Does anyone else remember the Encyclopedia Brown books. There were a bunch of them when I was a kid, and I tried reading them because I enjoy a good mystery. But what you discover when you read the Encyclopedia Brown books is that the solution is always one of four things:
Mrs. Danforth stole the silver because she came out of the house holding the silver and cackling, "They'll never discover that it was I who stole the silver!" Encyclopedia Brown learned this because he happened to be outside the house chasing butterflies.
Judy broke the vase because she likes peanut butter, a fact which was never mentioned in the story. Encyclopedia Brown knew this. Why didn't you?
Bert Nelson was the last one in the room, and because the room is floored in formica, he had to have been the one who stole Mrs. O'Grady's cat because it's well-known by everyone that formica contains sodium permanganate, which is toxic to fish in high doses, so he couldn't have been feeding the fish when he claimed he was. Everyone knows this about formica. If you don't, you're a communist.
Sarah ate the last piece of pie because her father is from Hungary, and the Hungarians are a notoriously untrustworthy people. Filthy Hungarians.
I distinctly remember one where the girl was the culprit because girls use an emory board not nail clippers, and one where the solution hinged on the fact that you can't feed mice cheese because it'll give them a heart attack. As a child, I had no idea whether either of these facts was true.
Do they still write Encyclopedia Brown books? Are they still casually racist? Do they still rely on esoteric knowledge of old technology?
@intransitivelie The only thing I remember from those books is that one solution hinged on the fact that you can't reach into your right pocket with your left hand. I still remembering reading that and thinking "I'm pretty sure you can, actually." And then I tried it, and yeah, it wasn't that hard.
I don't remember being annoyed when the solution required esoteric knowledge, he was supposed to be a genius, afterall. But I still remember that solution in account of how not definitive it was.
@NanoBookReview
I think I remember that one too, and yeah, you totally can.
The esoteric knowledge wouldn't have been so bad if it had been knowledge that wasn't from the 1950s, maybe. He's a boy genius, but the books are supposed to be solvable by kids who aren't. There's esoterica and then there's savant-level minutiae.