Get 'em While They're Young:
Kiddie Pulp

True hardboiled children's literature probably doesn't really exist, but here's a few suggestions to whet young appetites for the real thing a few years down the road. After all, it's never too early to get children reading.

I like to think that the format of many of these books, their basic pulpiness, their dependence on "some guy coming in the room with a gun," (as Chandler would say) to move the plot along, certainly prepped me well for a life of mystery and detective reading...

It was a treat to read this stuff. A lot of folks turn up their nose at this stuff, especially the Stratemeyer Syndicate stuff, but if they were written for kids, and kids loved them, does it matter that forty years later, an adult finds them wanting? I loved those books, and I'm sure most readers these days will admit to a soft spot for them, regardless of their "literary" value.

And Victoria Esposito-Shea had this to say, "I go back and read the books and the logic drives me insane now, and there are holes in the cases that you could drive a Mack truck through, and the characters are so WASPy that I grit my teeth (at least the Hardy boys had Tony Prito, the token Italian; Nancy Drew had no one), but I still keep going back. (Usually this involves sneaking into my daughter's room in the dead of night and snatching books off her shelf, but that's another story.)"

Arranged by suggested reading age...

• Private I. Guana
  The Case of the Missing Chameleon
  Written and illustrated by Nina Laden
  This is a clever little story book for younger kids, who'll dig the great illustrations and the quirky world of lizard detectives, bullfrog cops and a chameleon with an identity crisis, and their parents, who'll recognize the cliches of the P.I. genre that the book so gently and lovingly skewers.
  ..
• Flatfoot Fox
  by Eth Clifford
  Woodland hijinks solved by the "smartest detective in the whole world."
  
  
• Chet Gecko
  Written and illustrated by Bruce Hale
  The logical follow-up to Private I. Guana, for kids from 8-12. Chet is a detective. He's also a grade four student at Emerson Hicky Elementary School. And yes, he is a lizard.
  .
• Sam the Cat: Detective
  by Linda Stewart
  No, really. This is a pretty good mystery for kids, complete with a tough-talking puss, and some of the nastiest villians to ever cough up a hairball.
  .
• Encyclopedia Brown
  by Donald J. Sobol
  Arguably the most influential child detective ever. Down those tree-lined streets a child must go, neither tarnished nor afraid.
  ..
• Nikki Neal
  by Derek Gilbert
  A new contender, Nikki is a modern kinda ten-year old who plans on giving ol' Encyclopedia Brown a run for his money. Her stories are currently available for download online.
  .
• Bernie Magruder
  by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
  Bernie lives in a hotel in the Midwest, managed by his parents. Suffice it to say trouble frequently checks in.
  .
• The McGurk Organisation
  by E.W. Hildick
  The only series contributor Philip Eagle ever liked. "They came out in the seventies-eighties and the first was called The Nose Knows," says Phil. "It was the basic gang situation, but unlike the usual kids-beat-Nazi-spies stuff the whole thing used detective-story plot lines on things that might actually happen in a kid's life, and made it really matter to the reader. There were also some deliberate nods to Ed McBain and Raymond Chandler, and what I now recognise to be an extended parody of John Dickson Carr's supernatural-crime tales."
  .
• Sammy Keyes
  by Wendelin Van Draanen
  She may not be two-fisted, but she sure is pugnacious. On her first day of junior high school, Samantha Keyes gets suspended for punching another girl in the nose, and so it goes, as Sammy progresses through this series aimed at the 10-13 market, seemingly unable to keep out of trouble.
  .
• Nick and Tim Diamond
  The Falcon's Malteser
  by Anthony Horowitz
  A good-natured, private eye parody featuring a rather inept young P.I., who's helped out by his long-suffering kid brother, on the trail of a mysterious box of candy. Later made into the 1988 film Diamond's Edge, also recommended.
  .
• Henry Coffin
  Coffin on the Case
  by Eve Bunting
  Twelve-year old Henry wants to be a private eye, just like his dad. And then a high school beauty struts into his dad's office...
  .
• Detective Barney
  Collected in The Adventures of Detective Barney
  by Harvey O'Higgins
  16-year old Barney Cook is the quick-witted office boy and assistant for the Babbing Bureau, a New York City detective agency. Although the seven short stories were written way back in 1914 or so, originally published in Collier's and later collected in The Adventures of Detective Barney (1915), Barney is still considered "the most believable of boy detectives in American literature" (re: Maddened by Mystery).
  .
• The Hardy Boys Mysteries
  by Franklin W. Dixon (group pen name)
  Still the all-time best selling series of books for boys, with well over 250 books published so far, and counting, all featuring the adventures of Frank and Joe Hardy, teenage sons of celebrated private detective Fenton Hardy. And more than a few girls read 'em too. There are several series now going, but if you can dig up the first thirty or so original (non-revised) books in the series, you're in for a treat. Real kid pulp, full of action, nasty villians, narrow escapes, dumb cops, thrilling chases and all that other good stuff, written by pulp writer Leslie McFarlane and others under the Stratemeyer syndicate pen name. Later the early books were cleaned up and rewritten for "modern" tastes, and a lot of the purple prose and violence was cut out. However, in a ironic twist of fate, a new series of paperback adventures called The Hardy Boys Casefiles restakes the originals' claim to pulpliness by blowing Joe's longtime girlfriend to bits!
  .
• Nancy Drew
  by Carolyn Keene (group pen name)
  Now a feminist icon, despite the fact that often, it seems, Carolyn Keene was occasionally a man, sometimes the same ones who wrote The Hardy Boys. Alas, because they were "girl" books, I never read these, but a lot of other folks did. And, as roving correspondent Jan Long asks, "So what's stopping you now? As with the Hardy Boys, the originals, before they were dumbed down, were pretty good. (And by originals, I mean the ones from my mom's childhood, not mine."
  
  
• The Three Investigators: Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Series
  by various authors
  The basic premise: three boys set up a detective agency. Their secret headquarters is in a housetrailer buried in the "smart one's" uncle's junkyard. Well-written with real mysteries, they were a real treat, especially compared to the sanitized rewrites the Hardy Boys were undergoing at the same time. In fact, several of the books were written by Dennis Lynds (Dan Fortune's creator) under the pseudonym of William Arden.
  .
• The Three Detectives
  by Simon Brett
  Mystery writer Simon Brett's series aimed at younger readers features three schoolmates who team up to investigate "anything that's strange and can't be easily explained." sort of like The Three Investigators, but aimed at a younger audience. And these detectives are British, and one of them's a girl.
  .
• Brains Benton
  by Charles Spain Verral
  As proprietors of the Benton & Carson International Detective Agency, Barclay "Brains" Benton and Jimmy "Operative Three (there is no Operative Two)" Carson solved a number of cases in the small college town of Crestwood in the 60s and early 70s.

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