Writing is the closest you can come to being a girl detective in real life at that age. I wrote the Carson Girls series, and I still have The Carson Girls Go Abroad. A glance at my little mystery story reveals no child prodigy, no creative imagination blossoming, only a frustrated but nevertheless determined child who was busily resisting the Honey Bunch/Junior Miss model. My little story reveals a desperate dependence on escapist fantasies. It was an amalgamation of Nancy Drew, the Danas, the Bobbseys, Vicki Barr, and Cherry Ames. I couldn’t even think of an original name for my girls. I took it simply from Nancy Drew’s father, Carson Drew.
The Carson Girls Go Abroad was about twins, Sue and Jean, whose father was a famous detective and whose mother was significantly nonexistent. The girls had a modest flair for solving mysteries. Jean was the serious, practical twin—grimly mature and already latched to a boyfriend. Sue, the more adventurous, tomboyish twin (a thin projection of myself), was resentful of her sister’s boyfriend and had no plans to marry. She wanted to be an airline hostess and she bought a book, How to Become a Stewardess in Five Easy Lessons. Jean planned to be a nurse: she was more feminine, good at making beds and fixing food. As the book opened they were choosing their careers and celebrating their eighteenth birthdays with a surprise party (with ice cream, dainty sandwiches, pickles, candies, puddings, cakes, and pies) and a trip to the State Fair in Louisville (with cotton candy and candied apples and lemonade) where Sue had a narrow escape from the Snake Woman. Nothing happened to Jean, who was protected by her boyfriend.
The mystery was about a stolen stamp collection (the fictional version of my own dime-store album). A prominent citizen had his valuable collection stolen but it was mysteriously returned the next day. Then the Carson Girls heard a burglar in their own house and soon afterward discovered that one of their stamps, an odd Romanian portrait of a bespectacled man whose hairline was askew, had faded. The Carson Girls, according to the newspaper, theorized that a ring of counterfeiters was operating in the vicinity, “borrowing” stamp collections and making copies of valuable stamps.
In the meantime, the Carson Twins went on a trip to France with their father and their French maid, Mlle. Bleax (my conception of a French name). Jean’s boyfriend piloted his own private plane across the ocean and Sue played air hostess. Jean wore a helmet and goggles and sat in the cockpit with her boyfriend and also played ship’s nurse. When they got to France, they toured the provinces and saw the famous Percheron horses Sue had read about in geography. While they were in France, they became curious about a stamp shop and soon became involved in a fascinating set of adventures. As it turned out, the counterfeiting ring was operating right there in provincial France, and the Carson Girls solved the mystery, mainly because of Sue’s daring and logical mind. Jean was too busy with her boyfriend to contribute much. The twins won a fabulous reward for catching the crooks, and with the reward they would be able to go to airline hostess and nursing school.