Encyclopedia Brown Was Our Gateway Detective

• By Kathryn Schulz - Vulture - July 17, 2012

Of all the commercial operations, real and imaginary, ever launched by entrepreneurial children—from lemonade stand to Lucy’s advice booth—the one nearest and dearest to my heart is this:

BROWN DETECTIVE AGENCY
13 ROVER AVENUE
LEROY BROWN, PRESIDENT
No Case Too Small
25¢ Per Day Plus Expenses

LEROY BROWN, PRESIDENT: that’s Encyclopedia Brown, to you. His creator, the journalist and author Donald J. Sobol, died last week at the age of 87, though the news wasn’t widely reported until today. Whereupon I promptly took myself to my local library and reverted to a habit, last practiced in 1984, of checking out, in one fell swoop, a dozen of his books.

A quick recap, in case it’s been a while since you too checked out his books: Encyclopedia Brown is the son of the police chief in a town so famously tough on crime that “Hardened criminals had passed the word: ‘Stay clear of Idaville.’” That’s thanks to Encyclopedia, eternal fifth grader, voracious reader (hence the nickname), and crackerjack private eye. During the school year, Brown père recounts his toughest cases over dinner; Brown fils reliably solves them before dessert. In the summer, Encyclopedia hangs out his own shingle and foils the nefarious plans of countless kid criminals — miniature Moriarties to his miniature Holmes.

In addition to his formidable intellect, Brown possesses three features common to nearly all respectable literary detectives: a private code of conduct, a nemesis, and a sidekick. The code of conduct is a kind of one-man omertà: “He seldom spoke to anyone, not even his parents, about the help he gave to others. And he never spoke about the help he gave grownups.” The nemesis is Bugs Meany, Idaville’s thug-in-chief and ringleader of a gang called The Tigers. (Bugs Meany: has there ever been a better bad-guy name? The Genovese clan meets the playground; the villain meets, eponymously, the villainy.) The sidekick is the tomboyish Sally Kimball, who was, unusually for the era — for any era — the heavy of the operation. (“She was the only one, boy or girl, under twelve who could punch out Bugs Meany.”)
Full story here.