Intrepid teenage private eye Nancy Drew heads to Tinseltown with her father to investigate the unsolved murder of a movie star in this old-fashioned whodunit based on Carolyn Keene's popular series of books for young adults. But can the small-town girl cut through the Hollywood hype to solve the case?
Failed actress Alex Sternbergen wakes up hungover one morning in an apartment she does not recognize, unable to remember the previous evening -- and with a dead body in bed next to her. As she tries to piece together the events of the night, Alex cannot totally rely on friends or her estranged husband, Joaquin, for assistance. Only a single ally, loner ex-policeman Turner Kendall, can help her escape her predicament and find the true killer.
While participating in a contest at a local newspaper in which school children are asked to submit a news story, local attorney Carson Drew's daughter Nancy intercepts a real story assignment. She "covers" the inquest of the death of a woman who was poisoned. Nancy doesn't think the young woman accused of the crime is guilty and corrals her neighbor Ted into searching for a vital piece of evidence and stumbles onto the identity of the real killer.
Nancy helps two aging spinsters fulfill the byzantine provisions of their father's will, but the murder of their chauffeur complicates matters.
After a wealthy dowager who has made a substantial donation to her alma mater suddenly disappears, Nancy Drew sets out to solve the mystery.
When a close friend of the Drew family is accused of murder in a rural community, Nancy, aided by boyfriend Ted, helps her lawyer father expose the real killers.