Mysteries

When I was about fourteen I went through a Hardy Boys phase for a couple of years.  This was a series of books about two teenage detective brothers figuring out mysteries and catching crooks. (Many of the early books were written, uncredited, by a Canadian called Leslie MacFarlane.) My favourite character was their sidekick Chet Morton.  

I also read several Encyclopedia Brown books by Donald Sobol.  You'd read a short mystery and be challenged to guess the answer before looking it up at the back of the book.  It bugged me that I seldom guessed the answer.  There was one mystery where I guessed that the kid couldn't have banged his knee on the coffee table like he claimed because it should have upset the house of cards on it, but you'd have to be pretty dim not to figure out that one.

I don't care so much for mysteries today.  Some of the Agatha Christie movies are fun. (I think she was Catholic--what is it about Catholics that gives them a talent for writing mysteries?) I enjoyed Umberto Eco's medieval mystery novel The Name of the Rose, and ought to read it again someday.

I wouldn't make a good detective.  Life is a mystery to me, and more I learn the more mysterious it seems to get.