Romancing Nancy Drew

Note: this book contains neither crosswords nor ciphers in the traditional sense! The Notorious NBG head to Peru to help their temporary bud Carla, who is taking a secretarial course despite being ridiculously wealthy. She has a 300-ish year old family heirloom that only a white teen lady detective can decode! Ned cameos as her concerned beau who takes her on a romantic trip to the hotel airport. The girls hit up several world heritage sites, which are just wantonly defaced, and L. Ron’s newest recruit lobs an ACTUAL BOMB at our heroes. It’s a wild (colonial) ride! No mummies we’re (probably) harmed in the making of this outing.

Nancy heads to France to kick butt and help solve a friend (Keira Knightley)’s PTSD! She’s just a giving person that way. This is a real weird one, where we find out that Bess and George totally stan Joan of Arc, and John Slattery plays the client in the Perry Mason sub-mystery, The Case of the Frightened Financier.

It’s 1965 and we’re getting all colonial! Nancy and the girls head to Emerson for June Week slash orgy time and end up staying with queer elder Uncle John, whose house is being haunted by a particularly greedy phantom. Nancy is menaced by a dude who is one traffic stop away from going full serial killer. There’s a memorable sequence involving crew racing (or crew racing as a metaphor!) and Nancy and Ned almost certainly hook up a dozen times. Ned gets the crown (and the deeply inappropriate headdress!) this time around!

In which Nancy is pursued by Sea Org members to Scotland, where she finds their sheep graveyard. (This is not a happy sheep story.) Carson is tapped to handle turning an estate over to the National Trust, because it belongs to Nancy’s maternal great-grandmother, and a family heirloom she was to inherit has disappeared. Also, a bunch of sheep. Ned, fresh back from government shenanigans in Central America, becomes Nancy’s stateside deputy while she’s doing her Outlander tour. She is fair gamed but emerges victorious!!!

In SuperMystery 11, Nancy and Bess head to Canada right after Christmas to investigate sabotage on the set of a very dumb Lifetime movie being worked on by Bess’s cousin. Frank and Joe are hanging out with a bigwig in the ice car racing (???) community. It’s like someone took a Lifetime Christmas movie, Talladega Nights, and a CW show and threw them in a blender. Ned gets a mention but at least there’s no shenanigans between my least fave pairing, so I’ll take it!

Ned is absolutely AWOL for this one, the story of a ballet school owner beset by annoyance and frustration while trying to put together the yearly Nutcracker performance. Nancy joins the fracas as propmistress slash sassmistress to help figure out who seems to be sabotaging the show. I blame L. Ron for all this.

In Digest 175, Nancy, Bess, George, and Ned (Chad Michael Murray) investigate the disappearance of some wolves from a nearby wolf preserve, and strange events at the Hallmark Cinematic Universe Ice Festival, brought to you by Local Ski Shop. As you know, werewolves are not canon, so some poor furry just trying to get by has to be involved. At several points Nancy could have hit up the Sweat Lodge with CMM, but sadly does not. It’s a HOWL-ing good time (*NO) for all! Or none. Or furries.

This club (literally) has it all (Christmas)! Nancy and Bess are in NYC to help the Hardys (played by whichever male lead from Friends you hate most, and Justin Timberlake) catch a pair of cat burglars. Bess meets the man of her dreams (played by any member of New Kids On the Block) and all of them are soon clubbing and ice skating and getting kidnapped and stealing forklifts. It’s a lot. Happy holidays to all, and to all a horse drawn carriage ride that doesn’t end at gunpoint!

A LEGIT BANGER. Nancy and Bess head to Chicago to find out who is threatening hot teen-fashion designer Kim Daley (Fairuza Balk). Everyone hates her, so the suspect list is long—and then Nancy discovers she has been poisoned and has 72 hours from the exposure to live. She calls in Ned and they go full Jack Bauer on everything, because they have some hot celebratory banging to do. Keanu Reeves and Neve Campbell also star, LOL.

In which Nancy receives an emergency call to Washington to save Senator Kirkpatrick (Sigourney Weaver) from the repercussions of Files 7. The senator isn’t being blackmailed; she’s being threatened with exposure over one slightly sketch decision she made to help Teresa the tennis star, and TMZ has receipts. If Nancy can’t block the story, the senator’s career and Teresa’s life might be over. Nancy has a very exciting scavenger hunt and gets to see two corpses, because this is that kind of book.