara Vine tend to veer a lot further from the standard Cozy mold, though like the Inspector Wexford series they are also very good books.)

If you’re interested in reading more of these brief revisits of some of the more popular Cozy Mystery Series that I’ve written in the past, you can find them at the Most Recommended Cozy Mystery Series page on my site.

Just last month, Turner Classic Movies channel ran several of the old, black and white Nancy Drew movies. I watched all of them, sort of in a nostalgic trance. I enjoyed them immensely. I was transported back to when I was in the fifth grade, when Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys mystery books could be found in my bedroom. Back then I thought Carolyn Keene was the woman who wrote the Nancy Drew mysteries that I enjoyed so much. It probably would have been a surprise to most of us eleven year old girls that Carolyn was indeed not a “real person”.

Though the Nancy Drew series has always been attributed to “Carolyn Keene,” there never has been an author of this name, as the books were ghost-written by a series of anonymous and semi-anonymous authors. Edward Stratemeyer (creator of both Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys) first hired Mildred Wirt (Benson) to write the Nancy Drew mysteries, using the Carolyn Keene pseudonym. From there, Stratemeyer’s daughter, Harriet Adams, took on the task, and she was followed by a string of authors including Susan Wittig Albert.  (Yes, that’s right! Susan Wittig Albert, author of the bestselling China Bayles mysteries, the Darling Dahlias mysteries, and the Cottage Tales of Beatrix Potter mysteries.) Actually, more than a dozen authors have written Nancy Drew books, all going by “Carolyn Keene”.

Over the years, and also since so many different authors donned the Carolyn Keene hat, Nancy Drew, as well as the mysteries, have evolved. In the 1960s there was a major revision of the earlier mystery books, which were quite dated. They not only shortened the books (to save on printing expenses) but they also got rid of the “dated” stereotypes that were in the earlier novels.

In the 1980s they over-hauled the series again, and created the Nancy Drew Files. Nancy Drew became a little older, so they sometimes added little romances as subplots in the books. In the 1990s they started two other spin-off series: Nancy Drew and the Clue Crew, which was intended for younger, elementary aged girls, while Nancy Drew on Campus aimed at older teenagers. (Yikes! That’s a lot of different Nancys! Or would that be Nancies?)

In 2004, they officially retired the Nancy Drew series and started the Girl Detective series. They wanted to bring in a whole new audience to the books. However, this didn’t happen, so it was officially cancelled in 2012, and was replaced by the Nancy Drew Diaries series, which is still finding its footing.

Despite the many changes that have occurred to Nancy Drew over the years, “Carolyn Keene” should be proud of her accomplishments – with over 500 books credited to her name, she’s easily one of the most prolific authors of all time! Pretty impressive for someone who never existed!