Who Owns Women Detectives?

IN FIFTH GRADE, I brought a stack of Nancy Drew books on a camping trip. I read one a day, hauling them on hikes and finishing them by flashlight in my tent, to my little brother’s annoyance. At that time, I didn’t have access to earlier film or TV adaptations of the novels, so I encountered Nancy the way Mildred Benson, the first ghostwriter to operate under the pseudonym Carolyn Keene, wrote her on the page: a blonde sleuth who drove her own car and walked straight into danger and was always, always right.