Hello, and welcome to my clue book. My name is Karina and I'm thirteen. I have read 41 of the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories so far, starting with number one, The Secret of the Old Clock, which first came out in 1930, and I've played the computer game Nancy Drew: Secrets Can Kill all the way through three times.

Some people at school think Nancy Drew is for little kids, or for their grandmothers. I would like to politely disagree. My grandmother did read them, actually, and most of my hardcovers used to be hers and my mother's. But I read them because they're good. A good mystery is a good mystery no matter how old it is.

On this page you'll find why I love Nancy, her best friends, the truth about the author, and a quiz to test what you know. My book list has every one I've read, with a rating, and my Secrets Can Kill page has tips for the game without giving away who did it.

Nancy Drew lives in River Heights with her father, Carson Drew, who is a famous lawyer, and their housekeeper, Hannah Gruen, who has taken care of Nancy since her mother died when Nancy was little. Nancy is brave. She goes into dark attics and secret passages and abandoned mansions by herself, and she gets knocked out and tied up and locked in closets, and she always gets out and she never gives up. She is also clever, and it's not luck. She notices things nobody else does and she thinks them through.

And she drives her own car, a blue roadster, and goes wherever the mystery takes her, with no one telling her she can't. When these books first came out, that was a very unusual thing for a girl in a book to do. I think that's why so many girls loved her then, and it's why I love her now.

My only complaint: she's almost too perfect. She can ride horses, sail, dance, play golf and speak French, sometimes all in one book. I can barely do one of those. But that's sort of the point. She makes you want to try.

Bess Marvin and George Fayne are Nancy's best friends, and they're cousins, and they could not be more different.

Bess is the careful one. She likes pretty clothes and desserts and would honestly rather not go into the haunted house, thank you. But she always goes anyway, because Nancy is her friend, and I think that makes her the bravest of the three. She's scared and she does it anyway.

George is the tomboy, with a boy's name and short hair, and she's ready for anything. If there's a fight, George is in it. If there's a boat to row, George is rowing it.

My best friend Amber and I decided a long time ago that I'm a George and she's a Bess. She says she's a Nancy. We agree to disagree.

And then there's Ned Nickerson, Nancy's boyfriend, who goes to Emerson College and plays football and is always showing up to help at exactly the right time. He's fine. He's nice. But Nancy doesn't need rescuing, and I like it best when she's the one who rescues him.

Here is a real mystery, and I solved it at the library. There is no Carolyn Keene. It's a pen name. The books were created by the Stratemeyer Syndicate, a company that also made the Hardy Boys and the Bobbsey Twins, and many different writers wrote the books under that one name.

The one who wrote most of the very first Nancy Drew books was a woman named Mildred Wirt Benson. Later, Harriet Stratemeyer Adams, whose father started the company, wrote many of them herself and rewrote the old ones starting in 1959, to make them shorter and more up to date. That's why if you find an old copy of the first book at a yard sale, it might not match the one at the library. In the old versions Nancy is sixteen, and in the new ones she's eighteen.

The most amazing part: Mildred Wirt Benson is still alive. She is in her nineties and she still writes for a newspaper in Ohio. I think that is the best thing I have ever found out at the library.

How much do you know? Write your answers down before you scroll to the bottom. No peeking. A real detective doesn't peek.

1. What color is Nancy's roadster?
2. What is the name of the Drews' housekeeper?
3. What does Carson Drew do for a living?
4. Which college does Ned Nickerson go to?
5. In which numbered book does Ned first appear?
6. Which of Nancy's friends is the cautious one?
7. What is the name of Nancy's hometown?
8. Who really wrote the books?

Scoring: 8 right, you're a master sleuth. 6 or 7, you're a junior detective. 5 or less, go to the library. You'll thank me.