Event reporting: Nancy Drew at the NYPL

As this was the first time I’ve ever attended an event at the New York Public Library, I wasn’t sure what to expect — but it did come as a surprise to take the elevator down…down…down to the auditorium in the South Court. I guess I was expecting it to be above ground, but wherever it was, it didn’t seem to deter the attending crowd, which filled the auditorium up to near ³⁄₄ capacity, from what I could tell.

After long introductions by representatives of each co-sponsoring organization (Live from the NYPL and the Cullman Center) the panel got underway as David Ferriero (who was “outed” as being a major Nancy Drew fan in his own right, not just that his sister loved reading the books) then introduced Melanie Rehak and Laura Lippman. And boy, did he do his homework — Rehak later commented that he seemed to know more about her life than she did, while Lippman laughed aloud when her first publishing efforts were brought up.

I was worried it might be a bit disjointed, as the questions to Rehak obviously skewed more towards Nancy Drew while Lippman spoke more of female PI protagonists and her own writing process, but both these women not only engaged the audience, but engaged each other — evidently they had spoken at length right before the panel discussion and had hit it off quite nicely, and that certainly came through. Rehak offered many insights into her own love of Nancy Drew, stemming from her discovery of the books at the age of 8, to how she came to writing GIRL SLEUTH, and to why she might just write about Edward Stratemeyer as her next project, because she was so fascinated with his “Renaissance Man” quality.

Lippman went into some detail about how Nancy influenced her by a sort of “trickle-down” effect — the books paved the way for the early female PI novelists (Muller, Paretsky, Grafton) and they affected her creation of Tess Monaghan as a strong but fallible heroine who’s had a chance to grow throughout the books. And she offered a sneak peek into the next Tess book, which will focus on the kind of homicide very authentic to Baltimore — that of a young black male, given scant space in the newspaper the next day. Lippman called it a “karmic debt” in that it’s dealing with the “hyper-segregation” that is still a major problem in Baltimore.

Race is something that the Drew books never knew how to deal with properly, Rehak said. The early books were full of crude and ugly stereotypes, and the Stratemeyer syndicate dealt with this in the 1950s in two ways: cutting out all non-white characters completely from the books, and starting a new series for African-American girls that steered completely clear of controversy. No wonder the books failed quickly…

Because this was held at a library, Ferriero did nudge the conversation in that direction. Not surprisingly, both women are huge fans of libraries: Rehak owes lots to the NYPL as she did daily research for months at the Cullman Center as part of the process of writing GIRL SLEUTH, while Lippman always incorporates a library scene in the Tess books. Interestingly, though the Drew books were never officially banned, many librarians “hated” the Stratemeyer books, holding them up as an example of all that is wrong with literature.

There was lots more, and the Q&A was lively, even if there was the occasional blowhard or two. Afterwards there was a cocktail reception held on the 2nd floor of the NYPL, and in between glasses of wine and an amazing display of food, I chatted briefly with Rehak, Kirk Davis Swinehart, Halley Moore and with several folks from Harcourt, including Andrea Schultz (Rehak’s editor), Jenna Johnson and Melanie Blankenship. And the consensus in the room was about how great the panel was — something I would definitely have to agree with.