History Literature / NancyDrew

** In one of the earliest books of the ''Files'' series, Nancy and another character talk about their love of mysteries, and mention Nancy's SpearCounterpart series, ''Literature/TheHardyBoys'', as one of their favorites to read when they were younger, apparently indicating that the Hardys are fictional in Nancy's universe (or at least the ''Files'' continuity) as well. But within a year, the ''[=SuperMysteries=]'' {{Crossover}} series began that crossed over Nancy from the ''Files'' universe with the Hardy Boys from their respective ''Casefiles'' series, and Nancy and the Hardys are stated at the beginning of the first book in this series to have known each other for years. What's more, this crossover series ended up spanning for 36 books, and Nancy's work with the Hardys is mentioned at least a couple of times in later ''Files'' books.

* TheBusCameBack: The original series phased out Nancy's initial boyfriend, Don Cameron, pretty early on, replacing him with Ned Nickerson and not mentioning him again or why he and Nancy are no longer dating. Don reappears in "Most Likely to Die" from the ''Files'' series--which is centered around a high school reunion for the class that Nancy, Don, Bess, and George were all in--where he's Nancy's ex-boyfriend. In this incarnation, he still has feelings for her, but, while she notes that he's a perfectly nice guy and they had a lot of fun together, she never felt truly romantic or starry-eyed towards him, and thus dumped him.

* TheCaseOf: The series had a few, like ''The Case of the Disappearing Diamonds'', and ''The Case of the Vanishing Veil''.

** The first "Girl Detective" book involves a character trying to steal a family heirloom that's about to be appraised to prevent a scandal coming to light if people find out that it's a copy and his father stole the real one. In fact, the one he's trying to steal is the real one and his father has a copy and lied to the family about stealing the real one (which he felt he was entitled to) as a way of assuaging his ego.

* AndThatsTerrible: ''The Strange Message in the Parchment'' had this, just in case any readers thought stealing sheep was okay.

* BadBoss: The villains of ''Crocodile Island''. One of their workers is introduced running up to Nancy's boat begging to be taken away after they stabbed him with a trash pick for not doing a good enough job cleaning.

* ClearMyName: in ''Files #43: False Impressions'', and ''#59: High Risk'' (though this one is actually Clear My ''Boyfriend's'' Name). Several in the original series too--''Mystery at Lilac Inn'', etc.
* CostumePorn: Much like FoodPorn as described on the ''Literature/HardyBoys'' page, the books devoted a decent amount of space to descriptions of the outfits the girls wore. However, unlike the FoodPorn of the Hardys, the clothing descriptions remained, and when there are books like ''A Model Crime'' and ''Designs in Crime,'' which focus on modelling and the fashion industry, the descriptions sometimes went UpToEleven.
* CoversAlwaysLie: There was an odd period during the ''Files'' series (the period surrounding issue 100) where they decided to start marketing the books almost as a romance series. They were given titles that bordered on misleading, such as ''The Cheating Heart'' (about stolen test answers), ''Heart of Ice'' (sabotage at a mountain climbing school) and ''The Stolen Kiss'' (about a stolen painting called "First Kiss.") The covers switched to look like [[http://covers.openlibrary.org/b/id/409722-L.jpg Harlequin]] [[http://images.betterworldbooks.com/067/The-Cheating-Heart-Nancy-Drew-Files-99-9780671794910.jpg Romances,]] with Nancy staring longingly at some handsome stud (often Ned, but not always.) The writers attempted to justify this by ratcheting up the romantic angst, both in Nancy frequently missing Ned while he was at college, and having guilt-inducing feeling for the suspect, stranger, villain of the week. It came close to GenreShift, but not quite.
* CrazyJealousGuy: Ned tended to be this throughout all versions of the books whenever another guy showed interest in Nancy.

** In the book ''Two Points To Murder'' it was Ned who was a friend of the suspect. Much like with Bess or George's love interests, the guy turned out to be involved, but not guilty of the main crime. Only this time at the end of the book, the rift resulted in a pretty brutal, but realistic breakup.
* DroppedABridgeOnHim: The villain in [[spoiler:"The Crooked Bannister"]] died in a car accident in a town far away from Nancy and the others, about halfway through the book. They only find out during the interrogations of his accomplice at the end.

* {{Foreshadowing}}: The first few books of the ''Files'' series hint at the events of the eighth book ''Two Points To Murder'', namely, Ned getting fed up with always being second to Nancy's detective work and Bess and George getting angry when Nancy becomes suspicious of their respective boyfriends.

** Ned spends much of the first few books of the ''Files'' series bitching about always being second best to Nancy's detective work and being upset that she prioritizes her career over him, to the point where he finally breaks up with her. By the very next book after this, he himself needs those same detective skills to help his new girlfriend. His hypocrisy aside, this is also horrifically insensitive of him. And then there's the fact that said girlfriend is ''far more'' self-centered and career-oriented than Nancy ever was. He's also visibly jealous upon meeting her new boyfriend, even though ''he'' broke up with ''her'' and is dating someone else.

* IconicSequelCharacter: Bess and George didn't appear until ''The Secret of Shadow Ranch'' in the original series, her dog Togo didn't show up until "The Whispering Statue.", and Ned doesn't appear until ''The Clue In The Diary'' (though later text revisions briefly and erroneously refer to him several books earlier).

* MeaningfulName: In ''The Strange Message in the Parchment,'' Mr. Flockhart owns a sheep farm.

* ObfuscatingDisability: In ''Captive Witness'', the plot centers around a plan to rescue ten children from then-Communist Hungary. The ringleaders of the rescue mission are an elderly professor and his wheelchair bound nephew. It's soon revealed that the young man is not paralyzed and that the rescue plans were hidden in the seat of his chair, knowing that customs officials would not search it.

* PoorlyDisguisedPilot: You wouldn't think this could happen in book form, but it has. ''Nancy Drew Files #39: The Suspect Next Door'' focused '''heavily''' on Nancy's neighbor, a girl named Nikki Masters. Not too long after, Nikki got her own spin-off, a romance series called ''River Heights.'' It lasted about 16 issues before getting run off the face of the earth and is largely forgotten now.

* SaunaOfDeath: Appears in the '80s series during ''Two Points to Murder''; [[GettingHotInHere Nancy sheds her footwear, sweater, shirt and jeans to keep the heat at bay]] before managing to escape.

* TechnoWizard: George becomes this in the ''Girl Detective'' and ''Diaries'' series. In the former, she's still as athletic as ever and has her tech savviness as an additional trait, but in the latter, she loses her athleticism, and being a techie becomes her primary skill.

* TwoHalvesMakeAPlot: In ''The Quest for the Missing Map'', the eponymous PirateBooty map is torn and divided in two, and must be pieced together to solve the mystery.

** Ned spends much of the first few books of the ''Files'' series bitching about always being second best to Nancy's detective work to the point where he finally breaks up with her. By the very next book after this, he himself needs those same detective skills to help his new girlfriend. His hypocrisy aside, this is also horrifically insensitive of him. He's also visibly jealous upon meeting her new boyfriend, even though ''he'' broke up with ''her'' and is dating someone else.

** Helen Corning in the original series, who was eventually replaced by Bess and George (the excuse was that she was either traveling or studying in Europe, a common way to jettison unwanted characters at the time.)

* KnightOfCerebus: Gay Moreau of "The Mystery of Lilac Inn", is one of Nancy Drew's most dangerous enemies in the original series. She's a master of disguise with a personal vendetta against Nancy's father, and one of the few criminals who tries to murder the teen detective in cold blood. And what's even worse is that she comes closer to actually winning than any other antagonist.

* KnightOfCerebus: The villains of "The Clue of the Velvet Mask" are rather dark antagonists, as they are consistently one step ahead of Nancy and her friends, capture Nancy and Bess and make it extremely difficult for them to escape, and even manage to completely break George Fayne of all people.
** Even worse is Gay Moreau, the main antagonist of "The Mystery of Lilac Inn" and a master of disguise. Gay is a criminal mastermind who masquerades as several people, including Nancy herself. She not only kidnaps Nancy and attempts to get her killed on a sinking submarine, she also has a personal vendetta against her father. She's possibly the darkest villain of the original series, not helped by the fact that ''she almost wins''.

** Even worse is Gay Moreau, the main antagonist of "The Mystery of Lilac Inn" and a master of disguise. Gay is a criminal mastermind who masquerades as several people, including Nancy herself. She not only attempts to get Nancy killed on a sinking submarine, she also has a personal vendetta against her father. She's possibly the darkest villain of the original series, not helped by the fact that ''she almost wins''.

** Even worse is Gay Moreau, the main antagonist of "The Mystery of Lilac Inn". Gay is a criminal mastermind who masquerades as several people, including Nancy herself. She not only attempts to get Nancy killed on a sinking submarine, she also has a personal vendetta against her father. She's possibly the darkest villain of the original series, not helped by the fact that ''she almost wins''.

* KnightOfCerebus: The villains of "The Clue of the Velvet Mask" are among the darkest of the original series, as they are consistantly one step ahead of Nancy and her friends and manage to break George Fayne of all people.

** One of the ''Files'' stories involves a woman going to extreme lengths to find and destroy blackmail evidence she thinks will destroy her comfotrabel life, only for it to be revealed at the end of the book that the blackmailer fell off a roof and broke his neck during a burglary days ago and wouldn't have been able to pose a threat.

* YouKilledMyFather: Well not "killed" but "The Greek Symbol Mystery" and "The Case of the Vanishing Veil" both have the brother of an arrested villain attack Nancy for revenge.

* IconicSequelCharacter: Bess and George didn't appear until ''The Secret of Shadow Ranch'' in the original series while her dog Togo didn't show up until "The Whispering Statue."

* TheRival:
** Brenda Carelton, an amateur local journalist clashes a bit with Nancy in the ''Files'' books racing her to the truth, although they can cooperate on occasion.
** Local AlphaBitch Deirdre Shannon butts heads with Nancy a lot in "Girl Detective" and has since they were first graders.

* AgeLift: Gus Wooton is a bid in "The Tapping Heels" but a grown man in its reprint.

** The first "Girl Detective" book involves a character trying to steal a family heirloom that's about to be appraised to prevent a scandal coming to light if people find out that it's a copy and his father stole the real one. In fact, the one he's trying to steal is the real one and his father has a copy and lied to the family about stealing the real one (which he felt he was entitled to) as a way os assuaging his ego.

* BadBoss: The villains of ''Crocodile Island'', with one of their workers being introduced running up to Nancy's boat begging to be taken away after they stabbed him with a trash pick for not doing a good enough job cleaning.

* DeadAllAlong: [[spoiler:The titular villain in "The Crooked Bannister" died in a car crash several weeks ago, as revealed by his accomplice at the end.]]

** Brenda Carelton, an amateur local journalist clashes a bit with Nancy in the ''Files'' books racing her to the truth (although they can cooperate on occasion.

* YouKilledMyFather: Well not "killed" but "The Greek Symbol Mystery" and "the Case of the Vanishing Veil" both have the brother of an arrested villain attack Nancy for revenge.

** In "The Mystery of Crocodile Island" two minor villains attempt this in a miniature submarine during the polcie raid but unfortunately for them Nancy was in the back of it investigating.

* ThePrimaDonna: Tammy in "The Dancing Puppet" is described as a great actress who the theatre group ''would'' be lucky to have if not for her bossy and temperamental manner. Later on its implied this is because her brother is one of the books criminals the and the stress of being his SecretKeeper is getting to her.

* TheKlutz: Fred Jenkins, a wait er in "The Phantom of Pine Hill" is always dropping or spilling things.

* IconicSequelCharacter: Bess and George didn't appear until ''The Secret of Shadow Ranch'' in the original series while her dog Togo didn't show up until "The Whispering Statute."

* AmbiguousInnocence: Several {{Mook}}s from the climax of "The Clue in the Crossword Cipher" claim that the villain manipulated them by posing as a polcie official but whether or not that's true is unconfirmed and their at least taken in for questioning.

** The ''Girl Detective'' series is generally told in first-person exclusively from Nancy's point of view; however, in its first Super Myster, "Where's Nancy?", she's missing for almost the entire book, with her friends trying to find her. Instead, George and Bess share the narrative as they work together with Ned to investigate her disappearance, with the two of them alternating chapters for who has the first-person p.o.v.[[note]]Essentially, George and Bess do the same thing that the SpearCounterpart series, ''Literature/TheHardyBoys: Undercover Brothers'', regularly does with its two main characters, Frank and Joe.[[/note]] Once they finally find Nancy at the end of the penultimate chapter, she takes over the narrative for the final chapter.

** The first Super Mystery of the''Girl Detective'' series--which is usually told in first-person exclusively from Nancy's point of view--has Nancy missing for almost the entire book, with her friends trying to find her. Instead, George and Bess share the narrative as they work together with Ned to investigate her disappearance, with the two of them alternating chapters for who has the first-person p.o.v.[[note]]Essentially, George and Bess do the same thing that the SpearCounterpart series, ''Literature/TheHardyBoys: Undercover Brothers'', regularly does with its two main characters, Frank and Joe.[[/note]] Once they finally find Nancy at the end of the penultimate chapter, she takes over the narrative for the final chapter.