In the book The Secret of Shadow Ranch, Bess tells Nancy that Ned would be jealous. (Because she was hanging out with the cowboys.) However, Nancy never even met Ned until a few books later in The Clue in the Diary.
Nancy Drew (like the Hardy Boys) was originally written a couple books per year starting in the 1930s. After many books, it was decided to "update" the series so they were rewritten starting from the beginning book and catching up to where the old series left off, eventually continuing beyond the old series.
At a guess this slip-up is probably in the 1960s rewrite. The series started in the 1930s and so there would have been many books with Ned by the time they started updating them.
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I've always wondered how that sort of slip-up could occur. Wouldn't the author himself not have thought up Ned until later? (yes, I know it's Carolyn Keene, but that's a pen name as most of us know) I know when I make up stories and series of stories, I always build the later on the earlier. I can't imagine accidentally putting in a character who you haven't written yet.
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Actually, the first ever Nancy Drew book was "The Secret of the Old Clock" which is book no. 73 in the current series. Most of her books were rewritten gradually in the 60s to "modernize" the series while new Nancy Drew books were being written. However the publishers didn't bother to keep the old ordering of the books and just added them to the new series.
It is traditional in each Nancy Drew book to announce the title of the next book in the series at the final chapter. However the writers didn't change the this title when rewriting the old Nancy Drew books and often didn't know that an old book was going to be re-released after a new book. So in most cases each book actually gives the incorrect title for the next book in the series. This is probably the most obvious slip up in the Nancy Drew series.
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Carolyn Keene is a pen name for dozens of different people. They all have the basic characters down, and know how they'd react in different situations, but it is not one person. How do you think one person would be able to punch out 3 or 4 books per year? It's the same thing with the Hardy Boys and the Sweet Valley series, as well as the Babysitters' Club and all kinds of books series' like that. Franchises, not authors.
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