Baum's character of Mary Louise Burrows was a fifteen-year-old girl who works to reveal her grandfather's innocence in his book series begun in 1916 under the pseudonym Edith Van Dyne.
[5][6] The popularity of the Nancy Drew series spawned many mid-20th-century detecting heroines such as Judy Bolton (1932 – 1967), created by Margaret Sutton; Kay Tracey (1934 to 1942); and Trixie Belden (1948 to 1986).
A subgenre with middle-school heroines also developed, starting with Louise Fitzhugh’s novel Harriet the Spy written in 1964,[7][8][9] and including the Flavia de Luce series by Alan Bradley, begun in 2009 with the book The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, and The Great Shelby Holmes by Elizabeth Eulberg, and Friday Barnes, Girl Detective by R.A. Spratt, both from 2016.
Ruth Roland starred as the girl detective who worked on cases where her unique talents could help to solve crimes.
On TV there were alternating episodes of The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries from 1977 to 1979, starring Pamela Sue Martin as Nancy.