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MYSTERY BOX by Gordon McAlpine

MYSTERY BOX

by Gordon McAlpine

Pub Date: Oct. 1st, 2003
ISBN: 0-8126-2680-X

Carolyn Keene and Franklin Dixon never existed—Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys were written by pseudonymous corporate authors—but if they had been real, would they been debauched artists in Paris? On the surface, Carolyn’s childhood is very like that of her girl detective, down to her identical attorney father. Frank has a seemingly idyllic youth, solving minor mysteries with his beloved brother Joe. But as WWI ravages Europe, the façades of Carolyn and Frank’s lives shatter. They are driven from their homes: Carolyn by her father’s disastrous remarriage, and Frank by Joe’s death and possible dishonor. They meet in Paris, among their new friends, the expatriate modernists. Surrounded by Hemingway, the Fitzgeralds, Gertrude Stein, and Alice B. Toklas, Frank becomes a private investigator, while Carolyn flirts with Modernist poetry. They share comfort and love, and co-write the Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys books. Philosophies of art and popular culture infuse the little tragedies of everyday life. Gently moving, though stylistically adult. (Fiction. YA, adult)