Friday, October 21, 2011

Nancy Drew's Aliases: Some Good, Some Totally Silly

Sometimes Nancy had to snoop incognito and used an alias which she paired with a disguise every once in a while. When the aliases were transparent like "Nan Drewry," she often was found out but her disguises often helped when paired with an alias.

Some of Nancy's aliases:

Dru Gruen
Nan Drewry
Anne Boonton
Irene Insbruck
Debbie Lynbrook

Nancy managed to outwit the villain in The Whispering Statue (revision) when she sleuthed under the alias Debbie Lynbrook and wore a disguise--self-tanning lotion and a dark wig and glasses. The villain in the end screamed, “Your hair! You were wearing a wig that half-covered your face! You’re Nancy Drew, not Debbie Lynbrook!”

Best way to avoid being detected with a good or bad alias: a dumb criminal!

Here's an article I wrote back in 2005 on Nancy's aliases if anyone's interested. If you want to disguise yourself as Nancy Drew there's always the Nancy Drew costume shown in a recent Blog entry here--you might see one at eBay someday!

Jenn:)

3 comments:

Jan said...

You're right - some of her aliases make sense and others are really out there!
Jan Rader

Anonymous said...

Debbie Lynbrook! Whispering Statue is one of my favorite revised texts, but totally zany.

I think Nancy would have a much harder time today trying to use aliases/disguises. Back before the internet or TV news most crooks probably wouldn't know what she looked like, unless they'd seen black and white newspaper photos or her personally. She'd be much more visible in the modern world (especially if she had a Facebook page...). I know she often went undercover in the Files, but I can't recall if she used aliases. I don't think she usually did. For example, in SCK I'm surprised none of the students she interacted with recognized her name.

Rebecca

Jenn Fisher said...

I always liked Debbie Lynbrook too!