What first comes to mind is “The Case of Natty Nat.”
That’s the name of a rather suave robber who had been having his way with the merchants in the town of Idaville. The only distinguishing feature of this polite miscreant was the fact that he wore a coat that had a belt on the back.
The details of Natty Nat’s latest haul are presented to the 12-year-old son of the city’s chief of police at the family dinner table, and young Leroy spots an inconsistency in the victim’s account – a fact that reveals the guilt of a most unlikely suspect.
“The Case of Natty Nat” is – if memory serves me right – the very first story in the very first book about Encyclopedia Brown.
It was also unique in that it didn’t end with a question asking the reader to figure out exactly how Encyclopedia – as Leroy was nicknamed for his seemingly limitless knowledge of odd facts – figured out who was responsible for some crime, or why someone’s attempt at trickery came to naught.
Donald J. Sobol, who created Encyclopedia Brown in 1963, died recently at the age of 87. And the news reminded me how much his works dominated my reading life when I was just starting to measure my age in two-digit numbers.
The first book I read was the fourth published, “Encyclopedia Brown Gets His Man,” and I soon went through all the volumes I could find in my elementary school’s library.
That led to his novel “Secret Agents Four,” about a quartet of high school kids who manage to outwit an international plot against the city of Miami, Fla.
And from there it was Sobol’s series of “Two-Minute Mysteries,” brief tales of detection featuring a globe-trotting criminologist named Dr. Haledjian, which Sobol started writing for newspaper syndication in 1959 (and which Woody Allen parodied in “Match Wits with Inspector Ford” in his book “Without Feathers”).
Once I had exhausted all of Sobol’s work, I moved on to more “grown-up” detective stories – Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, Ellery Queen, Rex Stout, Julian Symons, Reginald Hill, Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Ross Macdonald.
But I still have a soft spot for Encyclopedia Brown, can still envision many of the original Leonard Shortall illustrations, remember the clue that led to the solution. In other words, the little world of make-believe that Donald J. Sobol created around this character is still quite real, where any problem, no matter how small, can be solved by listening, looking and thinking. And all the answer will cost you is 25 cents.
