Clifford B. 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 | Scoular Anderson
A Guide to Classic Mystery and Detection Home Page
Emil und die Detektive / Emil and the Detectives (1929)
Timpetill / Trouble at Timpetill (1937)
Caius ist ein Dummkopf / Detectives in Togas (1953)
The Marvelous Inventions of Alvin Fernald (1960)
Alvin's Secret Code (1963)
Alvin Fernald, Foreign Trader (1967)
Alvin Fernald, Mayor for a Day (1970)
Alvin Fernald, Superweasel (1974)
Alvin Fernald, TV Anchorman (1980)
The Wacky World of Alvin Fernald (1981)
The Peter Potts Book of World Records (1987)
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
The Great Rabbit Rip-Off (1976)
Three of Diamonds
The Greek Who Stole Christmas (2007)
The Shore Road Mystery (1928)
The Green Cameo Mystery (1936)
The Mansion of Secrets (1942)
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)
The Marvelous Inventions of Alvin Fernald. The Marvelous Inventions of Alvin Fernald (1960) introduces Alvin and his family and 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.
The book is structured around four attempts to connect with the mystery house. The most creative is the third, which involves message passing.
There are some echoes between the inventions concerning the mystery house, and other parts of the book. The summoning of Shoie in the middle of the night, is also an attempt to connect with Shoie's house, and communicate with someone inside.
Alvin's Secret Code. Hicks' most important work from a mystery reader's point of view is Alvin's Secret Code (1963). Each chapter of Alvin's Secret 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.
Alvin Fernald, Foreign Trader. Alvin Fernald, Foreign Trader (1967) verges on science fiction. Transportation is a motif that runs through this novel, everything from motorcycle cops to a plane trip to a paper airplane to bicycles. Hicks eventually develops some visionary ideas about new kinds of transportation. These seem oddly anticipatory of contemporary real-life developments in the 2000's. This is one of Hicks' longest books, and one that gets Alvin most involved in the world. Alvin takes part in both science and society here.
Both the international USA-Europe trade perspective and the industrial spy aspects of Alvin Fernald, Foreign Trader develop motifs found earlier in Alvin's Secret Code. Both books also reflect the spy-novel craze of the 1960's.
The big race at the end, perhaps reflects the popularity of recent comedy films about high-tech races in Europe: Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines (Ken Annakin, 1965) and The Great Race (Blake Edwards, 1965). A plot development about the outcome of the race, perhaps echoes one in Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines.
Alvin Fernald, Mayor for a Day. Alvin Fernald, Mayor for a Day (1970) has a large supporting cast of kids, each of whom has their own talents and differing approaches to life. These talents play a role in the plot. Hicks eventually adapted this book into a play (1992).
Much of the technology in the novella concerns communication devices the kids encounter: a telephone system at the Mayor's office, teletypes, walkie-talkies. Another set of elements involves construction: municipal projects, the playgrounds.
The municipal corruption that forms the crime subplot, was common in pre-World War II stories, both pulp magazine crime tales, and comic books.
Alvin Fernald, Superweasel. Alvin Fernald, Superweasel (1974) 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 Alvin's Secret Code. Like Alvin Fernald, Mayor for a Day, it brings Alvin into the public realm, taking action to change the society in which he lives. Both books reflect the Age of Relevance that influenced American entertainment around 1970.
Alvin Fernald, TV Anchorman. Alvin Fernald, TV Anchorman (1980) is a well done tale, with some elements of mystery. It follows some of the same patterns as Alvin Fernald, Mayor for a Day:
The Wacky World of Alvin Fernald. The Wacky World of Alvin Fernald (1981) is a collection of five short stories about Alvin Fernald. The best is "The Mind of a Savage Untamed", which is one of the few episodes in the saga with Shoie in the lead. "The Mind of a Savage Untamed" shows the same mosaic construction as the book length Alvin's Secret Code. Each of its five episodes (the clay, the two modeling scenes, the bull and the art show) has its own distinctive setting and feel. The finale has the characters pulling off a small scheme, like many Alvin finales. The opening has a mess made at Shoie's house, as in the nocturnal summoning in The Marvelous Inventions of Alvin Fernald. It also recalls the mess the kids make while cooking candy, at the start of Alvin Fernald, Foreign Trader.
Two stories, "April Fool!" and "Alvin Invents a Man", deal with elaborate jokes or hoaxes pulled off by Alvin. Some of the disguises in Hicks' next novel, Alvin Fernald, Master of a Thousand Disguises, also can be considered as elaborate hoaxes. However, most of the schemes in that book are a means-to-an-end, solving a mystery, while the hoaxes in The Wacky World of Alvin Fernald are done for their own sake.
Alvin Fernald, Master of a Thousand Disguises. Alvin Fernald, Master of a Thousand Disguises (1986) is a more conventional kids' mystery, with a search for a hidden treasure. The disguise in Chapter 10 is perhaps psychologically revealing. It extends the portrait of the Alvin-Shoie relationship. It can be linked to "The Mind of a Savage Untamed" in The Wacky World of Alvin Fernald.
The book is better in its second half, when the kids' schemes get underway. These later suspense passages recall the public library suspense chapter in Alvin's Secret Code, with the kids' actions suspenseful up against a fence. The attempts to penetrate into the walled garden of a house, also recall The Marvelous Inventions of Alvin Fernald. The disguise approach is different from the technological communication ideas in the earlier novel.
The use of a large group of kids, each with their own personality, recalls Alvin Fernald, Mayor for a Day.
The best in the series, The Peter Potts Book of World Records (1987), shows Hicks' skill with character drawing and storytelling. It is an emotionally involving book, with some wisdom to impart to its readers about life. Especially in the running plot, given full expression in the last story, about the impending birth of Peter sister's child.
The first three short stories in the collection feature inventions that are giant versions of ordinary devices. Hicks shows his background as a contributor to Popular Mechanics. Hicks gives an interesting, physics-based account, of how such large devices would differ in operation from normal sized ones. The account is especially skillful in the third tale, "The World's Tallest and Fastest Stilt Walk". Such works remind one of the modified-bicycle finale of Alvin Fernald, Foreign Trader, and the devices in The Marvelous Inventions of Alvin Fernald.
The fourth story, "The World's Biggest Kid Parade", is different. It is much longer than any of the other tales, and is not centered on inventions. Instead, it recalls a pair of Alvin Fernald books. Like Alvin Fernald, Mayor for a Day and Alvin Fernald, TV Anchorman, it has the kids organizing by themselves an activity normally run by adults, here putting on a parade. (However, parades in real life are sometimes done by kids as well as adults, and the subject is less purely kids-in-the-roles-of-adults than the two Fernald books.) Also like those two books, a guest star kid is the organizational brains behind the action. Juvenile entrepreneur Willy Peters is closest to the kid mastermind in Alvin Fernald, Mayor for a Day, in having somewhat selfish motives. He is in fact the most mercenary sympathetic character in Hicks. The tale also resembles Alvin Fernald, TV Anchorman in having the kids involved with local television, and a grown-up TV host. The tale is dotted with numerous bizarre-and-funny kid activities, each one performed by a different kid making a cameo appearance: also like the news reports of various kids in Alvin Fernald, TV Anchorman.
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 (1967). 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 (1981), 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.
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. 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 Kommt ein Mädchen geflogen (1956) (translated in 1957 as Star Girl) and Telegramm aus Liliput (1958) (translated in 1960 as Castaways in Lilliput).
The answers to these questions in these Stratemeyer 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.
All the Stratemeyer books were published under house pseudonyms. The Green Cameo Mystery was reportedly plotted by Edna Stratemeyer Squier, and written by Mildred Wirt Benson. The Mansion of Secrets was reportedly plotted by Harriet Stratemeyer Adams, and written by Anna Perot Rose Wright. Mildred Wirt Benson, the real author of many of the early Nancy Drew books, is just now emerging from anonymity.
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 Tiddler'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 was the joint pseudonym of Donald Monroe and Keith Monroe. The team published a sequel, Time Machine to the Rescue (1967).
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.