Combining the appeal of the girl sleuth, the interest of aviation, with the practicality of the career book, Dodd, Mead, Publishers commissioned Helen Wells, writer of their already popular and saleable Cherry Ames Nurse Series of the 1930s and 1940s, to write a stewardess series.⁶⁶ Wells debuted Vicki Barr stewardess in 1947, with Silver Wings for Vicki and followed the edition with fifteen more like it, ending the series in 1964 with The Brass Idol Mystery. While seemingly progressive on the surface, the series has struck some, like Bobbie Ann Mason, as a movement backwards to a less empowered heroine. Of the narrative climate, Mason writes: “Girl parachutists and aeronauts claimed several series, and eventually most girl detectives could fly solo when the necessity arose, although the more recent Vicki Barr series has reduced the airborne heroine to a stewardess in a trim blue uniform.”⁶⁷

Mason’s point is well taken, indeed by the time Vicki Barr had arrived, it would seem that more modern airborne heroines had lost much of the practical and professional momentum that they had gained in their earlier years as girl aviators and during the war years as career women. They were in a sense becoming less heroic and more domestic. In spite of her trim blue uniform, Vicki Barr embodies some definite examples of agency that reflect the social context of the late 1940s and early 1950s. One of these is the fact that unlike her predecessors, Wells never concludes the Vicki Barr series with a romantic marriage; in fact romance is never the first thing on Vicki’s mind in each edition, she flirts, but never falls in love. Her responsibility is to the mystery she solves, but one could argue that Vicki’s experiences marriage in a more symbolic way each time she solves a crime. The character of Vicki Barr represents shrewd independence and devotion to her career in the post-war years. She is a model for the next generation of the stewardess heroine. Mason offers an astute description of Vicki worth repeating:

The series’ first book, Silver Wings for Vicki, chronicles Vicki’s entrance into the occupation, demonstrates her talent, and endows her with celebrity when she catches jewel smugglers. Newspaper titles state, “Blonde Air Hostess Corners Criminal in Air.” While the early volumes seem to project a similarity to other stewardess novels along with the empowerment of sleuthing, by the eighth volume Peril Over the Airport Vicki's stewardess career takes a backseat as she trains for a private pilot's license at a small hometown airfield facing stiff competition from a new airport and possible sabotage by a mysteriously tattooed mechanic. This is a pivotal book in the series, where Vicki's career is repeatedly belittled by both the good guys and the bad guys, representing many of the struggles of women aviators themselves. What makes the narrative more problematic is a consideration of the plight of the female pilot desperate to trade in her small sports craft for the privilege of flying a commercial airliner, when Vicki herself thinks, "Riding in commercial air liners felt flat compared to the thrill of learning to master a small plane."⁶⁹ Her comments might reflect defiance to the myth that commercial airliners offered the only true freedom for women aviators, or she herself might be bowing to the reality of the situation.