Kay Tracey
Encyclopedia
The Kay Tracey Mysteries were published under the name Frances K. Judd, a house pseudonym
of the Stratemeyer Syndicate
, a book packager. The series was conceived as a response to the popularity of the Nancy Drew
Mystery Stories
and likewise features a teenage girl detective
. While the original entries in the series lasted only from 1934 to 1942, the books were updated, revised, and have been re-issed numerous times, most recently by Bantam Books
in the 1980s, and have been translated into Swedish
and French
. Many critics see Kay Tracey as markedly inferior to Nancy Drew, but some find the series to be significant as one of a number of series that provided girls with a feminist role model prior to third-wave feminism
.
who lives with her mother and her older cousin Bill, a lawyer, in the fictional town of Carmont. Kay is depicted as unfailingly intelligent and courageous; she lives in "a constant shower of praise." Unlike Nancy Drew
, the character on whom Kay Tracey was modeled, Kay is a student in high school
. Like the Dana Girls
, fictional sister sleuths created by the Stratemeyer Syndicate
around the same time as Kay Tracey, Kay deals continually with a jealous schoolmate, Ethel Eaton, who often interferes in Kay's cases. Kay is often aided in solving mysteries by her two best friends, twins Wilma and Betty Worth, and Kay's boyfriend, Ronald Earle, who occasionally assist Kay in solving mysteries.
Mystery Stories
. The series has been reprinted numerous times, often with changes in artwork, format, and series numbering. The series was most recently re-issued in the 1980s.
The series was created and supervised by Harriet Stratemeyer Adams
, with the actual stories being written by four women over the series' history: Elizabeth Mildred Duffield Ward, Mildred Wirt Benson, Edna Stratemeyer Squier (Adams's sister), and Anna Perot Rose Wright. Ward was responsible for the first two titles in the series; volumes three through 12 as well as volume 14 were written by Benson. Wright wrote the last four volumes. While Squier contributed only one volume, The Forbidden Tower (later dropped from the series), she wrote the plot outlines for nearly all the volumes in the series.
Adams and Squier exercised tight control over the series, ensuring that all outlines were extremely detailed. At one point Benson cited this level of detail as a reason for the abrupt writing style of some of the titles, writing to Adams that "I do think that the last Kay Tracey story had a slightly hurried and abrupt tone, although I spent fully as much time and thought on the manuscript as usual.... Recent plots seem to be running somewhat long on detail, and I had difficulty in getting all of the scenes into the story even by cutting some of them short." Adams and Squier continued, however, to supervise every detail of the books; in particular, they expressed concern over the way that Benson characterized the title heroine and her friends. As Squier wrote to Benson at one point, "Kay and her chums at times speak too sarcastically and audaciously for growing girls. The story has a boyish ring throughout which we will temper to conform to more girlish ideals."
The series was later updated and revised, beginning in the early 1950s, although the only title to be substantially re-worked was the first volume, The Secret of the Red Scarf. During this time, wrap-around style dust jackets, that is, jackets where the cover art continued over to the spine, in full-color, were introduced. A new frontispiece in pen-and-ink was included. A spine symbol of Kay, apparently cheering, was introduced on the jackets, as was a binding symbol on the book spine, which was a picture of Kay peeking from behind a curtain. The volumes were slightly revised in most cases, mainly to updated slightly outmoded vernacular, and to re-sequence the books. Three titles – The Forbidden Tower, The Mystery of the Swaying Curtains, and The Shadow on the Door – were dropped from the series, for reasons which are unclear.
The series was re-issued in digest size
paperback
s by Dell
in the early 1960s, and was again re-sequenced. The books were then returned to their 1951–1952 sequencing for later printings with nearly identical artwork, in both hard-cover pictorial board editions and in paperbacks. In the 1980s, Bantam
re-issued six of the titles in the series (re-numbered yet again), and at least six titles were printed in the United Kingdom
in 1984, again with new artwork.
1. The Secret of the Red Scarf, 1934
2. The Strange Echo, 1935
3. The Mystery of the Swaying Curtains, 1935
4. The Shadow on the Door, 1935
5. The Six-Fingered Glove Mystery, 1936
6. The Green Cameo Mystery, 1936
7. The Secret at the Windmill, 1937
8. Beneath the Crimson Briar Bush, 1937
9. The Message in the Sand Dunes, 1938
10. The Murmuring Portrait, 1938
11. When the Key Turned, 1939
12. In the Sunken Garden, 1939
13. The Forbidden Tower, 1940
14. The Sacred Feather, 1940
15. The Lone Footprint, 1941
16. The Double Disguise, 1941
17. The Mansion of Secrets, 1942
18. The Mysterious Neighbors, 1942
series, Kay Tracey was never as popular a character as Nancy Drew. Various critics have attempted to explain how a series so superficially similar should have been so much less successful.
Some commentators have cited the stories themselves and the style in which they were written as a reason for the series' comparative lack of success. The series is written at a much more break-neck pace than other series books of the time; their style has been called "formula-writing at its most flaccid." Others have compared the series to comic books, arguing that the stories are "lurid, but too cartoonish to be frightening."
Others have pointed to the character of Kay Tracey herself. The character has been described as much less focused than Nancy Drew
on rational detective methods. While a Nancy Drew mystery at least "tells readers that Nancy works by logical reasoning," Kay "lurches from coincidence to happenstance." Some call Kay a "Nancy Drew imposter." Anne Macleod and others argue that the series was less long-lasting than Nancy Drew, despite its superficial similarities, because "the stories fail to support the kind of authority and autonomy that Nancy enjoys without question."Macleod (1995), 33. Kay lacks her own car, but must instead borrow her cousin Bill's, and her authority is "undercut by her clear identification as a schoolgirl." Kay lives with her mother, not her father; while Kay's mother does not interfere in Kay's mystery-solving, she "carries non-interventionism to the point of idiocy"Macleod (1995), 33. and fails to provide the series with the cachet that Carson Drew
provided for Nancy.
In general, however, critics often see Kay Tracey as simply one of a number of girls' series that are important because they provided girl readers with role models, particularly girls who grew up before third-wave feminism
.
Pseudonym
A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...
of the Stratemeyer Syndicate
Stratemeyer Syndicate
The Stratemeyer Syndicate was the producer of a number of mystery series for children, including Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, the various Tom Swift series, the Bobbsey Twins, the Rover Boys, and others.- History :...
, a book packager. The series was conceived as a response to the popularity of the Nancy Drew
Nancy Drew
Nancy Drew is a fictional young amateur detective in various mystery series for all ages. She was created by Edward Stratemeyer, founder of the Stratemeyer Syndicate book packaging firm. The character first appeared in 1930. The books have been ghostwritten by a number of authors and are published...
Mystery Stories
Nancy Drew Mystery Stories
The Nancy Drew Mystery Stories was the long-running "main" Nancy Drew series, published between 1930 and 2003. Initially, titles were published by Grosset & Dunlap, but with #57 publication switched to Simon & Schuster. Most people consider these first 56 to be the original series and consider the...
and likewise features a teenage girl detective
Detective
A detective is an investigator, either a member of a police agency or a private person. The latter may be known as private investigators or "private eyes"...
. While the original entries in the series lasted only from 1934 to 1942, the books were updated, revised, and have been re-issed numerous times, most recently by Bantam Books
Bantam Books
Bantam Books is an American publishing house owned entirely by Random House, the German media corporation subsidiary of Bertelsmann; it is an imprint of the Random House Publishing Group. It was formed in 1945 by Walter B. Pitkin, Jr., Sidney B. Kramer, and Ian and Betty Ballantine...
in the 1980s, and have been translated into Swedish
Swedish language
Swedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish...
and French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
. Many critics see Kay Tracey as markedly inferior to Nancy Drew, but some find the series to be significant as one of a number of series that provided girls with a feminist role model prior to third-wave feminism
Third-wave feminism
Third-wave feminism is a term identified with several diverse strains of feminist activity and study whose exact boundaries in the historiography of feminism are a subject of debate, but often marked as beginning in the 1980s and continuing to the present...
.
Character
Kay Tracey is a 16-year-old amateur sleuthSleuth
-Theatre and film:*Sleuth , a 1970 play by Anthony Shaffer*Sleuth , a film adaptation of the Anthony Shaffer play, directed by Joseph L...
who lives with her mother and her older cousin Bill, a lawyer, in the fictional town of Carmont. Kay is depicted as unfailingly intelligent and courageous; she lives in "a constant shower of praise." Unlike Nancy Drew
Nancy Drew
Nancy Drew is a fictional young amateur detective in various mystery series for all ages. She was created by Edward Stratemeyer, founder of the Stratemeyer Syndicate book packaging firm. The character first appeared in 1930. The books have been ghostwritten by a number of authors and are published...
, the character on whom Kay Tracey was modeled, Kay is a student in high school
High school
High school is a term used in parts of the English speaking world to describe institutions which provide all or part of secondary education. The term is often incorporated into the name of such institutions....
. Like the Dana Girls
The Dana Girls
The Dana Girls was a series of young adult mystery novels produced by the Stratemeyer Syndicate. The title heroines, Jean and Louise Dana, are teenage sisters and amateur detectives who solve mysteries while at boarding school...
, fictional sister sleuths created by the Stratemeyer Syndicate
Stratemeyer Syndicate
The Stratemeyer Syndicate was the producer of a number of mystery series for children, including Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, the various Tom Swift series, the Bobbsey Twins, the Rover Boys, and others.- History :...
around the same time as Kay Tracey, Kay deals continually with a jealous schoolmate, Ethel Eaton, who often interferes in Kay's cases. Kay is often aided in solving mysteries by her two best friends, twins Wilma and Betty Worth, and Kay's boyfriend, Ronald Earle, who occasionally assist Kay in solving mysteries.
Series history
Written by four women from 1934 to 1942, the Kay Tracey Mystery Stories were created in order to capitalize on the success of the Nancy DrewNancy Drew
Nancy Drew is a fictional young amateur detective in various mystery series for all ages. She was created by Edward Stratemeyer, founder of the Stratemeyer Syndicate book packaging firm. The character first appeared in 1930. The books have been ghostwritten by a number of authors and are published...
Mystery Stories
Nancy Drew Mystery Stories
The Nancy Drew Mystery Stories was the long-running "main" Nancy Drew series, published between 1930 and 2003. Initially, titles were published by Grosset & Dunlap, but with #57 publication switched to Simon & Schuster. Most people consider these first 56 to be the original series and consider the...
. The series has been reprinted numerous times, often with changes in artwork, format, and series numbering. The series was most recently re-issued in the 1980s.
Authorship
Meet clever Kay Tracey, who, though only sixteen, solves mysteries in a surprising manner. Working on clues which she assembles, this surprising heroine evolves the solution to cases that have baffled professional sleuths. |
| From the jacket to The Shadow on the Door, 1934 |
The series was created and supervised by Harriet Stratemeyer Adams
Harriet Adams
Harriet Stratemeyer Adams was an American juvenile mystery novelist and publisher who authored some 200 books over her literary career. She wrote many books in the Nancy Drew series and a few in the Hardy Boys series...
, with the actual stories being written by four women over the series' history: Elizabeth Mildred Duffield Ward, Mildred Wirt Benson, Edna Stratemeyer Squier (Adams's sister), and Anna Perot Rose Wright. Ward was responsible for the first two titles in the series; volumes three through 12 as well as volume 14 were written by Benson. Wright wrote the last four volumes. While Squier contributed only one volume, The Forbidden Tower (later dropped from the series), she wrote the plot outlines for nearly all the volumes in the series.
Adams and Squier exercised tight control over the series, ensuring that all outlines were extremely detailed. At one point Benson cited this level of detail as a reason for the abrupt writing style of some of the titles, writing to Adams that "I do think that the last Kay Tracey story had a slightly hurried and abrupt tone, although I spent fully as much time and thought on the manuscript as usual.... Recent plots seem to be running somewhat long on detail, and I had difficulty in getting all of the scenes into the story even by cutting some of them short." Adams and Squier continued, however, to supervise every detail of the books; in particular, they expressed concern over the way that Benson characterized the title heroine and her friends. As Squier wrote to Benson at one point, "Kay and her chums at times speak too sarcastically and audaciously for growing girls. The story has a boyish ring throughout which we will temper to conform to more girlish ideals."
Publication history
The Kay Tracey Mystery Stories have been reprinted multiple times in a number of different formats and with different artwork. The series was originally published by Cupples & Leon. These editions featured a glossy frontispiece and a full color illustration on a yellow dustjacket. Later runs of the dustjackets were red and blue as well as yellow.The series was later updated and revised, beginning in the early 1950s, although the only title to be substantially re-worked was the first volume, The Secret of the Red Scarf. During this time, wrap-around style dust jackets, that is, jackets where the cover art continued over to the spine, in full-color, were introduced. A new frontispiece in pen-and-ink was included. A spine symbol of Kay, apparently cheering, was introduced on the jackets, as was a binding symbol on the book spine, which was a picture of Kay peeking from behind a curtain. The volumes were slightly revised in most cases, mainly to updated slightly outmoded vernacular, and to re-sequence the books. Three titles – The Forbidden Tower, The Mystery of the Swaying Curtains, and The Shadow on the Door – were dropped from the series, for reasons which are unclear.
The series was re-issued in digest size
Digest size
Digest size is a magazine size, smaller than a conventional or "journal size" magazine but larger than a standard paperback book, approximately 5½ x 8¼ inches, but can also be 5⅜ x 8⅜ inches and 5½ x 7½ inches. These sizes have evolved from the printing press operation end...
paperback
Paperback
Paperback, softback or softcover describe and refer to a book by the nature of its binding. The covers of such books are usually made of paper or paperboard, and are usually held together with glue rather than stitches or staples...
s by Dell
Dell
Dell, Inc. is an American multinational information technology corporation based in 1 Dell Way, Round Rock, Texas, United States, that develops, sells and supports computers and related products and services. Bearing the name of its founder, Michael Dell, the company is one of the largest...
in the early 1960s, and was again re-sequenced. The books were then returned to their 1951–1952 sequencing for later printings with nearly identical artwork, in both hard-cover pictorial board editions and in paperbacks. In the 1980s, Bantam
Bantam Books
Bantam Books is an American publishing house owned entirely by Random House, the German media corporation subsidiary of Bertelsmann; it is an imprint of the Random House Publishing Group. It was formed in 1945 by Walter B. Pitkin, Jr., Sidney B. Kramer, and Ian and Betty Ballantine...
re-issued six of the titles in the series (re-numbered yet again), and at least six titles were printed in the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
in 1984, again with new artwork.
Titles
The Kay Tracey Mystery Stories were renumbered repeatedly; below is a complete list of volumes in original publication order with the original numbering.1. The Secret of the Red Scarf, 1934
2. The Strange Echo, 1935
3. The Mystery of the Swaying Curtains, 1935
4. The Shadow on the Door, 1935
5. The Six-Fingered Glove Mystery, 1936
6. The Green Cameo Mystery, 1936
7. The Secret at the Windmill, 1937
8. Beneath the Crimson Briar Bush, 1937
9. The Message in the Sand Dunes, 1938
10. The Murmuring Portrait, 1938
11. When the Key Turned, 1939
12. In the Sunken Garden, 1939
13. The Forbidden Tower, 1940
14. The Sacred Feather, 1940
15. The Lone Footprint, 1941
16. The Double Disguise, 1941
17. The Mansion of Secrets, 1942
18. The Mysterious Neighbors, 1942
Critical assessment
While the Kay Tracey books were intended to be similar to the Nancy DrewNancy Drew
Nancy Drew is a fictional young amateur detective in various mystery series for all ages. She was created by Edward Stratemeyer, founder of the Stratemeyer Syndicate book packaging firm. The character first appeared in 1930. The books have been ghostwritten by a number of authors and are published...
series, Kay Tracey was never as popular a character as Nancy Drew. Various critics have attempted to explain how a series so superficially similar should have been so much less successful.
Some commentators have cited the stories themselves and the style in which they were written as a reason for the series' comparative lack of success. The series is written at a much more break-neck pace than other series books of the time; their style has been called "formula-writing at its most flaccid." Others have compared the series to comic books, arguing that the stories are "lurid, but too cartoonish to be frightening."
Others have pointed to the character of Kay Tracey herself. The character has been described as much less focused than Nancy Drew
Nancy Drew
Nancy Drew is a fictional young amateur detective in various mystery series for all ages. She was created by Edward Stratemeyer, founder of the Stratemeyer Syndicate book packaging firm. The character first appeared in 1930. The books have been ghostwritten by a number of authors and are published...
on rational detective methods. While a Nancy Drew mystery at least "tells readers that Nancy works by logical reasoning," Kay "lurches from coincidence to happenstance." Some call Kay a "Nancy Drew imposter." Anne Macleod and others argue that the series was less long-lasting than Nancy Drew, despite its superficial similarities, because "the stories fail to support the kind of authority and autonomy that Nancy enjoys without question."Macleod (1995), 33. Kay lacks her own car, but must instead borrow her cousin Bill's, and her authority is "undercut by her clear identification as a schoolgirl." Kay lives with her mother, not her father; while Kay's mother does not interfere in Kay's mystery-solving, she "carries non-interventionism to the point of idiocy"Macleod (1995), 33. and fails to provide the series with the cachet that Carson Drew
Carson Drew
Carson Drew is a fictional character in the popular Nancy Drew Mystery Stories series. He is Nancy's father, a widower, and is the most respected lawyer in River Heights. He is brown-haired and has blue eyes like his daughter. He is a lawyer. Nancy's Aunt Eloise is his sister. He enlists the help...
provided for Nancy.
In general, however, critics often see Kay Tracey as simply one of a number of girls' series that are important because they provided girl readers with role models, particularly girls who grew up before third-wave feminism
Third-wave feminism
Third-wave feminism is a term identified with several diverse strains of feminist activity and study whose exact boundaries in the historiography of feminism are a subject of debate, but often marked as beginning in the 1980s and continuing to the present...
.