Encyclopedia Brown by Donald J. Sobol
Rather than talking about a specific book, this blog is a bit different. It's part character profile, part personal experience. For me, there's no better place to start than with my first favorite fictional character, and the one that had a significant impact on my psyche - Encyclopedia Brown, boy detective.
Leroy "Encyclopedia" Brown is ten years old, the son of the Chief of Police in Idaville, and is often described as "a complete library walking around in sneakers". When he's not helping his father solve cases at the dinner table, he runs his own detective agency out of the garage with his partner, Sally Kimball.
Brown owes a debt to both Sherlock Holmes and Nero Wolfe (especially the latter) - he's brainy, distinctly non-physical, and, like Wolfe, he leans back and closes his eyes as he listens to the details of the case being presented to him. Sally fills, in part, the Archie Goodwin role, acting primarily as the detective's bodyguard, but also helping him solve the cases, at times.
Recommended to me by my sister, Encyclopedia Brown was my introduction to mysteries. The series eventually led me to the aforementioned Holmes and Wolfe, as well as the Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators, Kinsey Milhone, Matthew Scudder, Kenzie and Gennaro, Easy Rawlins, and many others.
But the influence went beyond that. Obviously, part of what drew me to the books was identifying with the main character. As a quiet, smart kid who was bullied, I couldn't help it. I went through a fairly long phase of wanting to be a detective when I grew up (including calling an actual detective agency when I was about 11 to find out what qualifications were needed to become one). I learned critical thinking, careful observation, and making intuitive leaps from Encyclopedia Brown, as well.
And, most telling, my best friends were often girls (and, later, women) who were generally more assertive than I was, at least as smart as I was, and (if necessary) could probably handle themselves better in a fight than I could. More often than not I nursed crushes that I kept to myself, while quietly disliking whomever they were interested in at the time.
More than any other fictional character, or single book, Encyclopedia Brown changed my life. Because of him, I grew up taking pride in my intelligence (maybe a bit too much, at times), thinking and talking my way out of problems, treating women like equals, and spending countless hours in libraries, bookstores and, well, books. All of that for far less than 25 cents a day, plus expenses.
