Wanting to recapture some of the innocence of youth literature wise, I want to read a couple of the Hardy Boys and or Nancy Drew books. I did have a couple Hardy Boys when I was a kid but back then I did not read very much and never made it past the first few pages.
So any recommendations for any of the HB/ND books, are they any good, are some better than others? I would like some stories and impressions from reading those mystery novels.
I have a raging clue . . .
When I was a kid, I adored the hardcover Nancy Drew series. These were the original ones from the sixties. My favorites were always the ones that seemed to promise some supernatural action or at least a spooky old house (The Hidden Staircase, Secret in the Old Attic, The Whispering Statue, The Moss-Covered Mansion, The Ghost of Blackwood Hall). Though I was always disappointed in the end*, I remember the feeling of checking out of the library with a batch of fresh Nancy Drews very fondly. These days I don’t read mysteries at all.
George was super cool. I wanted to be just like her when I grew up. In fact, I could have gotten along swimmingly without whiny Bess, neutered Ned, or the other boyfriend characters.
*I was always bummed at the end of Scooby-Doo as well.
First, I recommend reading the earliest versions you can get. It is unfortunate that there are some racist and otherwise not politically correct references, but the lovely word pictures of Nancy in her roadster and Joe and Frank traveling by train are charming. That said, I’d recommend:
Nancy: The Bungalow Mystery, The Password to Larkspur Lane, The Clue of the Leaning Chimney (Nancy rescues enslaved workers), The Ghost of Blackwood Hall (Nancy in New Orleans!), and Nancy’s Mysterious Letter.
Hardy Boys: The Tower Treasure (first book), The Mystery of Cabin Island (ice boat!), The Twisted Claw, While the Clock Ticked, and The Flickering Torch Mystery.
See me when you want Bobbsey Twins straight dope!
Oooh, I have about 60 of the lavender-colored Bobbsey Twins hardcovers that I collected when I was a preteen (and occasionally added to over the years). I really need to complete that collection.
I also have some of the original hardcovers from the 1920’s or so. Some of them are incredibly un-PC now, especially regarding the kids’ black housekeeper and her husband, but they are fascinating to read (and to see what changed between the 20’s and the 60’s-70’s.)
Oh, Sam and Dinah! Yeah, Sam was the chauffeur. Except in the books when he worked at Mr. Bobbsey’s lumberyard. Continuity was not a priority in Bobbseyland.
Forget Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys. Trixie Belden is the best teen detective! I so wanted to be Trixie, with a great BFF (who was rich!), horses to ride, and great adventures.
StG
Definitely my favorite.
Of course, the Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew books came in different editions, with later editions being cut considerably.
But my favorite of that genre was “The Whispering Box Mystery,” featuring Rick Brandt.
Bah. The Hardys and Nancy can’t hold a candle to Jupe, Pete, and Bob.
Still love (and still read) Nancy Drew. My favorites -
The Mysterious Mannequin (they go to Turkey!)
Sign of the Twisted Candles (fun treasure hunt and a family fight with George and Bess!)
(Bolding Mine)
I had to smile when I read this. The first Nancy Drew book, The Secret of the Old Clock, was written in 1930, as was The Hidden Staircase and The Bungalow Mystery.
The Hardy Boys series is even older, of course, The Tower Treasure having been written in 1927, along with The House on the Cliff and The Secret of the Old Mill.
I, too, came to the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew in the 60’s. One day, while visiting my grandparents, imagine my surprise when my father showed me his Hardy Boys books dating from the 20’s and 30’s! My grandmother had actually saved them, although alas, we have no idea where those true original editions are today.
I knew I should have tried a little harder on that post. 
I read the (newer) Hardy Boy books when I was in elementary school in the early '60s. I read my daughter a ton of Nancy Drews. I agree about the original ones - they came out in reproduction versions, and are more interesting, especially in comparison to the newer, '50s, whitebread ones. Nancy was a bit younger and a bit more independent. The sorry state of the road back then was interesting also - you know if Nancy took a back way in her roadster she’d get bogged down or something.
Notice that in the '50s era books Nancy stops everything every Sunday and goes to church, something inserted with no plot reason. (We wouldn’t want to think our Nancy is an atheist, would we?) But they are all made to a standard outline, though the earlier ones are a bit better.
Of interest, if you can find it, is a crossover series of paperbacks with both Nancy and the Hardy Boys, who typically are on different cases and run into each other in exotic locales. They are aimed at a slightly higher level than the main series, in that people actually get murdered in them. Plus, Nancy and Ned are having problems, Nancy and Frank have an almost thing, and Joe is on the make, his girlfriend from the original series having been blown up by terrorists at some point. My daughter loved the soap opera angle.
I semi-MSTIEd them when I read them. When she read one herself she was shocked that the housekeeper’s name was not Hannah Gruesome.
I have a set of these, too, that a neighbor gave me when I was 12 or so. They’re still great reading for a winter afternoon when you don’t want to commit to something long and serious.
Don’t forget the Dana Girls Mysteries, also written by the ghost writer Carolyn Keene . I liked the first one, By the Light of the Study Lamp, and any written by Leslie McFarlane, a.k.a. Franklin W. Dixon who also wrote some Hardy Boys mysteries.
the Willard Price books - Volcano Adventure, African Adventure etc are good
As a kid, I got hooked on the Hardy Boys books. While my brothers would take their allowance and buy candy and games, I would buy the books and devour them in short order. At one point, I owned every Hardy Boy book ever published (granted, some in newer format, but same story as the older version of the book).
I can vividly remember thinking that I hoped Franklin W. Dixon would never die, so that he could write Hardy Boy books forever and I would always have more to read! (Little did I know that it was a pen name and the books were actually written by multiple authors.)
I suppose you could say the Hardy Boys was my generation’s Harry Potter series - got me hooked on reading at an early age and I still enjoy reading for the fun of it - so I guess I owe those authors a debt of gratitude.
I had read the Hardy Boy books in the 60s; a friend’s parents would buy them for him and after he read them he would sell them to me for thirty-five cents each. I still have forty or so of them, along with the Hardy Boys Detective Handbook.
I believe they’re called “The Hardy Boys Casefiles”, I had a few, but I somehow missed Nancy Drew in them, was she in it often or just the odd book here and there. I read a fair few of her books so I would have thought i’d have noticed.
I remember I had an omnibus of the first 3 casefiles, and I thought that’s what the casefiles bit meant, so it was a bit of a shock when Joe’s girlfriend (Lola?) gets blown up, followed by a car chase with them shooting guns at the criminals. Overall I think they’re as good as the normal stories, just a bit more adult.
I also used to read The Three Investigators, both of which I think I’ve still got somewhere. The Three Investigators was for a slightly younger audience I think, but still pretty good. I used to like the way they had their secret HQ hidden away in the junkyard, with all the secret entrances. I think they had a more ‘adult’ spinoff too.
No, those are different. I think there might be Nancy Drew casefiles also, though we don’t have any. The one’s I’m talking about (from the '80s and '90s) have both characters on the cover. You can’t miss Nancy in them. They do have a consistent background - Nancy Drew/Hardy Boy expanded universe, anyone?
Since Nancy is always 19 or so, my daughter and I would sometimes amuse ourselves by speculating on what a timeline would look like, and how many different places Nancy would have to be at once on any given day.