Suck it, Sobol

We have a copy of this (not this cover - of which [covers] more shortly) laying around the gaff, and on occasion I take it up and torment The Mrs with it. My brother says there used to be a daily Two Minute Mystery space with the puzzles in the paper, but I was too young to know of that. Old Sobol created the mighty Encyclopedia Brown, but just may have overplayed his hand with these foul trifles.

They all have the basic same conceit: a crime of some sort, a couple of characters (as many as can fit in 200 or so words) and the cagey master detective Haledjian*, the kind of erudite detective guy who knows that silver bowls reflect things upside down, that deer get up back legs first and at what humidity a cake will not rise. Brain-teasers, really.

One thing that's so galling are the weird names of the characters: "Joy April, a musician" or "Robert Tyle" or "Don Bay." No, wait - it's actually the way they all incessantly introduce themselves:

"I saw the body in the headlights on my car. By the way, I'm Tom Hub."

Anyway, you can "do" about five of these before tossing the book across the room. Memory is a tricky mistress, howevs - there inevitably comes a day when a "bit of Haledjian" somehow sounds fun, and it's all downhill again.**

ALSO,

An Encylopedia Brown book should look like this:













(timeless!)

NOT like this***:

(Hello, Leroy! And how are things in 2005?)

These were also awful:

(done in the overly illustrative Then Again Maybe I Won't school, aka "books that children of divorce would be allowed to read while Mom is out on a date [eww!]" style)

* what is the nationality of the name Haledjian? Perhaps he's Assyrian, like Yossarian

** maybe the fact that I'm minutes from forty indeed means that I shouldn't be reading Two Minute Mysteries and finding fault with them?

*** God only knows what Agatha Christie books look like today - probably have Miss Marple in sweatpants...