One might forget
just how very
economical
her stories tend to be:
each character
gets her money’s worth–
reappears,
echoes,
trades exposition amd rising action
for a cameo in the climax.
Sure there are red herrings,
but no 11th-hour villains,
diablo ex machina
to pin the whole thing on.
It’s all a tight affair–
brass tacks mystery,
each scene integral to the plot
with a few descriptions
of gowns tossed around
just to set the stage.
Dialogue is terse, serviceable, interspersed
with synospes of talking we didn’t need to hear.
And then there’s Nancy herself–
just a blonde girl
in a blue convertible
who talks
more than she deduces.
Things just seem
to happen to her–
she finds herself
in all these situations
where clues
fall
into her lap
and she recognizes them as such,
where people
just say things
and she listens.
She connects dots,
but all the dots are in a perfect line–
no scatter plot for Miss Drew–
a perfect, neat mystery,
tied up and packaged
so that it will fit in her trunk
behind the vinyl stack.
I’ve always had an affinity for her,
felt some special thing
when I thought of her
and not just because I’m a blonde girl in a blue convertible.
I always expect
to see that stranger again
and realize what he’d said had been
a clue to some mystery–
but the funny thing is
when you keep your eyes open
this happens more often than it ought to–
like life sometimes feels
like some sprawling, rambling James Joyce extravaganza,
some dark Faulkner allegory
and you sit to write down the facts of it–
the observed and observable rather than the felt and thought–
and it comes out so small and
Nancy Drew–
and there’s a laconic beauty
in it.
We never hear
Nancy’s feminist diatribes,
rueful musings,
philosophical rants,
existential dilemmas,
but we hear
her heart
of detection and truth and justice and compassion.
She’s boiled down
not hard boiled
but boiled clean.
I Started Late and Forgot the Dog. 
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