Random Thoughts On Mystery Series I Read Before I Could Vote

The Hardy Boys (Franklin W. Dixon):

Does anyone else remember the drastically different atmospheres of the various Hardy Boys book series? Like, in the hardcover ones with light blue backs, Frank and Joe were clean-cut kids next door fighting smugglers and thieves who would have been fair game for Scooby Doo? But then there was that dark-blue, pocket-sized paperback series in which they were always fighting terrorists and government agents, and Joe’s girlfriend got blown up with a car bomb and their dad was murdered halfway through. And then there was the big, multicoloured paperback series in which Frank and Joe just visited various interesting places (Circus! TV studio!) and exposed whatever corrupt scheme-that-did-not-involve-killing-recurring-characters was taking place.

 

The Three Investigators (Robert Arthur, Jr.):

Personally, I preferred the Three Investigators, who also came in multiple flavours: middle-grade and YA. In the middle-grade novels, the main characters were Jupiter, the smart, chubby kid who lived with his aunt and uncle at their junkyard; Pete, the “athletic one”; and Bob, the shy secretary of the club. Together, they solved really cool (but not violent) mysteries in quirky ways and then reported back to Alfred Hitchcock (yeah…. wtf?). Oh, and they had a cool clubhouse that was really a trailer buried under a pile of junk. The YA series was very similar, except they were all seventeen-year-olds, and Bob had somehow turned from “shy geek” to “major ladies’ man”. Er… ?

 

Anyway, I remember way more details from the Three Investigators than Frank and Joe. I mean, yeah, the whole car-bomb thing? Stayed with me. But the Three Investigators had things like… a plot that revolved around fast-food chicken sandwiches cooked with gravy already inside. And seven parrots that each said a clue that lead to a hidden treasure. And a guy using a chemical that triggered the fear response to keep people out of a haunted house.

 

Enid Blyton’s…. (Enid Blyton):

Now, Enid Blyton wrote about a million children’s mysteries where a gang of friends and/or cousins and/or siblings goes out and stops smugglers/thieves. The Famous Five were arguably the most popular, but there were also the Secret Seven, and the Five Finder-Outers (and Dog. Are you scared that I remember all this? Because I am.) Oh, and the Barney mysteries (thanks, Wikipedia… I wasn’t quite sure whether they were the Five Finder-Outers or something different). And I guess you could count the Adventure series with Jack, Dinah, Lucy-Ann, and Philip. Anyway, the children always had an animal or two who helped them by conspicuously not liking and/or scaring off criminals. These animals nearly always had a sickening name like Kiki, Buster, or Scamper, and one of the children always had a daft nickname as well. (Examples: Fatty, Snubby, the infamous “George” for Georgina because “she was as good as a boy”…)

 

Unfortunately, it’s almost too easy to make fun of Enid Blyton: she lived such a long, politically-incorrect time ago that it’s like shooting fish in a barrel. Girls who like nothing better than to play house. Boys who are dashing and strong and manly. Lashings and lashings of ginger-beer.

 

Nancy Drew (Carolyn Keene):

Sadly, I never read Nancy Drew until a friend and I made a class-project movie in our last year of high school.

 

Speaking of corny series that have something to do with the Hardy Boys, I did own a very strange book that was a crossover between the Hardy Boys and Tom Swift… it had something to do with an alien woman (with whom, if memory serves, Joe, the “fun-loving” one, fell in love. Actually, I think all the male characters fell in love with her at some point. Anyway.) who had to run away from evil US government agencies for reasons quite absurd.

 

Encyclopedia Brown (Donald J. Sobol):

 

Can we say “circumstantial evidence”? Oh man, who could forget Leroy Brown and his partner, Sally Kimball, as they defeated evil one trivial fact at a time.

 

Part of the “you can solve it yourself!” school of juvenile mysteries that included Hawkeye Collins and Einstein Anderson, not to mention the spinoff series from the Clue board game, Five Minute Mysteries, and all them knock-offs. Basically, it’s a series of riddles with recurring characters. Those awful Tigers and their leader, Bugs Meany*! That slick teenage scam artist Wilford Wiggins! Okay, I can see how sometimes an otherwise useless piece of knowledge can poke holes in somebody’s case: yeah, if you can show how a hardened criminal could have broken into the house despite the fact that he left no footprints in the backyard, it helps. But, geez, Encyclopedia, claiming a dude is lying about his world travels just because he mentioned how pigs looked up at the airplane as he passed over and PIGS CAN’T LOOK UP? One exaggeration does not a liar make.

 

True, Sherlock Holmes built his cases based on trifles; however, if you read the Sherlock Holmes stories carefully, you will notice that Holmes rarely ever proves his case using his deductions. He’s either lucky enough to force a confession when he confronts the criminal, or he deduces the criminal’s next step and heads him or her off at the pass, as it were.

 

Oh well. At least, in the film version, Encyclopedia was allowed to be one of the few male heroes who’s a good foot shorter than his female friends. (If memory serves, anyway)

 

The Boxcar Children (Gertrude Chandler Warner):

 

What were their names again? Henry, uh… (Wikipedia to the rescue!) Jessie, Violet, and Benny. In the first book, they were sort of cool because they ran away from home and lived in a boxcar. To tell the truth, my main memories of this series don’t involve mysteries, just the simple style of the text and the banality and little family troubles of the characters. And also the inevitable exposition in which the narrator explained that Henry, Jessie, Violet, and Benny had lived in a boxcar for a bit. But then the first book happened, and now they didn’t anymore. In case you were wondering about the title of the series. Stupid kids, always asking questions!

 

The Bobbsey twins (Laura Lee Hope aka random people writing under this pseudonym… well, so were some of the other authors I’ve named, but I didn’t point it out…. whatever):

OK, I know these guys started way longer ago than any of the others, but, still. Two pairs of twins? Dark, slender Bert and Nan? Golden-haired, adorable Freddie and Flossie? Riiiiight…

 

Trixie Belden (Julie Campell/writers using the pseudonym Kathryn Kenny):

 

A lot of people seem to like Trixie Belden, who appears to be a less-perfect, more-interesting Nancy Drew. I had a lot of old Trixie Belden books on my shelves. However, since one of their covers pictured a sinister-looking idol with ruby-red eyes that scared the bejeebers out of me, I never opened the books. Sorry. If it makes you feel any better, I still had nightmares.

 

The Stevie Diamond mysteries (Linda Bailey):

 

Maybe you’ll only know these if you grew up Canadian, like me. But, anyways, they had fun titles like How Come the Best Clues Are Always in the Garbage? and How Can I Be a Detective if I Have to Baby-Sit? In spite of the titles, the protagonist, a girl named (what a surprise!) Stevie Diamond, wasn’t at all whiny, and I remember liking the fact that the narrator didn’t spend all its time telling me how Stevie’s friends looked and which ones were dating whom. And I liked how her partner and best friend, Jesse Kulniki, could let Stevie shine while still being an intelligent, funny guy. ‘Cause, you know, supposedly feminist stories where all the boys are idiots aren’t any more uplifting than sexist ones where all the girls are.

 

* Bug’s Meany’s private journal: Note to self – consider changing surname to “O’Happyfriend” or “McNiceguy”.