By Donald J. Sobol
Ten short cases from the boy detective who runs a neighborhood crime lab out of his garage, with the solution to each one hidden in the back so your child can crack it first.
Leroy Brown knows so much that everyone calls him Encyclopedia. His father is the town's police chief, and when the chief gets stumped at the dinner table, it's Leroy who points out the one detail that gives the crook away. He also runs a detective agency out of the family garage, twenty-five cents a day, no case too small. Each chapter is a whole mystery that ends right at the moment Encyclopedia says he's solved it, and the answer waits in the back of the book so your child can try to beat him to it.
This is the purest solve-it-yourself book on the shelf. Every case is a fair puzzle: all the clues are on the page, one of them doesn't add up, and a sharp child can spot the lie before the answer is revealed. Because each mystery is only a few pages, it's perfect for a reader who wants a win in one sitting, and it turns reading into a game the whole family can play out loud. It's a classic from the 1960s, so a stray detail here and there feels a little old-fashioned, but the puzzles themselves have aged beautifully.