Nancy Drew: All 56 books, ranked

published 10 October 2019

It's been nearly 90 years since Nancy Drew found her first hidden staircase, cracked her first code, caught her first crook, and got knocked out by her first chloroform-soaked towel.

While countless movies and television shows have been made about our favorite girl detective, nothing comes close to the original books, with their action-packed (and occasionally outlandish) plots and fantastic cover art, which hint at the title's contents — sometimes spooky, other times perplexing, but always entertaining.

Never afraid to take charge, Nancy was a pioneer of the girl power movement, taking down thieves, racketeers, and other bad guys while making it look easy. Her ingenuity, resourcefulness, and instincts were her secret weapons, making Nancy a character readers could admire. I certainly did — growing up, if my nose wasn't in the latest Baby-Sitters Club book, I was probably reading The Ghost of Blackwood Hall for the 245th time.

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This one revolves around stolen furs and people being conned into purchasing stock in a fake fur company. While they get no sympathy from me, since that's what you get for buying fur, a major issue with this book is the title is deceiving — most of the action takes place away from a ski jump. There is also the recycled plotline of a villain taking on Nancy's identity, which is done a bit better in other books.

The secret is ... this is not one of Nancy's best adventures. She is tasked with solving the mystery of a gold bracelet with a missing charm, which is sent from her aunt in New York and just so happens to arrive as Nancy is taking trick riding lessons (of course, she's a pro and can already jump onto a moving horse). She winds up looking for the bracelet's owner at a nearby circus, but everything happens at a slow pace, and there doesn't seem to be a real urgency to move things forward.

Nancy decides that looking for gold sounds like a fabulous idea and heads out to Nevada for a dig, accompanied by her best friends, cousins George Fayne and Bess Marvin. Early in the book, there is a disturbing scene involving a stranger threatening to shoot Togo, Nancy's dog. A shot is heard and Togo disappears, and while everyone is sad not knowing what happened to him, they still go inside and eat dessert. This felt really off-brand.

This one is fine, but kind of dull, despite the fact that there is so much going on. While trying to use the clue of the broken locket to find a hidden treasure, Nancy, Bess, and George encounter a ghost ship, try to help a man being screwed out of his royalties by a record company, and visit a place called Pudding Stone Lodge (which is, admittedly, a great name). It just doesn't feel like there is much of a connection to the characters introduced in this title.

This isn't about piano keys, car keys, or those Black Keys. Instead, Nancy meets the world's youngest archeology professor and travels to the Florida Keys, where there's buried treasure and bad guys who want her out of the picture. The action ultimately moves from the United States to Mexico, which keeps the reader's attention, but this book doesn't have the same oomph as the ones focusing on truly nefarious villains and sinister happenings.

Nancy, George, and Bess travel to Crocodile Island in order to find a bunch of poachers. Since this is in Florida, you know things get weird (like, submarines spying on Nancy weird), but what stands out the most is the fact that this is a really educational book — readers learn all about the differences between crocodiles and alligators, how crocodiles survive in the wild, how fast they are, what they like to eat, and so on.

I must admit, I'm slightly jealous of a fictional character. Nancy gets to go everywhere, and in The Clue of the Whistling Bagpipes, she heads to Scotland in order to meet her great-grandmother and find a missing family heirloom. This one is different due to the fact that it's Nancy's family being targeted, not random people we never hear from again, but the book is slightly hindered by Nancy not getting to Scotland until later in the story.

If Nancy wasn't so nosy, she might never have stumbled upon this mystery, but you'll be glad she did — while investigating a mansion fire, Nancy comes across a diary, and she has to figure out who wrote it, if they survived the blaze, and how a man spotted running away from the scene fits into the puzzle. This one has several villains (including one dubbed "Foxy Felix"), and a lot of moving parts that make it a tad overwhelming.

Castles are fascinating places, made even more so when they are believed to be haunted but are really just home base for a bunch of crooks who get their kicks stealing from old people (this is truly a pattern in the Nancy Drew books). The Moonstone Castle Mystery starts off with a bang, with Nancy receiving a moonstone in the mail from a secret sender, who also passes along an ominous note. She's then followed by a scowling stranger as she attempts to find out who sent her this stone, and it's only up from there.

This one's for all the Architectural Digest readers out there. Nancy travels to Charlottesville, Virginia, in order to try to find a long-lost medieval stained glass window taken from England. She explores colonial mansions, inspects (possibly haunted) attics, and wonders what's behind a high brick wall. This one's different, thanks to its focus on buildings and decor, and the journey to finding the window, adorned with a peacock, is rewarding.

I am obsessed with the fact that this book immediately starts out with Nancy Drew on an airplane, asking the pilot to fly lower so she can look at her house. Since that's an insane request, he tells her no. She is handed a pair of binoculars instead and sees that there is an intruder climbing out of a window, carrying a briefcase. This could only happen to Nancy, which is why I love it so much. Nancy later will jet off to Hawaii to stop imposters from wrongfully claiming an inheritance. Pour yourself a Mai Tai and give this one a read.

Nancy Drew may be River Heights royalty, but Madame Alexandra is actual royalty. A queen who is now living in exile under an assumed name, Madame Alexandra is one of the series' more fascinating protagonists, with a back story reminiscent of the Romanovs. Nancy must help her find her missing grandson, and get rid of the bad imposter with zero manners who is pretending to be him. This book has solid pacing and a side plot about pickpockets, because everyone in this town is either a thief or the victim of a thief.

This is another Nancy Drew story focusing on an old person getting scammed, but this time, the victim is Bess and George's great-uncle, Asa Sidney. There's also the added bonus of a perfectly mysterious title (The Sign of the Twisted Candles? What does that mean?) and a family feud involving George and Bess. This one had some unexpected drama, as Nancy's friendship with Bess and George was put to the test over her involvement in their familial strife. It also has some of the best descriptions in all of the Nancy Drew books — they are so vivid, with details about everything, down to the arched doorways and wall sconces of the inn where Asa is imprisoned in a tower.

Any book that features a cult instantly shoots up to the top of my list. In The Secret of Red Gate Farm, the cult in question wears white hooded robes (yikes) and calls itself the Black Snake Colony. There's also a peculiar perfume that attracts criminals and a sad sack girl and her grandmother who could lose their farm if Nancy can't help them — believe it or not, this randomness somehow all makes sense in the end.

A strange carrier pigeon delivering an even stranger message ("Blue Bells now Singing Horses") kicks off The Password to Larkspur Lane, one of the all-time Nancy Drew greats. After a series of mysterious events, Nancy eventually figures out that a bunch of elderly people are being held against their will at a fancy estate, so crooks can take their money. Teenage Nancy then goes undercover as an old lady to rescue everyone — ingenious!

The Ghost of Blackwood Hall has everything — séances, hoaxes, an abandoned mansion occupied by an organ-playing ghoul, scam artists, hypnotized girls who give their hard-earned money to a fake orphanage, a trip to New Orleans, abductions, quicksand! There's so much going on, which is exactly why this is the greatest Nancy Drew ever written. Every spooky, eerie, and supernatural thing that could possibly happen does in this book. It's delightful from beginning to end.

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

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