Re Kevin's spirited defense of Nancy, Joe, and Frank:
"Because Nancy Drew (and her brothers-in-arms The Hardy Boys) were the
kid-friendly equivalent of the early hard-boiled crime pulps, and were
in fact contemporaries. The Hardy Boys and Drew both made their debut
about the same time Hammett and Gardner and Daly were running amuck in
the pages of BLACK MASK. And with their colourful characters, breathless plots, purplish prose and fast-paced action (and occasional political incorrectness) , Nancy and the Boys were viewed with more than a little suspicion by the so-called arbiters of decency and taste. Just as the pulps were. As the gateway drug that probably lead a lot of us of a certain more literate age here, I think the various offspring of the Stratemeyer (sorry if that's too hard to pronounce) Syndicate deserve a little more respect."
Very well put!
JIM DOHERTY
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