S.O.S. in red

Now I'll make sure a tube of red lipstick is among the contents of my bag whenever I venture beyond our village gate.

Lip color as a handy tool for leaving urgent messages on a wall mirror is nothing new as far as cinema is concerned. Whether it's a sinister warning from some villain or a desperate plea for help from a victim on the run, scarlet writing on a mirror has upped the suspense factor in a number of thrillers and action/adventure films. The image does carry with it an air of foreboding, doesn't it?

But not when it comes to the teen sleuth from River Heights! One of her adventures takes her aboard an aircraft, where she is held captive. Her kidnappers taunt her, tie her hands behind her back, then walk off.

"This is a dreadful fix to be in!" Nancy Drew silently rues.

Her only hope is another aircraft that's expected to be airborne soon.

"If I could only signal it!"

From The Mystery of the Fire Dragon by Carolyn Keene (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1961)

Then... a light bulb moment! First wriggling about to be able to retrieve the lipstick from her pocket, then squirming some more into the necessary position to scrawl on the plane's window (with her back turned to it at that), Nancy manages to do the undoable! 

Talk about smarts and quick thinking! Of course, it wasn't Nancy herself who thought of that fantastic escape plan but the author behind the typewriter who came up with the plot and details of The Mystery of the Fire Dragon, volume 38 of  the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories classic series. Harriet Stratemeyer Adams, who took over book packaging firm Stratemeyer Syndicate -- together with sister Edna Stratemeyer Squier -- in 1930 after her father's death, handled much of the editing tasks of the earlier books in the series. Besides editing then writing many of the succeeding stories that revolved around the amateur detective, she steered the company as its top honcho until the early 1980s. 

At the time of her father's unexpected death, which heralded her active involvement in the company's affairs, Harriet Adams was fully entrenched in family life with her husband and their brood of four, aged 5 to 13. Home was a comfortable place in New Jersey. No doubt, the sudden responsibility of making decisions regarding the future of the Stratemeyer Syndicate, then running the business for the next five decades, presented one challenge after another. But she did it, and the popularity that Nancy Drew has achieved through several generations can attest to the expertise with which Harriet Adams directed the company. 

All this happened from the time of the Great Depression in the 1930s. Being part of the work force in the decades prior to the 1960s was not the norm for women, much less their heading big companies. But Harriet did it. Small wonder, then, that the heroine in the mystery series demonstrated remarkable grit and persistence. She could very well have been a reflection of the authors who brought her to life (Mildred Wirt Benson, the first "Carolyn Keene") and who kept her alive (Harriet Adams). 

Small wonder, too, that Harriet Adams would fashion a fantastic manner of escape for the teen sleuth -- while bound and airborne -- with the use of an unlikely tool. Perhaps if it happened to her in real life, Harriet would have really risen to the occasion and escaped any would-be captors by scrawling an S.O.S. on a window. 

"I mustn't give up!" -- that's one line I remember Nancy Drew uttering with conviction in at least one of the books when caught in a precarious, seemingly hopeless situation. Well, if I ever find myself in such a fix, I hope a similar Nancy Drew-esque brand of grit pops out of me, even if my hope of escape happens to be anchored on a mere lipstick tube waiting to play its part to free me from peril.