Books I Grew Up On: Two Minute Mysteries

Ever since starting this whole Blank I Grew Up On series, I've been struggling to remember the names of the books I read as a kid.  Thanks to Monday's post, I now remember one set of books, the Two Minute Mysteries series of books.  This was a series of books containing a whole slew of 2-3 page mysteries that was more an exercise in reading comprehension and critical thinking than a story with a plot.

Since each mystery is so short, there really wasn't much time to set things up or have a denouement of any sort for each of the stories.  It was mostly just a focus on that fun crucial part of mysteries where the detective catches someone making a mistake.  At the end of each story, the book would pose a question like, "How did the detective know that person was the killer?" with an upside answer explaining the subtle mistakes.  A lot of times the person mentioned something about the crime that the detective never told them (so they weren't supposed to know it).

I think this series was a good training tool for even deeper mystery solving and has prepared me well for the Phoenix Wright series.  Now I know to scrutinize pronoun use and crime timelines among other things.  The series has three books in all, but looking on Amazon, only the first one is still in print (and the others must be in huge demand since the new price is $150-200!).  Fortunately, if you read one, the others are pretty just more of the same.  If you're into mysteries, I'd give the main one a look since it's only $5.