Boy Detective!

Even as a very young reader, I developed a taste for mysteries: the first book I remember reading and enjoying was the Bobbsey Twins mystery, The Bobbsey Twins at Pilgrim Rock. In retrospect, it was tame stuff and not particularly good as a whodunnit, though there were hints of the Radcliffian brand of Gothic fiction. But there were ghosts (not real) and smugglers (or perhaps thieves -- my memory is vague on this point), and lots of child-level excitement. I loved it and read the whole thing -- 100-plus pages -- in a single day.

Unfortunately (or, rather, fortunately), the library I had access to -- a small church library -- had no Bobbsey Twin mysteries. But they did have a whole shelf of another series from the Stratemeyer syndicate, the intrepid and eternally young Hardy Boys. I was instantly hooked and read them all. The Hardy Boys were a definite upgrade from the Bobbsey Twins, but they had certain weaknesses as well: one, Frank and Joe were older than me, had cars and girlfriends, and so were hard to identify with; two, they weren't very good detectives, relying more on happenstance and recklessness than deductive reasoning. (Believe it or not, I did think about such things as a young reader, though I'd have expressed it differently: "The Hardy Boys never really figure things out!")

Then I made a momentous discovery: Encyclopedia Brown. Unlike the Hardy Boys, who were almost out of high school, Encyclopedia Brown was a "boy detective": he was about my age and he was, like me, a smart and somewhat shy bookworm. Moreover, the stories were written to be figured out by the reader: each tale ended with a cliffhanger, and I had the opportunity to guess the solution before turning to the back of the book to check my answer. In short, I didn't just read about the detective, I became the detective. (To this day, I always try to figure out a mystery, whether movie or book. Katie, on the other hand, is content to be surprised at the end.) Encyclopedia Brown taught me how to think, how to observe small details, and how to piece together isolated facts into larger picture. As I got older, I moved on to Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, and Lord Peter Wimsey, but, in the back of my mind, I'm still Encyclopedia Brown, albeit grown up.

So, in light of that information, imagine my joy at this news story: "Teen 'detective' leads police to stolen bike"

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. - Police in suburban Westchester County said a 13-year-old's detective work led them to a 17-year-old accused of stealing a $2,275 mountain bike. Scarsdale police said the bike was stolen while its 13-year-old owner was inside a village deli.
The boy searched the Internet and found a bike that fit the description of his for sale on eBay. He gave the information to investigators.
A detective posing as a potential buyer arranged to meet the bike's seller in White Plains. Police arrested the 17-year-old on charges of felony criminal possession of stolen property.

See, this is the kind of thing I dreamed about when I was a kid, but nobody stole my bike. Nonetheless, it is heartening to see that the spirit of Encyclopedia Brown lives on.