Nancy Drew Bares All: Confessions of a Teen Sleuth: A Parody by Chelsea Cain

"If you are reading this, then I am gone and this manuscript, per my instructions, has been delivered to the writer Chelsea Cain.. ."

So begins Confessions of a Teen Sleuth, Cain's sly and delicious parody of the Nancy Drew series. Cain doesn't just do a highly humorous take-off on the original teen sleuth stories, in which Nancy and Frank Hardy share a hot kiss or two while being held captive above a speakeasy, but takes Nancy forward into an old age in which she is still torn between her two teen loves--the steady companionship of her "special friend," Ned Nickerson, and her dangerous, secret attraction to the darkly handsome and daring Frank Hardy.

In Cain's spoofy memoir, we learn how Nancy's Bryn Mawr roommate, the chubby and envious Carolyn Keene, made her career from a series of unauthorized fictionalized stories about Nancy Drew's teen years. We learn that Nancy went AWOL from her marriage to Ned to follow Frank into a daring rescue of his brother Joe Hardy from Nazi captors, where the two were forced to hide overnight in a romantic hayloft. We also learn than the nurse-cum-sleuth Cherry Ames continued to be Nancy's nemesis as she ghost-writes her own mystery series and shamelessly competes for attention in a post-popular series world.

As she ages beyond middle age, Nancy faces the usual struggle to remain "slim and attractive," eventually forced to select her "slimming skirts" from those with concealed elastic backs. Still, she tints her hair in its original Titian, and styles it and applies tasteful cosmetics before taking on every case. Although she and Ned divorce, they come together again for a few years of "travel and romance" before Ned's death, while Nancy solves "The Mystery of the Haunted Cruise Ship, 1985. Nancy then attends a New York publisher's bash for Carolyn Keene, where Nancy meaningfully inscribes a copy of The Hidden Staircase for Carolyn:

"For Carolyn,
Who made my whole life different. THANK YOU.
XO,
Nancy Drew"

It is only while writing her memoirs that Nancy recalls a mysterious collision with a young man on her way to meet with Carolyn Keene. Checking the perfectly coordinated handbag she was carrying that night, Nancy finds a message:

"7000 Calle Noche, Mexico City. If you are looking for a mystery."

Taking time only to rent her River Heights home to two pretty blonde twins from Sweet Valley, California, Nancy catches the next flight to Mexico City and at 7000 Calle Noche finds, of course, Frank Hardy, who asks her to join him.

"It's big, Nancy, really big," he responded. The biggest adventure yet. All the old teen sleuths are being called up. Tom Swift is waiting in the Sky Queen to take us abroad."

"For now," [thinks Nancy]," "all I knew is that it felt good to be a sleuth again. And Tom Swift could wait for a little while. Frank and I had some catching up to do."

For more nostalgic Nancy reading, take a look at Nancy Drew and the Women Who Created Her, The Nancy Drew Cookbook: Clues to Good Cooking, The Movie Star Mystery, and Still Sleuthing.