Murder & Mayhem in The Nancy Drew Files Series - Celebrating the 40th Anniversary

It was the summer of 1986 between 7th and 8th grade and my thirteen-year-old self was at Waldenbooks at the mall with my mom who also loved to read and so we’d make trips to the bookstore often. I’d grown up on classic Nancy Drew hardcovers with mysteries about old clocks, hidden staircases, old attics, phantoms and not-so haunted places. And there I was in my acid wash jeans with hair that probably had half a can of hair spray immersed into it and there on the cover of a YA style paperback book, was a new more modern Nancy Drew – also imbibing in the hair spray it would seem. With her purple jacket and jeans and big hair she was confident and there was some guy who seemed a lot older than he was in the background with a car explosion behind him and smoke and fire billowing off the cover. This was The Nancy Drew Files. Case #1 – Secrets Can Kill. And it was about to get very interesting in Nancy Drew’s world!

The tag line on the back cover read, “Nancy Drew goes back to high school – but this time, the curriculum is murder.” Murder! This was not your grandmother’s Nancy Drew. And I was intrigued. Home, it went with me and from then on, I was hooked and thank goodness for quite some time, they would publish quite a few titles per year to give me that Files fix. I was just at the right age for this series and it resonated. Not so much the murder part, though I feel this could have started me down the path of being a true crime junkie, but what resonated more likely was the fashion, romance and suspense which were exciting. Targeting teen girls, this series focused more on those topics than in any previous incarnation. And murders were now Nancy’s bread and butter, something that was not a part of the classic Nany Drew books. Inside each book before the case began was a page from Nancy’s Casebook listing her assignment (later her case), her contact, suspects and complications. I always enjoyed this breakdown of the case before reading the book.

The Nancy Drew Files series ran from 1986 to 1997 and spanned 124 books. Titles were all about murder or romance like Secrets Can Kill, Murder on Ice, and Heart of Danger. Nancy wasn’t dealing with faux ghosts, antiquities thieves, or generic bungalow robbers. There were more sophisticated criminals in this series, who would murder someone and also attempt murder to get Nancy Drew off the case, rather than just leaving her in a closet to “starve.” The stakes were much higher, the fashion more haute couture (save for some of those sweater/suits that made her look more Golden Girls in hindsight), and the romance was much more prominent and trickier. Often a villain was dating Nancy, Bess or George and Nancy and Ned Nickerson were on and off again. Times had definitely changed in Nancy’s world. There were more Pop Culture references and things that would date these books, the stuff that wasn’t so dated in the classics. The Hardy Boys also had a similar update in the Hardy Boys Casefiles series. And there was a crossover series, with 36 Nancy Drew & Hardy Boys SuperMysteries.

When The Nancy Drew Files series debuted, in the back of book one was a contest, The Nancy Drew Files Sweepstakes. There were over 3200 prizes up for grabs. There were Walkmans, boom boxes and stereo systems and lots of copies of the Nancy Drew Files books. All you had to do was fill out an entry form or send a card in with your info to enter the contest. Advertising also asked, “Have you Seen Nancy Drew Lately?” Ads noted that “Nancy Drew has become a girl of the 80s! There is hardly a girl from seven to seventeen who doesn’t know her name.” They promised “more romance, fashion, mystery and adventure.” It was all about teen stuff, travel with Bess and George, and even rock concerts were promised to the targeted older readers. There were promo booklets and bookmarks given out by bookstores like B. Dalton that are quite collectible today among Nancy Drew Files collectors. In the 1990s, computer game maker HeR Interactive began to create games based on some of the books in the Files series including their first game, Secrets Can Kill. There was a planned River Heights USA clothing line that was never produced.

Prior to the Files series debuting in 1986 we’d had quite the transition behind the scenes through the previous seven years. Nancy Drew had gone from yellow spine picture covers to paperbacks in 1979 resulting in a lawsuit amongst her publishers and The Stratemeyer Syndicate in 1980 during the 50th anniversary of Nancy Drew. Ghostwriter Mildred Wirt Benson testified at the trial. Harriet Stratemeyer Adams had passed away in 1982 and the Syndicate was sold to Simon & Schuster in 1984. Lots of changes had come Nancy Drew’s way. Publicity was widespread when the Files series debuted. Also debuting that year was Carol Billman’s book on the Syndicate, The Secret of the Stratemeyer Syndicate: Nancy Drew, The Hardy Boys and the Million Dollar Fiction Factory. Headlines for the new Files series debut ran the gamut from “Nancy Drew Updates her Image with Wardrobe, Love and MTV,” (Ellen Creager writing for the Detroit Free Press), “Nancy Drew Takes a Step into the 1980s,” (Sylvia Sachs), “Nancy Drew: Then and Now,” (Deborah Felder, Publishers’ Weekly, May 1986), “The Mysteries of the New Nancy Drew,” (Deborah Kaplan, Detroit Free Press), and so on. “New,” “1980s,” and “Updated” were themes running in these articles.

The Publishers’ Weekly article by Felder revealed that Simon & Schuster was spending a whopping $125K on marketing and discussed those collectible giveaway booklets with chapters from the first several Files books. These booklets were distributed to bookstores but also junior high schools. It also mentions the planned fashion line of not only clothing but also cosmetics, that never was produced.

Mildred WirtBenson, working at the time for The Toledo Blade, was hit with the mass of articles out on the Files series and she took umbrage with Felder’s piece in Publishers’ Weekly and sent a letter which was published in the September 1986 issue. In her letter she attempted to correct the record as Felder had repeated the typical Syndicate publicity that Harriet Stratemeyer Adams had written most of the books. Mildred stated that she felt fans deserved the truth. Felder wrote a response also published in this issue and defended her article and her research which pointed to Adams and wrote that Mildred’s work and lack of recognition were typical of staff writers or ghost writers but did say that Mildred’s work deserved credit for making Nancy Drew a success.

Not all publicity was pro-Files. Patricia Holt, writing for the San Francisco Chronicle in the October 19, 1986 issue, felt Nancy Drew was “a professional sex tease for teenyboppers, a ‘Dynasty’ bimbo wandering through insipid plots with rock stars and high school dreamboats whose mere touch makes her forget her detective role.” Hypers! – as George might say.

At the 2013 estate sale of Mildred’s daughter, Peggy, there was a Nancy Drew Files Secrets Can Kill book that had been among Mildred’s books. Perhaps this long-time author and journalist had the last word on the Files series. Inside she wrote, “I had nothing to do with the writing of this book. Mildred Wirt Benson.”

For all its modernization, the added fashion and romance, and the murders, I still enjoyed The Nancy Drew Files series as I was also reading the Sweet Valley High series at the time. I was also continuing to read the digest paperbacks in the classic series and enjoying those too. I read through around Files #51 A Model Crime before I went off to college in 1991. I quit purchasing them, transitioning to the college scene and leaving all my Nancy Drew books back at home. When I starting seriously collecting all Nancy Drew books and spin-offs around 1997, I began to collect all the volumes I’d missed in the Files series, making a lot of visits to paperback exchange shops and used bookstores. And eBay too. 

I own several cover art paintings for the Nancy Drew Files, #83, Diamond Deceit, #85 Sea of Suspicion, and the last book #124 Crime at the Chat Café. Ghostwriter Vicki Berger Erwin donated her letters and files on writing Diamond Deceit to the Jennifer Fisher Nancy Drew Collection & Archive at the Toledo Public Library and will be speaking at our Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys 100th Conference in Toledo next April 15-17, 2027. The Toledo Public Library also has a Nancy Drew Files painting for book #38, The Final Scene which is one of our theme books for our 2026 Nancy Drew Sleuths St. Louis Convention as it was set in St. Louis when HeR Interactive created their computer game version for The Final Scene. Fans who attend the convention’s Meet & Greet party will get a chance to win a commemorative Nancy Drew Files 40th anniversary enamel pin.

It’s hard to believe that it’s been 40 years since The Nancy Drew Files series debuted. I will always remember it fondly from my childhood and those teen years that I read my way through those books. Through Nancy Drew Files, I got to travel to all sorts of locations vicariously including several European stops in a trilogy of “passport to romance” over three volumes one summer. I learned even more sleuthing skills regarding crime scenes and murders, and enjoyed the easy fun-filled entertainment these books brought. The great thing about Nancy was she still had the same zeal for solving crimes that she did in the classics, just in a more modern setting. Also debuting in 1986 were the ever-popular movies, Top Gun and Pretty in Pink. 1986 was a great year and I’ve enjoyed so much revisiting the 1980s for the 40th anniversary of this series.