Boyfriend Trouble!

Let’s be honest, folks! As long as there have been girl sleuths, there have been girl-sleuth boyfriends! Even our sainted trailblazer Nancy Drew had her Ned Nickerson; her companions George and Bess had Burt Eddelton and Dave Evans as swains themselves! And don’t forget Trixie Belden and Jim Frayne… So naturally most of the Snoops have sweethearts of their own! The most intense Snoop romance, of course, is between Tricia and her now-official fiancé Bobby Martin, but she’s hardly the only one! While there’s no official engagement yet, her best friend Krysten Parker has put her sweetie, Trish’s own big brother Tyler Dwight, through enough vicissitudes that he could hardly walk away from her now! And while Hannah O’Hara has developed a nasty habit of catching and discarding boyfriends (payback, she says, for all those years she was a nothing but a nerd whom no boy took any interest in), Maggie O’Hara has had an intense but somewhat secretive relationship with Chris Howland, her hockey-playing swain.

Of course, the younger Snoops—now rather ostentatiously calling themselves the Darius Allen Detective Club—are old enough to have found sweethearts, too! Abbie went through enough drama with her beloved Jaden Ross to make sure he never escapes her again, and Serenity Mabrey has been playmates—and later, sweethearts—with her neighbor Joey Housely for as long as she can remember! Even our bisexual Snoop Leslie Morgan keeps up a bit of a romance with Joey’s big brother Jimmy Housely!

Even our middle-school sleuths are discovering romance! While sometime Snoop Lisbeth Morgan tends to scare off the boys with her precocious charms, Taylor Jensen is beginning to set her cap for her reluctant classmate Sammy Hartman. But it was Aisha al-Fashir who won the race for the first boyfriend among them in The Queen's Curse, snagging her mousy young swain Tucker Logan so badly he could barely even speak to her!

Even the elementary-age Snoops have been bitten by the romance bug! Who can forget the Colton Walters-driven rivalry which so strained the relationship between Jilly Burton and Charity Mabrey in The Mystery-Train Mystery? There’s little doubt that poor Colton will someday be playing Ned to his own Nancy Drew!

Not just in Snoop World, either! Even our GDIT sleuthing favorites Katie and Lila Spencer have sweethearts, and Ashley Emerson’s flirtation for her hunky European swain Nikolas Parnassus is the mainspring for the delightful Field Trip Intrigue! Katie and her friend Stacey Campbell’s edgy boyfriends Jake Perry and Mike Pulaski have helped their girls out of plenty of sleuthing jams, and Lila’s new boyfriend Chris Marlin has the makings of a true Ned Nickerson-esque hero!

But what is the proper role for a girl-sleuth boyfriend? Historically, Ned Nickerson was a frequent rescuer for his oft-imperiled Nancy, and Jim Frayne was a full-fledged Bob-White with sometime sweetie Trixie. In Snowden, the boyfriends have had a somewhat more checkered career: Bobby Martin getting to see the Snoop world through his Tricia’s eyes in Saving Time after Trish got to see him with new eyes in The Secret Weapon; Tyler’s love for Krysten surviving the jealous madness of The Green-Eyed Monster; the boyfriends teaching their Snoop girlfriends a few harsh lessons in The Purloined Paramours. And now, Joey follows his adored Serenity where no man has gone before in Artemis Club Adventure… So where does the proper girl-sleuth boyfriend fit in? The heroic rescuer like Ned? The fretting bystander like many of our Snoop Boyfriends? The partner-in-sleuthing? Or are boyfriends mere encumbrances to a good girl-sleuth tale? Take the poll, and state your case!