“There’s a Desk Waiting for You in the Herald Office”: Metafiction and Empowerment in the Judy Bolton Mysteries

Among the mystery series that were so numerous during the twentieth century, the iconic Nancy Drew certainly wins the girl sleuth longevity award, having continued to exist in some form ever since her first appearance in 1930. However, a few other series also attained long-lasting popularity among girl readers, although they are less well known now. The Judy Bolton mystery series by Margaret Sutton, which consists of thirty-eight books published between 1932 and 1967, is one of the most enduring examples of the genre. As a bright and energetic young woman with a nose for mysteries and a talent for solving them, Judy resembles the more familiar Nancy Drew in many ways. But there are significant differences between the two series as well, both on and off the page. Unlike Carolyn Keene, Margaret Sutton was a real person, who wrote all the Bolton books herself—one almost every year for over thirty years. Judy, as opposed to other series heroines of past and present, actually ages, maturing from a fifteen-year-old high school girl to a married woman in her early twenties. Although she is not a career girl, like fellow amateur detectives Cherry Ames (a nurse by profession) and Vicki Barr (a stewardess), Judy makes detecting her de facto career as she solves mysteries throughout various stages in her life, including high school studies, secretarial work, and marriage to her childhood sweetheart. Despite changes in her age and societal position, Judy’s commitment to sleuthing—to satisfying her curiosity while exercising her mind—remains as much a constant as her father’s oft-quoted advice: “Use your head, Judy girl!”

Judy uses her head by regularly engaging in the production, analysis, and critique of texts as part of the mystery-solving process; nearly every one of her cases turns on the interpretation of a mysterious text. The narratives that Judy creates and reads, which include amateur plays, radio broadcasts, poetry manuscripts, riddles, letters, law books, newspaper stories, and even mystery novels modeled on Judy’s adventures, give the series a significant metatextual component. The scenes that involve reading or writing not only suggest that the thoughtful practice of these activities can empower young people, but also initiate this kind of empowerment by encouraging readers to take an active role in shaping and interpreting texts along with Judy and her friends. In particular, Sutton’s use of fairy tales and newspaper writing shows how girls can read and write their way to a respected place in their societies despite the presence of gender restrictions. Fairy-tale references throughout the series remind the reader of the powerful fantasy these stories create: that the only mystery in a woman’s life is whom her prince will be, and that solving that mystery guarantees lifelong happiness. While this fantasy of a marital “happy ending” (that is, a life with nothing left to discover) might appeal to some women in the novels, it fails to contain Judy. Instead, Judy injects a new sense of agency into fairy tales by revising their conventions to fit the genre that delights, challenges, and empowers her—the mystery. This rereading/rewriting process mirrors the agency created by Judy’s interactions with her hometown newspaper the Herald, which confers power on her as author and subject of front-page articles. Together, the two genres sketch out both the dangers and the opportunities posed to adolescent female identity in these metafictive mysteries.

Mysterious Metafiction

The Judy Bolton series is saturated with instances of reading and writing. In almost every case, Judy solves the mystery—and thus resolves the plot of the novel—by drawing on her ability to create and interpret texts. By extension, the results of those completed cases, which tend to involve the strengthening or restoration of family and community relationships, also depend on thoughtful reading and writing. Mary Welek Atwell and Sally Parry both point out the importance of interpersonal connections in Sutton’s books; as Parry says, Judy “is more likely to restore moral rather than legal...