More on Max Finder

Further investigation of the Encyclopedia Brown and Max Finder mystery series yields an explanation of why so many characters in the latter seem to be up to no good.

In most of the cases that Donald J. Sobol set in Idaville, the culprit is fairly obvious: Bugs Meany, a recent parolee, the snotty braggart who’s taking Sally out to the movies, and so on. The young detective’s task is usually to spot an incongruous detail in that suspect’s alibi or behavior which cracks open his façade of innocence.

In contrast, the mysteries that Liam O’Donnell concocts for Max Finder are true whodunits. A wrong has been committed, and there are at least two suspects, often more. Readers are challenged to identify not only how the brainy detectives solve the crime, but who committed it. To make that hard, those suspects need to be equally suspicious, and perhaps the culprit should be the least suspicious of the lot. Hence the treacherous employees, frame-ups, and cutthroat competitors.

When I first wrote about this series, I was responding to Snow Wildsmith’s praise for how it gives Max’s friend Alison Santos “moments to shine.” Indeed, that aspiring journalist solves several of the mysteries before he does—though Max still gets top billing.

The town of Whispering Meadows is also notably multicultural. The kids have surnames like Diallo, Chang, Hajduk, and Kanwar. Artist Michael Cho draws Max so readers might be able to interpret him as Caucasian, Eurasian, or even Inuit. The character sketches break kids out of types. Tony, “an all-around athlete,” also “cries at sad movies,” and Nanda, who likes “the latest CDs and clothes,” is “a hockey goalkeeper.”

Only one role seems to be reserved for European-Canadian males: the bully. “Basher” McGintley and Lucas Hajduk are as white as, well, Bugs Meany.

Whispering Meadows, Den of Thieves

Crime and misbehavior in Encyclopedia Brown’s home town of Idaville tends to come from three sources:

• Criminals passing through town, or recently out of jail.
• New kids trying too hard to show off.
• Bugs Meany and his Tigers.

The bulk of the local young population—the kids obsessed with teeth or animals or lacrosse or whatever—come across as well-meaning and good-hearted. Trouble comes from outsiders, and the community’s recognized bullies.

I found Whispering Meadows, the home town of young sleuths Max Finder and Alison Santos, to be a more treacherous place. The first volume of this series, by Liam O’Donnell and Michael Cho, contains ten short, comics-style mysteries originally published in OWL Magazine.

In three stories, the culprits turn out to be trusted employees of the damaged businesses. In a couple more, one friend victimizes another. Several stories contain red herrings as the guilty person tries to frame an innocent bystander. And whenever there’s a contest, the kids compete in cut-throat fashion.

Punishment for the transgressions tends to be mild. Of the ten cases, only one involves action by legal authorities; in another, a summer camp sends some kids home early. But a more typical dénouement in the back of the book is along the lines of: “Jeremy apologized for breaking Sally’s stereo, and for making the scene look like Hector did it, and after a while they all became friends again.”

Which might make sense, since a lot of the kids in Whispering Meadows have a common interest in bad behavior. In the next story, Hector might well be vandalizing someone’s bike while Sally blames Angela for beating her in the spelling bee.

Whispering Meadows sounds like a horrible place to grow up.