(As an aside, does anyone have ideas for testing out the temporary tattoo pen I bought? My stupid brain is stuck on the dark mark from Harry Potter, and since it is hot and I am around other parents a lot, it’s not necessarily a good idea, especially if it doesn’t wash off in a reasonable amount of time.)
Today we’re going to talk about another foundational book series from my childhood, the Two-Minute Mysteries series by Donald J. Sobol (who I just learned, by researching this post, also wrote the Encyclopedia Brown series). There’s three books in the series, each of which is a collection of several short mysteries that can, in theory, be solved through logic.
Now, as an adult, I love mysteries, and I especially love ones where, if you’re paying enough attention, you can figure out whodunnit. (I am eternally proud of myself for figuring out And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie.)
(As another aside, did anyone watch the Whodunnit? murder mystery show on ABC, like, five years ago? That was good times.)
At least the first book is still available through Scholastic.
These were some of the first mysteries I read, though it does probably warrant noting that these were meant to be solved by the reader, rather than what you typically see in the mystery genre. Kind of more logic puzzles, really. In theory, you’d be able to solve the mystery pretty easily (each story was about two pages long), and the solution for each was printed upside down at the end, so it was easy to check.
That being said, I remember some of the mysteries not making any sense, or not being easy to solve, and from looking at Goodreads, it sounds like I wasn’t the only one.
Still, the books were lots of fun, and I had a good time working through them. (And I did go through all three, over the years.) I don’t know that they would hold up at all for an adult audience, but if you know an elementary-aged kid who likes mysteries and/or logical puzzles, they might be worth it.
In other news, look what I got in the mail yesterday!
I’ve got a story in the Society of Misfit Stories this month! I tried to take a picture of the spine to show how substantial this issue is (it’s almost half an inch thick) but alas, I am not a good photographer.
The story in this one is called “The Good of the Community” and was actually written for the Seasons Eternal anthology Turtleduck Press put out some years back. However, when the stories were turned in, it ended up that KD and I had been pretty similar in themes and tropes, so I got the short end of the stick and had to pull my original story and write a new one for the anthology. It’s nice to see the story find another home, because I had a good time writing it and have always been fond of the worldbuilding.
(Also, I got the nicest, most complimentary acceptance email ever from them, so I’m feeling pretty good about this all around.)
Did you read the Two-Minute Mysteries, squiders? How easy did you find them to solve?
