Juvenile Mysteries
#390: Minor Felonies – Feel the Fear (2014) by Lauren Child
I apologise if I appear to be giving some import to my own fevered speculations here, but a few weeks ago I wrote that “I absolutely commend the role literature plays in helping people, young or otherwise, make sense of the world around them, but it’s also nice that sometimes a novel about a couple of 11 year-olds solving a murder can just be about a couple of 11 year-olds solving a murder”. I referenced it once already, and now I’m doing it again. Yeesh, my ego.
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#387: Minor Felonies – Alice Jones: The Ghost Light (2017) by Sarah Rubin
I am aware that some (many/most/all?) of my readers do not share my fascination with the current Young Adult detective fiction scene, and to a certain extent I sympathise. But in an age where detection is eschewed in grown-up circles — with unreliable narrators prevailing, and amnesia conveniently repealed at the 85% mark to hurry in a conclusion because clewing has failed — it heartens me to know that younger generations are being raised with access to the rigorous principles that delight so many of us.
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#384: Minor Felonies – Smart (2014) by Kim Slater
Reviewing two murder mysteries by Tanya Landman last week, I wrote that “I absolutely commend the role literature plays in helping people, young or otherwise, make sense of the world around them, but it’s also nice that sometimes a novel about a couple of 11 year-olds solving a murder can just be about a couple of 11 year-olds solving a murder”.
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#381: Minor Felonies – Mondays Are Murder (2009) and Dead Funny (2009) by Tanya Landman
Tuesdays in March were dedicated to YA detective fiction from the Golden Age — just here on this blog, I mean, you didn’t miss a memo or anything — and Tuesdays in May will be YA detective fiction from the 21st century. First up are Tanya Landman’s first two Poppy Fields novels, Mondays Are Murder and Dead Funny (both 2009).
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#365: Minor Felonies – Welcome to Danger, a.k.a. Danger Unlimited (1949) by Christianna Brand
Every so often someone will email me to let me know of books that may pique my interest: Kate at CrossExaminingCrime has brought several Freeman Wills Croftses to my attention, and Ben of The Green Capsule has also informed me of some bargains, including today’s title that, it’s fair to say, we’re still not sure who was most excited to discover existed.
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#364: An Egyptian Chinese Puzzle in The Mystery of the Whispering Mummy (1965) by Robert Arthur
So, here I am in the throes of a month of Tuesdays posts looking at GAD-era YA novels and — boom! — here’s a YA novel on a Saturday?! What on earth…?
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#362: Minor Felonies – The Clue of the Phantom Car (1953) by Bruce Campbell
An orphaned young man who lives with his red-haired best friend’s family, all the while having adventures…yeah, okay, no, the Harry Potter similarities stop (and indeed, don’t even start — he’s not an orphan, his father’s just away a lot) there. But it’s interesting to reflect, as these YAGAD novels are making me do, on the format that adventures for younger readers take and how little the classic tropes have needed to change in the intervening decades.
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#359: Minor Felonies – The Secret of the Old Clock (1930) by Carolyn Keene [rev. Harriet Adams 1959]
Well, well, well, even at my time in life there’s still much to be learned. For instance, I did not know that Carolyn Keene, author of the Nancy Drew mysteries, wasn’t an actual person but instead a syndicate a la the Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators authors (the key difference being that they never put any author name on the cover).
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#356: Minor Felonies – Young Robin Brand, Detective (1947) by Freeman Wills Crofts
Image via Facsimile Dust Jackets
The Invisible Event 