So aside from this gorgeous Scandinavian fairytale book I used to repeatedly check out from the library as a child*, the Nancy Drew books make up the entirety of my first real literary memories. When you have a bookworm for a child, know that that child will scour your entire house for any book it can find**, and will then proceed to read any and all books indiscriminately. This works out well for the child, generally, but you should know it’s going to happen. That’s […]
Scooby-Doo Meets Nancy Drew
Texas Gothic by Rosemary Clement-Moore (Ember, 2011) reads like something written by Zane Grey after an all-night peyote bender and Veronica Mars marathon. It mashes up tropes from a half-dozen different genres–the plucky girl detective, the hot cowboy, the lost Spanish goldmine, the restless ghost–and gently pokes fun at itself for doing so. In another writer’s hands, the book could have been a disjointed mess, but Clement-Moore’s breezy, self-aware style manages to pull it all together into a mostly enjoyable read. What’s it about? During […]