Nancy Drew is a fictional 18-year-old amateur sleuth, living in the town of River Heights with her father, attorney Carson Drew, and their housekeeper, Hannah Gruen. Nancy spends her time solving mysteries, some of which she stumbles upon and some of which begin as cases of her father's. Nancy is often assisted in solving mysteries by her two closest friends, Bess Marvin and George Fayne, and also occasionally by her boyfriend, Ned Nickerson. Ned is a college student at Emerson College. Many ghostwriters penned the Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys series, respectively. Both series were created by Edward Stratemeyer, founder of the Stratemeyer Syndicate book packaging firm, in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Stratemeyer's daughter, Harriet, and syndicate writer Mildred Wirt Benson were the two people primarily responsible for bringing the iconic character of Nancy Drew to life in the minds and hearts of millions of readers around the world.