Dubai Diaries: My favourite girl detective

How did a fictional girl detective manage to become one of my favourite literary characters? The story begins over thirty years ago when my parents happened to get me a couple of Nancy Drew books from a secondhand bookstore (a little kiosk inside a furniture shop in Karama at the time).

I remember being fascinated by the teenage ‘titian-haired’ amateur sleuth who along with her two best friends Bess and George solve mysteries that range from a secret involving an old clock, a whispering statue, a haunted bridge and many more.

As you can imagine, these books filled my young mind with unique thrills; I felt every time Nancy set out to solve a mystery I was along for the ride somehow, vicariously living my dream of being one of her loyal sidekicks.

I would be vaulted from my rather laidback life in a sunny Middle Eastern city (where the most excitement you could have was in a sandy playground downstairs), to the fictional American town of River Heights where I’d be part of exciting car chases, scoping out deserted buildings, investigating ‘ghostly’ occurrences and all in all, being a true-blue ‘detective’.

Looking back, I’m not sure what it was about Nancy that impacted me most. Could it have been her fearlessness, her brilliant analytical mind, her determination that truth should win? Or was I just caught up in the romance of being able to escape to a realm where a young girl battled the odds to solve the most exciting of mysteries.

Maybe it was all the above, coupled with Nancy’s personal attributes of kindness and empathy (her love and protective attitude towards her father, lawyer Carson Drew, is extremely poignant in light of the fact that her mother had passed away many years ago and she was brought up by a kindly and sensible housekeeper, Hannah Gruen).

I also liked the fact that she had some great friends - Bess and George - (two starkly contrasting personalities) who can always be counted on. The occasional appearance in the books of her college-going boyfriend, Ned Nickerson, who I always imagined to be rather good-looking, was a treat.

But Nancy, ultimately, didn’t need Ned or anyone else to tell her who she was or what she should or shouldn’t be doing - and this I think is where most of her appeal lies. She had a support system and needed it (as all of us do) but at the end of the day was an independent spirit.

Nancy has often been the subject of film and television portrayals, the most recent being 2019’s Nancy Drew, which, set in modern times, is a darker take on the original books, with supernatural elements.

While I aim to give this series a chance before getting into any comparisons, I’m glad that since the first Nancy Drew novel was written in the 1930s her appeal has never waned; to me she will always be a tour de force of young adult literature and sometimes, I still find myself zipping across River Heights with her in a blue convertible, all set for the next mystery to come along.

• Dubai