The Mystery of the Unpublished George Edward Stanley Books- Part 1

 

Thanks to “The Hardy Boys Digest” blog for finding this link. It looks like the University of Southern Mississippi has a treasure trove of HardyBoys and Nancy Drew related documents under the collection title “George Edward Stanley Papers”.

George Edward Stanley was quite a prolific ghostwriter of Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew books, having written books in both Digest series, the Clue Crew, Secret Files, and Girl Detective Series. I’ve only read one of them, the Nancy Drew Digest “No Strings Attached”, which I do remember liking.

I do know that he’s infamous for writing two of the worst Hardy Boys books; “The Mystery of the Black Rhino” and “The Case of the Psychic’s Vision”, but I can’t really comment on their quality, because I haven’t read them yet.

Looking at the listings, I noticed multiple things of interest, including a few unpublished books. I’d like to point out, before beginning, that the only thing I have to work from is book names. Without heading to the library myself, which is extremely unlikely to ever happen, I can only guess as to the contents of these unpublished works.

The Hardy Boys: Living with the Blue People

There are three listings on the page for this book:

“The Hardy Boys: Living with Blue People/Desert Danger/Sahara Oil” by George Edward Stanley (unpublished)

“Hardy Boys: Undercover Brothers: Sahara Oil!” by Franklin W. Dixon (George E. Stanley); Simon & Schuster (unpublished)

“Living with the Blue People” by George E. Stanley (unpublished)

Of the three different listings, the first contains the most files, including several summaries. The UB listing only contains research and a summary, and the last one contains only a Proposal.

We do know that the first listing is probably for a Hardy Boys Digest. All the other digests on the page are listed as The Hardy Boys: (Book title). The first listing matches that format.  

If you are wondering who the Blue People the title refers to are, this is the likely answer. 

My guess is that the book never got published because of the cancellation of the Digest series.

The fate of the Undercover Brothers book is hard to guess. Maybe it was too similar to "The Mummy's Curse"? Or maybe they couldn't find a convincing way to get ATAC involved in the plot. 

The last listing has no mention of the Hardy Boys, and it looks like George Edward Stanley tried to get it published as its own book, with the Hardys out of the plot. The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew were far from his only mystery stories and he wrote plenty of other stories about kid detectives.

 

The Secret of the Skeleton’s Letter

The other interesting unpublished book is listed as Nancy Drew and the Secret of the Skeleton’s Letter/Hardy Boys and the Skeleton’s Letter” by George Edward Stanley (unpublished).  There’s also a listing for Future Changer/The Skeleton’s Letter” by George Edward Stanley (unpublished), though I can only speculate that they are related.

It looks like this book at some point considered for either the Hardy Boys Digests or the Nancy Drew Digests. If the second listing is connected, the book could have had a plot involving a letter that predicted the future.

Much like “Living with the Blue People”, George Edward Stanley appears to have tried to also get the story published without the Hardys or Nancy Drew but didn’t succeed.

 

Other bits of trivia.

-The Nancy Drew Digest “Danger on the Great Lakes” was originally called “Mystery on the Great Lakes”.

-The Bobbsey Twins book “Mystery on the Mississippi” was originally called “Bobbsey Twins and the Riverboat Mystery”.

-The collection also contains writers guidelines for; the Hardy Boys Digests, the Nancy Drew Digests, and the Clue Crew.

-There’s also a bunch of other unpublished books with no relation to the Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew. A few of the interesting titles are “My Daddy Robs Banks”, “Murder Goose”, “Dead Bugs Talk”, and “Saving My Ghost Sister’s Reputation.

Update:

I've had to fix some things. 

Review: The Secret in the Stars (Nancy Drew #156)

Well, I’m back after two years! Sorry, I’ve had a rough time, and have only gotten back into reading recently. Hopefully, I’ll actually manage to keep this blog running this time!

In "The Secret in the Stars", Nancy, Bess, and George go to a park for a "star watch" party hosted by Dr. Stars, a famous astronomer. When they arrive, the park is empty, and so is Dr. Stars' van. While investing in the van, Dr. Stars shows up and reveals that his telescope is missing its focus lens. Is somebody trying to sabotage the show?

Nancy Drew is awfully forgetful in this book. She forgets her notebook in a public park, she forgets to ask Bess a question that could have helped rule out a suspect, and she forgets to read Dr. Star’s biography on his website. That last one is particularly annoying, as had she actually read the biography, she would know that the Dr. Stars she’s been investigating was an imposter. Even worse, she clearly was on the page at some point, as she had it printed out.

Even if she weren’t so uncharacteristically forgetful, it really felt as if she could have solved the case a lot sooner than she did. It was blatantly obvious from the start that Dr. Stars was an imposter, but Nancy takes a painfully long time to start investigating him. I also have a really hard time accepting that nobody in River Heights knew what Dr. Stars looked like, even considering the year this book came out.

It doesn’t help that there’s a 20-year age difference between the fake and real Dr. Stars.  Dr. Stars even had a cartoon logo of himself on his van, showing that he looked nothing like the imposter, and only Nancy, her friends, and one of the suspects noticed. It doesn't make sense to me. It might be nitpicking, but it was quite distracting to me and took me out of the story several times.

The other major problem I have with this book is Bess’ actions during it. She acts like a creepy fan to a pair of celebrities, causing them to have to flee the place they are in twice. Why did she think that trying to take a photo of them without their permission would end well? While she is called out on this, and she does apologize for spying on the celebrities, it still feels out of character for Bess. Bess also decides it’s a good idea to try to crawl in through a window in the middle of the night while Nancy’s doing research online, scaring Nancy and nearly getting Bess bashed over the head. Apparently, she didn’t think of knocking on the window.

This book took me a long time to read, as I waited for Nancy to figure out the obvious. It doesn't help that the book is quite slow-paced. If I wasn't reading this for the blog, I wouldn't have bothered finishing it. The book does get a bit better when Nancy finally realizes that Dr. Stars is an imposter, but by then I was already bored of it. 

I would not recommend this book, as it's one of the worst digests I have read. Admittedly, it was probably not the best book to start off with, but I've got plenty more books to read. Up next, the Three Investigators Crimebusters! 

       

Rating 

2 out of 10

A Bunch of Ghostwriter Information

I'm having some personal problems, and that's why it's taken so long for me to post anything. I won't go into farther detail, but I will try to update this blog more often. I'm working on a review right now and hopefully will have it up soon.

I was looking through LinkedIn again and discovered a whole lot of Ghostwriter information. Not sure how I missed all this last time, but the profiles might not have been there.

First, we have two ghostwriters for the recent "Hardy Boys Adventures" series:
-Ruben Sack wrote #6,7,10,12,15. He also wrote the Diaries book "A Nancy Drew Christmas".
-Paul Crilley wrote #9.

We have three ghostwriters who I know wrote Nancy Drew books, but I'm not sure what ones:
-Louise Ladd was mentioned on someone's page as a Nancy Drew Ghostwriter.
-Janet Jones and Pamela Willis wrote a Nancy Drew Digest in 1996, no information on which one they wrote.
-Cathy Hapka wrote Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew books.

Finally, Stacia Deutsch wrote the Nancy Drew Clue Crew book, "Pony Problems", and several other Nancy Drew books.

A Nancy Drew Files Mystery Solved?

Recently, I've been looking through LinkedIn to see if I find any info on Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew ghostwriters. I actually found quite a bit:
-Ami Boghani wrote The Nancy Drew Diaries #10
-Ellen Keller wrote The Hardy Boys Casefiles #91
-Deborah Gaine wrote The Nancy Drew Files #40 and #44

However, one LinkedIn page not only revealed the name of a ghostwriter, but might have solved a mystery as well. But first, some background info.

The final book in the Nancy Drew Files series, "Crime at the Chat Cafe" was published on December 1st, 1997. However, that may have not been the last book written for the series. The Book Depository had a listing and an ISBN number for Nancy Drew Files #128, before the listing was removed.* They also had listings for other unpublished Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew books, like Casefiles #129, 131-134 and Super Mystery #38.

What the Book Depository didn't have were ISBN numbers for Nancy Drew Files #125-127. Now, you'll notice that I didn't list Casefiles #130 as one of the unpublished books. That's because it actually got published as Digest #150, "The Crisscross Crime". If you were to search the Book  Depository for "Casefiles #130", back when the site still listed unpublished books, you'd find nothing.

So where were the ISBN numbers for Nancy Drew Files #125-127? I have long suspected that those three Nancy Drew Files books got published as Nancy Drew Digests. However, I've never been able to figure out exactly Digests started out as Files books.

Now back to LinkedIn. While searching, I found this profile. (You need a LinkedIn account to access it)

In the experience section, she lists some of the books she's written. Now this is where it gets interesting. One of the entries on her list is, "The E-Mail Mystery, Nancy Drew Files (Megabooks; Simon & Schuster)". 

This is strange, because "The E-Mail Mystery" is actually Digest #144. However, Denise Hidalgo referred to it as a Nancy Drew Files book. Considering that she wrote the book, I don't think this was an error. 

Now I haven't read "The E-Mail Mystery", but the summery on the back cover makes it sound a lot like a Nancy Drew Files book. I'm pretty sure that the "The E-Mail Mystery" is one of the three missing Files books (#125-127). 

*For those wondering, the ISBN number for Nancy Drew Files #128 is 9780671007553.