About book Encyclopedia Brown And The Case Of The Mysterious Handprints (1986)
My read-and-review-one-book-a-week resolution is getting desparate, as you can see. Unwilling to read the 148 pages I have remaining in Life of Pi by tonight, I nabbed this book from my little brother's shelf.I loved Encyclopedia Brown when I was the age for him, and I love him now as well. He's living proof that no knowledge is useless, and his viciously snarky and unabashed attitude mixes with his expansive brain to create the perfect kind of mini-sleuth. And the one-liners are great, and the mysteries are so unfathomable that they become amusing as well.But I'm making sweeping generalizations. To be a truly faithful reviewer, I need to critique this book 10 times - once for every mini-story. Here goes:1) The book opens up (as they all do) by explaining that Encyclopedia Brown, the son of the police chief, is the sole reason for the zero-crime-rate of the tiny town of Idaville, Anystate. Which is a lie, because a damn crime gets committed every chapter! The crime rate is massive for a small town, when you consider that all these books are written in one grade of Encyclopedia's education, and the sheer volume of books means hundreds of thefts, vandalisms, and instances of sabotage in just a single year! Huge!2) Never mind all that hard crime stuff, let's get to Bugs Awful and his vicious gang of Tigers! Bugs is assuredly my favorite character in the series, though he has competition, because of how he can hear the viciously pretentious Encyclopedia and yet stand by like he's babysitting the kid. Any actual fifth-grade bully would have knocked Einstein's jaw clean off its holster ages ago. But Bugs has more honor than that. He's a good kid, though he makes not a single redeeming decision in the course of the novel.3) Well, the real reason he doesn't go after Eniac Blue is he's afraid of his girlfriend, Sally. Sally beat up Bugs in the pilot episode of the series and the poor kid's been afraid of the two ever since. Which means Sally must have done something really traumatizing to him, because if I know anything about my own gender it's that a kid like Bugs would never admit defeat from a girl. He might get knocked to the floor a thousand times. He'll go on fighting. And get smashed to pulp again. And again. And again. And again and again and again, until she's taken down every one of his functioning synapses.Anyway. This mystery is important because it's the first one I don't have to go to the back for to figure out. Also, Bugs is trying to be the good guy this time, and it's interesting to see how he handles the role of precocious brat (though I sense a homage to Encyclopedia in his performance).4) So this suave fifth-grader is courting a girl with a 'powerful left arm,' but she knocks him out as soon as she sees him. The mystery is why she decked him on sight without giving him a chance to put on the moves.The 'powerful left arm' clause must be significant, but I have no idea how. Encarta Black knows all left-handed girls are lesbians, maybe? That's my guess.Well, no, (view spoiler)[that's wrong (hide spoiler)]
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