At the end of December I was nigh-certain I was going to "fail" my self-inflicted appointed reading goal, having been consistently ten books behind schedule since The Brothers Karamazov. (Why I thought that would be a good selection to start out last year, I don't know.) So in desperation, I turned to re-reading some of the Juvenile Fiction I've been meaning to review on this blog.
It was the T.C.D.C. to the rescue.
"What's a 'teesie-deesie'?" you may ask.
It's letters:
Capital T.
Capital C.
Capital D.
Capital C.
It stands for the Three Cousins Detective Club. Which just so happens to be the name of (at least) two series by Elspeth Campbell Murphy.
As the name of their club suggests, these books follow ten-year-old cousins Sarah Jane, Timothy, and Titus as they experience various adventures and solve mysteries. The "protagonist" of the book rotates among the Tim, Ti, and S.J.; The Mystery of the Silent Idol opens with the outdoorsy Timothy stuck doing back-to-school shopping at the mall; The Mystery of the Carousel Horse follows Sarah Jane as she helps a neighbor get ready for a "barn sale"; The Mystery of the Silver Dolphin has Titus working as a "gofer" for a writer--more on that one later.
The three best ways to describe the T.C.D.C. books are:
- EXcellent!
- Neat-O!
- So cool!
The first series has ten books (hence the reason for my choosing them to fill the gap in my reading list), each focusing on one of the Ten Commandments. As I said above, there's a second, "sequel" series that seems to be about the Fruits of the Spirit...but when I went to confirm the number of volumes in this series, I found WAY more installments, many of which I haven't read (yet!), so it's possible that Campbell Murphy expanded into other "serial" topics from the Bible (the Beatitudes, for example).
The books handle some heavy themes (including adultery and murder), as well as abstract concepts like "peace," explaining them clearly and yet in an age-appropriate way. Re-reading them as an adult, I was impressed by the humor and characterization that went into these slim volumes--their style is minimalist falling into "childish" simplicity. There isn't any condescension in the teaching, and while our heroes are "good," they aren't cutesy or perfect.
While I read nine of the first series (and the two from the Fruits series) as a way to quickly catch up on my reading quota--and I mean quickly: I polished these off in a few hours--it actually wasn't the main reason I thought to read them. Once in a while, I'll think of some random thing that's "from something," and it drives me crazy until I am able to track down where it's from. In this case, it was charcoal rubbings. A weird, random thought seemingly out of nowhere popped into my head in the middle of the night, practically waking me up. Where'd I hear about people taking charcoal and rubbing them on reliefs to get a copy of the picture? Fortunately for my sleep schedule, I was able to recall that this was the way The Mystery of the Gravestone Riddle begins: with Sarah Jane doing a school project.
In reading all these mysteries, however, I came upon one of my own. (Did you notice the clue in the preceding paragraph? I only read nine out of ten of the original series....) My absolute FAVORITE installment--in fact the first one I read when I was eight--was The Mystery of the Silver Dolphin. (In retrospect, this might have been the first "mystery" I'd ever read, awakening my interest in whodunnits.)
At that age, dolphins (and, to a lesser extent, all whales) were my "thing." Everyone knew this. It was such an integral part of me that some people who knew me back then still give me random dolphin paraphernalia because they saw it in the store and thought of me. In fact, I received TWO copies of The Mystery of Silver Dolphin in the same year. Which makes this mystery all the deeper because...I can't find even ONE copy now. I know I kept both; my nine-year-old cousin got me the second copy, which I wouldn't have given away out of sentiment as well as politeness, and the first copy I'd received from my mom and had already written my name in.
The worst irony is, that book is about the topic of stealing!
Alright, I don't really think both copies were stolen. But I need the T.C.D.C. for this case, right now!
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