Clifford Hicks | Donald J. Sobol | Erich Kästner | Henry Winterfeld | The Hardy Boys, Kay Tracey, and Nancy Drew | Mystery Books | Donald Keith | Rolf Heimann | Kim Blundell and Jenny Tyler | Susannah Leigh and Brenda Haw
A Guide to Classic Mystery and Detection Home Page
The Shore Road Mystery (1928)
Emil und die Detektive / Emil and the Detectives (1929)
The Green Cameo Mystery (1936)
The Mansion of Secrets (1942)
Timpetill / Trouble at Timpetill (1933)
Caius ist ein Dummkopf / Detectives in Togas (1953)
The Marvelous Inventions of Alvin Fernald (1960)
Alvin's Secret Code (1963)
Alvin Fernald, Superweasel (1974)
Alvin Fernald, TV Anchorman (1980)
Alvin Fernald, Master of a Thousand Disguises (1986)
Peter Potts' Book of World Records (1988)
Secret Agents Four (1967)
Angie's First Case (1981)
The Amazing Power of Ashur Fine (1986)
Encyclopedia Brown, Boy Detective (1963)
Encyclopedia Brown Gets His Man (1967)
Encyclopedia Brown Solves Them All (1968)
Encyclopedia Brown Carries On (1980)
Encyclopedia Brown Sets the Pace (1982)
Encyclopedia Brown Takes the Cake (1982, 1983)
Encyclopedia Brown and The Case of the Treasure Hunt
Encyclopedia Brown and The Case of the Disgusting Sneakers (1990)
The Great Rabbit Rip-Off (1976)
Puzzle World series (The first six books are collected in The Complete Puzzle World)
The first book, Puzzle Island, is also described as being "designed by" Kim Blundell.
Sherlock Q. Jones's Casebook of Puzzles, Riddles and Muddles (1991)
A Puzzling Day at Castle MacPelican (1995)
A Puzzling Day in the Land of the Pharaohs (1996)
Maze Books
Maze Puzzles (1993)
Citymaze! (1994)
Double Maze Books
Mastermind Mazes (1997)
Monster Mazes (1997)
Clifford Hicks is a children's writer. He has done a series of books featuring Alvin Fernald, boy inventor and detective, that mix adventure, mystery and comedy. Each one has some "background", whether it be ecology, foreign trade, TV journalism, or cryptography. His most important work from a mystery reader's point of view is Alvin's Secret Code (1963).
Each chapter of Code is written in a different style. There are comedy sections, ingenious pieces on codes, thriller chapters, and so on. The chapters all fit together like a mosaic, and form a unified story. This mosaic technique is quite fascinating; it seems to be unique to Hicks, and I have never encountered it in any other writer. Among Hicks' other works, The Marvelous Inventions introduces Alvin and his friends; it is very mild, compared to later books in the series, but pleasant; it suffers from centering on that cliché of the children's mystery, the mysterious house. Super-Weasel is a strange extravaganza dealing sympathetically with the environmental movement, and shows Hicks' talent going full tilt, although it has less emphasis on pure mystery than other works in the series. It is very imaginative, and is Hicks' second most important work after Code. TV Anchorman is a well done tale, with some elements of mystery. Each of these books is actually novella length; they would make a nice omnibus packaged together and published in one volume. It might also help Hicks begin to get the adult readers he deserves.
Among Hicks' other writings are a series on Peter Potts, a kid whose home life is economically poorer than Alvin's. These stories are comedies, not mysteries. The best in the series, World Records, shows Hicks' skill with character drawing and storytelling. It is an emotionally involving book, with some wisdom to impart to its readers about life.
Donald J. Sobol has been writing Encyclopedia Brown books for nearly thirty years. Aside from the first volume in the series, in which he created Encyclopedia Brown, the best books in the series come in two chronological batches, one in the mid sixties, the other in the early eighties. Here his plots are most inventive, the jokes are funniest, the metaphors are most ingenious, and the details of kids' life and activities are most imaginative. These five best books together form a sort of "novel", or at least an adult size collection of stories (the E. B. collections are very short).
During each of these peak periods, Sobol also broke forth into novels, something he didn't usually otherwise do. It was if his creativity was overflowing in all directions. In the sixties we have a spy novel, Secret Agents Four. This ingenious book includes a detailed mystery plot of a kind related to those of Golden Age Mystery. In many ways it is a mystery story masquerading as a spy novel, or at least, a mystery story in the form of a spy novel. The eighties tale, Angie's First Case, is an out and out mystery, and is perhaps Sobol's finest work. It too builds up into an elaborate old fashioned mystery plot.
In both stories Sobol attempts to surprise readers that such an elaborate solution is coming. The form does not announce it, as did the form of the classic Golden Age Mystery. The solutions of both novels are formally similar in that they are "unexpected solutions", the real truth, and the fact that there is a "real truth", emerging as a surprise at the end of the book. The solutions of many older mysteries explain a large number of mysterious events that both the reader and the detective have been puzzling over in the course of the story. The reader knows that there are many unexplained mysteries and is expecting the solution to provide a rational explanation. Sobol's two books make everything look normal and spring the final revelation of hidden mystery as a surprise. Another formal similarity is the large number of clues hidden in the narrative. They are simply lurking there, hopefully unnoticed by the reader, until Sobol pulls them together at the end and weaves them into his final pattern.
All three of Sobol's main mystery titles, the Encyclopedia Brown books, Secret Agents Four and Angie's First Case seem to be set in South Florida, sometimes explicitly, as in the chase through the Florida Keys in Secret Agents Four, and sometimes just implicitly, with the many ocean beach scenes of the E. B. books. Sobol is very good at capturing South Florida atmosphere. The many mansions open to the public, museums and exhibits in the books are typical of South Florida life, as are the many roadside stands and tourist attractions, often run by his perennial villain, Bugs Meany. Paradoxically, the books give no evidence that Sobol is attempting to portray South Florida. The material is just "there", without any labeling as regional material. In fact, Idaville, the location of the E. B. books, is often referred to as a typical American town. It is very possible that Sobol is just making up plots, and is unconsciously inspired by what he sees around him. These books, richly atmospheric of a region, show none of the clichés of self consciously "regional" writing. There is no attempt, for example, to suggest that human nature is different in Florida, or that character or morals are shaped by the region. Sobol does not lay on "atmosphere" or local facts with a trowel, so that the reader, who has paid good money for a "regional book", knows that he is getting his money's worth and "learning about Florida".
Although the title of the book is Angie's First Case, to date there has not been a sequel, unfortunately. Sobol has since published an interesting fantasy thriller, The Amazing Powers of Ashur Fine (1986), whose ending also seems to promise a sequel. Ashur Fine is much more somber than most of Sobol's work, and shows a deliberately gloomy or tragic tone.
Erich Kästner's Emil and the Detectives (1929) is a little novella for children that delightfully mixes humor and detection. Hardly a puzzle plot story, it is still a delicious tale.
Henry Winterfeld is a German children's writer. His books include thrillers, mysteries, and science fiction novels. His first book, Timpetill (1933) (translated as Trouble at Timpetill), is an ingenious story about a town of children whose parents get angry, and who leave them en masse, to take care of themselves. The children have to learn to govern themselves, get food and supplies, and cope with groups of bullies. The story is pitched somewhere at the adventure story-children's thriller level. The plot reminds one oddly of Buster Keaton's film The Navigator, in which Buster and his girlfriend must learn to take care of a gigantic steamship out at sea all by themselves.
Winterfeld's masterpiece is Caius ist ein Dummkopf. This book was published in German in 1953; the French translation came out in 1955, and it appeared in English in 1956 as Detectives in Togas. It is a mystery set in Ancient Rome, and follows a group of schoolboys who track down a problem concerning their teacher. Historical mysteries were a rarity back then, except for the books of John Dickson Carr, and an occasional work like Christie's Death Comes as the End. Both the Roman background, and the mystery plot are well handled, and carefully integrated with each other. Winterfeld, like many older writers of Children's mysteries, fits squarely into the tradition of puzzle plot detective fiction. These stories all have a bit more adventure than the typical grownup mystery, but this is all to the good: it merely means that their tales are not as static as such adult writer dullards as Henry Wade or Milton M. Propper. There is also a good deal of humor in Winterfeld's work.
Winterfeld wrote a sequel called Caius Geht Ein Licht Auf (1969) (translated as The Mystery of the Roman Ransom), but it is nowhere as good. Mystery elements are skimped, and the book is mainly a preachment against the evils of slavery in Ancient Rome. There is a third novel in the series, Caius in der Klemme (1976), which I have not yet read. Readers interested in Roman mystery novels should check out Rick Heli's huge website devoted to them. Winterfeld also wrote science fiction novels for children, such as Telegramm aus Liliput (1958) (translated in 1960 as Castaways in Lilliput).
What's most enjoyable about these mysteries is the amount of mystery in them. The word "mystery" is an overused term today, applied to any crime story. But these children's' novels have plenty of genuine mystery, in the strict sense of the term, involving situations that are puzzling, and difficult to explain. Virtually every chapter introduces some intriguing question: Why would someone want to steal an apparently valueless book? What is causing the strange sounds heard at the old Ashley place? How are diamonds being smuggled out of the country? Why is Jane being followed? Such questions, which promise logical, yet surprising answers, are the very heart of the mystery, as a genre of writing. These questions, which cause the most intense enjoyment in mystery readers, are one key to the mystery story as an artistic experience.
The answers to these questions in these Stratemyer books are not as clever or as memorable as the best of Chesterton, Christie, Queen or Carr. Yet the fact that they are asked at all, and in such abundance, is the root of the fact that these books give surprising amounts of genuine pleasure to clear-eyed adults, who are neither wallowing in nostalgia, nor snickering at camp. They also form a startling contrast with many contemporary "crime novels", in which the mystery is hardly stronger than finding out the guilty party.
Among the children's books I read as a youth, two Stratemeyer syndicate stories stick out because of their fascinating subject matter. The Shore Road Mystery (1928) has a finale in which the Hardy Boys explore caves; in The Mansion of Secrets (1942) Kay Tracey explores a house full of secret passages. Kay Tracey is little remembered today, at least in official nostalgia celebrations, where all the attention goes to Nancy Drew. But she was my favorite of the Stratemeyer characters while growing up. If the Hardy Boys' Bay City has a New England feel - I always assumed it was near Boston - the location of the Kay Tracey stories is in a set of suburban towns interlinked by railway; not too far away is a giant city. My best guess is Westchester County, an affluent suburban area north of New York City. Another outstanding piece of storytelling in the series is The Green Cameo Mystery (1936), wherein Kay tracks down a gang of counterfeiters. The plotting is this book is dramatic, logical and gripping. This story also has a Chinese background. The author was careful to include sympathetic Chinese characters, and to stress the glamorous and beautiful nature of Chinese culture. It is clearly an attempt to teach kids about a culture of another country, and I thoroughly enjoyed it while I was growing up. I say "the author", because all the Stratemeyer books were published under house pseudonyms, and I have no idea who actually wrote these books. Mildred Wirt Benson, the real author of many of the early Nancy Drew books, is just now emerging from anonymity.
If we do not know the true authors of these works, at least I have names, titles and the books themselves. But several other good books I read during childhood are now nothing but memories of plots. I have tried on occasion to see if children's librarians could identify these books, but to no avail. Perhaps my readers can help. Please mail any information you might have to me at MG4273@aol.com. (Clicking here will bring up mail.) The plots:
A chess mystery. A young sleuth helps clear up a mystery of identity during a children's chess tournament by putting indelible red ink on a kid's neck.
A mystery solved by an entire troop of Brownies (and the author points out what an unusual "protagonist" this is). It takes place in a house surviving from the Revolutionary War (or was it the Civil War?), one which contains a secret passage. (This book has been identified by my alert readers! It is The Mystery of the Old Fisk House by Mary Shiverick Fishler and Lois Hamilton Fuller. A review on this site is hopefully coming up soon.)
A story about a bunch of kids who live in a row of houses in England. They live next to a warehouse, which has a triangular yard they call "Tom Tidler's Ground", after a poem by Walter De La Mare. By an elaborate scheme, they prevent a teenager living in the row from robbing the warehouse.
An sf thriller about a kid who sees water running uphill, discovers a top secret government gravity project, and fakes his own death to run off an join the project.
A historical fantasy-cum-detective story, set in Scotland, about a kid with second sight, who sees part of a murder plot during a vision.
Donald Keith's Mutiny in the Time Machine (1959-1963) is a novella originally published in Boy's Life magazine as a series of stories, and later by them as a separate book. It is very little known today, but its ingeniously plotted story seems like a definitive treatment of time travel adventures. Like Edward Ormondroyd's later children's book, Time at the Top (1966), it should be read by adults as well. While both tales are science fiction, their well constructed plots show a certain rooting in the traditions of the cleverly plotted mystery thriller. The belief that fiction should be well plotted lasted longer in science fiction than in any other branch of popular literature.
This is the Golden Age of puzzle books for kids. One thing that has helped this is the rise of color printing. This makes it possible to inexpensively print complex, multi-colored mazes, for example, and other visual puzzles. Heimann's books are among the most complex mazes available for kids. Several are multithreaded: they will have three paths for the kids to trace out, for example. Heimann's work seems fairly Viennese. Amazing Mazes has a formal garden that reminds one of those attached to palaces in Vienna.
Heimann uses a great number of recurring settings for his mazes; two are especially appealing. One kind shows the roofs of a Mediterranean style village, in which all the homes are built together, and which one can pass from roof to roof by a series of ladders, stairs and walks. The other shows an outdoor landscape, complete with many roads and paths, as well as interesting buildings and signs. Both show the interest in architecture and landscape that is so successful in the Golden Age mystery novel. Heimann clearly likes these types as well; they are now predominating in Amazing Mazes 3 (1996), whereas they were in a minority in his earliest books.
Maze Puzzles is a three volume book, designed for slightly younger kids than Heimann's. The puzzles form a series story, and are delightfully imaginative. Continuing characters thread their way, and one scene might show a floor plan of a building, while the next might show a maze within one room of that building, the room that was the heroes' destination in the previous page.
Leigh and Haw's Puzzle World series seems to be vaguely British in background: the kids have British sounding names and clothes, and the attitudes have a civilized, British feel. There are also numerous scenes on trains. However, they are kept fairly generic, so they can be enjoyed by kids around the globe. Puzzle Jungle takes place on a small island covered by a tropical rain forest: it reminds one of that most scientifically studied of all tropical islands, Barro Colorado in the Panama Canal Zone.