A Note from the Author:

This story is no different from the other Drew Nance stories – It still makes use of, or mentions, several real-world locations - Staten Island, New York, New Jersey, Riverdale, Sweden, Hawaii and other places. Though the way they’re shown in the story is close to RL, they were changed a bit for the sake of the story. Any negative impressions they may give are not necessarily RL. They’re used for continuity and verisimilitude for the story. Advance apologies to the Islanders: the Staten Island and Hawaii stereotypes here are in no way the author's personal image of them. Again, these stereotypes are from popular media, and were exaggerated for purposes of the story.

As to the selection of Staten Island as the main location in the story, it was selected because it was the only one in the five borroughs where regular use of cars was plausible: as the reader may know, driving in metropolitan New York is not a common thing except in Staten Island, where more than 83% of the families have cars and the majority use them regularly rather than commute, as opposed to the NYC average of 45%, with only 30% of working NYC people actually driving (8% in Manhattan!). Feel free to look up these stats, or you can check this article: https://www.nycedc.com/blog-entry/new-yorkers-and-their-cars .

This may be a minor thing but driving around is an essential plot element in Drew's stories.

Also, like I mentioned in the previous Drew Nance stories, I was inspired by the Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys books, the 2002 TV-movie, the 2007 movie, as well as the “re-boot” graphic novel series “Nancy Drew, Girl Detective.” But other than that, this story has nothing to do with any of them, and though some names here are the same as the characters from those stories and shows, they are used here only as a tribute. As to the title, it’s also a tribute - “The Hidden Staircase” is the title of the second Nancy Drew novel. Again, the similarity ends with the name.

Furthermore, the pictures used are publicly accessible pictures from the Internet: this is not a commercial publication; no ownership is claimed; no copyright or IP infringement is intended.

As before, I apologize in advance if you find any temporal disconnects: i.e. real-world events not referenced in the proper time sequence, old popular figures referred to as if they’re current ones, etc. Nevertheless, I hope this doesn’t stop you from enjoying the story.

Like all Drew Nance stories, this one is a stand-alone story, too. But if you wish to read how all of this started, you can read the prologue story, “Drew Nance - Girl Detective Redux: A Beginning.” The prologue story was written with the encouragement of Sephy as an entry in a previous BCTS contest. Drew won that contest for me, actually (yayyy!), though it’s the only contest I ever won here in BCTS (lol). And that’s how Drew and her crazy crew were born.

You can also read the one that preceded this story: “Drew Nance, Girl Detective Book 1: The Secret of the Old Clock.” That’s up to you, of course lol. But, like I said, this second “book” is a stand-alone story, so there’s no need to look at these other stories: enough reference text is included so one need not refer to the previous stories.

Again, at the risk of sounding tedious and pedantic, I hereby serve notice that I am retaining the rights to my story. Because of the preponderance of plagiarism in BCTS/Amazon/Fictionmania and in other sites and venues, I had to have this on record. I appeal to the reader to notify me, or the site administrators if you notice anyone “borrowing” my stories, or even parts of them, and claiming them as theirs.

Now – Avanti!

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