Thursday, January 11, 2018

My Homage to Nancy Drew - Girl Sleuth by Heather Weidner #nancydrew @heatherwwidnerauthor

My Homage to Nancy Drew – Girl Sleuth

Thank you so much for letting me visit today. I write mystery novels and short stories. Secret Lives and Private Eyes is the first in the Delanie Fitzgerald mystery series. The Tulip Shirt Murders is the second book. My sleuth Delanie is a sassy, redheaded private investigator who zooms around Central Virginia in her black Mustang.

I have loved mysteries since Scooby Doo and Nancy Drew. My friends and I raced through all the Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys collections at the public library in Virginia Beach. My favorite is still The Crooked Bannister (1971) with its hot pink cover. I loved the plot twists and the double meanings. From that point on, I was hooked on mysteries, and I moved on to Alfred Hitchcock, Agatha Christie, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. But Nancy Drew is still one of my favorite sleuths.

As a pre-teen reader, I was so impressed that Nancy could solve crimes before the professionals and adults did. I adored her freedom. She had a car. She did things that other girls didn’t, and she could solve crimes. She influenced generations of women like Hillary Clinton, Laura Bush, Oprah Winfrey, and Sonia Sotomayor. Nancy has been a role-model for lots of young girls for over eighty years.

The Nancy Drew mysteries were written by several ghost-writers under one pseudonym, Carolyn Keene. The series has undergone several revisions and updates over the years, but Nancy’s spirit prevailed. The famous yellow spines were added to the books in 1962. That was the set that I remember reading. And her stories have been translated into over twenty different languages.

The girl detective appeared in several movies from the 1930s to the 2000s and TV shows through the years. Her face and logo have graced all kinds of merchandising from jewelry, lunch boxes, and clothing to board and video games. She has appeared in novels, coloring books, and graphic novels.

There are some similarities between the iconic Nancy Drew and my private investigator. I didn’t intentionally mean to create the parallels, but subconsciously, her character influenced my mystery writing. Both females are fearless, smart, and feisty. Delanie and Nancy both have red hair. (Nancy Drew started out as a blonde in the 1930s, but artists in the 1940-50s depicted her as a redhead.)

Nancy drove a sporty roadster. Her car was upgraded to a Mustang in the mysteries from the 1980s. My sleuth loves her black Mustang, nicknamed Black Beauty. Nancy’s friends (Bess and George) were important in her life and to the stories just like Delanie’s partner Duncan (his English bulldog Margaret), and her girlfriends Paisley and Robin are key to her story life.

I like to think of my Delanie Fitzgerald as following in the footprints of the original girl sleuth.

About the Author

Heather Weidner’s short stories appear in the Virginia is for Mysteries series and 50 Shades of Cabernet. She is a member of Sisters in Crime – Central Virginia, Guppies, Lethal Ladies Write, and James River Writers. The Tulip Shirt Murders is her second novel in her Delanie Fitzgerald series.

Originally from Virginia Beach, Heather has been a mystery fan since Scooby Doo and Nancy Drew. She lives in Central Virginia with her husband and a pair of Jack Russell terriers.

Heather earned her BA in English from Virginia Wesleyan College and her MA in American literature from the University of Richmond. Through the years, she has been a technical writer, editor, college professor, software tester, and IT manager. She blogs regularly with the Pens, Paws, and Claws authors.

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About the Book:

Title: THE TULIP SHIRT MURDERS
Author: Heather Weidner
Publisher: Sandpiper Productions
Pages: 264
Genre: Mystery – Female Sleuth

BOOK BLURB:

Private investigator Delanie Fitzgerald, and her computer hacker partner, Duncan Reynolds, are back for more sleuthing in The Tulip Shirt Murders. When a local music producer hires the duo to find out who is bootlegging his artists’ CDs, Delanie uncovers more than just copyright thieves. And if chasing bootleggers isn’t bad enough, local strip club owner and resident sleaze, Chaz Smith, pops back into Delanie’s life with more requests. The police have their man in a gruesome murder, but the loud-mouthed strip club owner thinks there is more to the open and shut case. Delanie and Duncan link a series of killings with no common threads. And they must put the rest of the missing pieces together before someone else is murdered.

The Tulip Shirt Murders is a fast-paced mystery that appeals to readers who like a strong female sleuth with a knack for getting herself in and out of humorous situations such as larping and trading elbow jabs with roller derby queens.