Anthony Del Col

"Contains materials originally published in magazine form as Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys: the big lie, volume 1: issues 1-6"--Copyright page.

Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys: the Big Lie

Nessa Luna

Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. This has not changed my opinion in any way.

I used to be a fan of Nancy Drew back when I was a kid, read some of the books and I believe I even reread a couple of my favourites. I've been meaning to pick up some of the books recently, but couldn't remember which ones I had read in my youth. When I saw this graphic novel on here, I thought it would be perfect as I love graphic novels to bits. Unfortunately, it's been too long since I've read any Nancy Drew, so I had no idea what to expect. While I liked this novel, I thought the art style was not really my thing, and the story just felt different from what I remembered ND to be like. I missed the characters that I read about years ago, and even though the Hardy Boys are supposed to have been around since the beginning, I had no idea how they were. Then again, this graphic novel did make me want to pick up some more Nancy Drew books, so, all in all, it wasn't a bad read!

Jeff James

Maybe Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys: The Big Lie would have resonated for me a bit more if I’d ever read Nancy Drew or the Hardy Boys. Instead, I’ve only ever seen their cover illustrations and imagined the sort of squeaky-clean peril they might get themselves into. I think, though, that I still wouldn’t have gotten much from this too-serious gritty reimagining of the classic teen mysteries.

The introduction to The Big Lie admits that it takes inspiration from the revelatory Afterlife With Archie, a series that thrillingly juxtaposes familiar Archie characters with zombie horror to great effect. The problem is that The Big Lie only suffers by comparison.

Where Archie subverts familiar characters and tropes without losing the essence of the originals, The Big Lie tells a dour modern-day noir that slaps Hardy and Drew names on bland, interchangeable characters. It isn’t subversive because there isn’t enough substance there to subvert.

Instead, it confuses a grim, serious tone with maturity, suffers from some serious holes in logic, and hangs it all on a boilerplate storyline about corrupt cops, drug dealers, and unexpected murderers. I didn’t care about or relate to any of the characters, and I also didn’t much like the art.

If I was going to write a modern noir update of the Nancy Drew and Hardy Boy mysteries, I think I would ground it in story where they’re all still crime-solving kids, but the mystery has higher stakes. You could still flash-forward and show them as adults, but the core has to be about something that happened when they were kids.

Although I do like the idea of rebooting classic stories from a fresh new angle, I can’t recommend The Big Lie. It misses the mark in so many ways and delivers something both bland and uninteresting.

Full disclosure: I received a free review copy from NetGalley. This review was originally published at Full of Words.

A Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys mystery unlike any other you’ve ever read! When the teenage brothers Frank and Joe Hardy are accused of the murder of their father – a detective in the small resort town of Bayport – they must team up with Nancy Drew to prove their innocence (and find the real guilty party in the process) in a twisting noir tale, complete with double-crosses, deceit, and dames. Writer Anthony Del Col (Assassin’s Creed, Kill Shakespeare) and artist Werther Dell’Edera (Batman: Detective Comics, House of Mystery) bring the iconic teen detectives into the modern age, and redefine noir for a new generation of readers!

Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys: the Big Lie

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