If I had to choose an Encyclopedia Brown to skip (!), this would be it. There is a bit more violence (a man hits his companion over the head with a pipe), horror (a detailed story of a child being kidnapped and held prisoner against his will), and a touch of the occult (a divining rod—a stick that shakes when it senses gold nearby).

I’m planning to give it to my son to read after cutting out the chapters:

  • The case of the mysterious tramp
  • The case of bugs’ kidnapping
  • The case of the divining rod.

Unfortunately those chapters’ “solutions” in the back of the book overlap with other solutions, so I won’t cut the solutions out as well. However at least my kids’ mind will spend less time on those stories that I’m not excited about.

*See also reviews of Encyclopedia Brown on ReformedPerspective.ca: https://reformedperspective.ca/encyclopedia-brown-boy-detective/