Features
Sleuth!
Investigating Detective
Fiction for Children
by Penny Billyeald
The detective series remains one of the most popular literary
genres for children. As with adult fiction, there are a number
of series that feature the same detective character or
characters, thus providing the reassurance of the familiar so
much enjoyed by readers. A loose explanation of this
popularity is that reading one of a series is like going into a
room full of people that you know, rather than a room full of
strangers. Apart from the fascination of the clue puzzle that
forms the foundation for the story, there are a number of other
elements that have kept detective fiction in the forefront of
children’s literature since its beginnings with Erich Kästner’s
Emil and the Detectives (1931). This was the first example of
the enduring motif of so many children’s detective storites, the
motif of a group of children who pit their wits against the adult
world and succeed where adults have failed, often growing in
stature as a result.
Besides enjoying books that are exciting and fast-paced,
children derive great pleasure from reading of the exploits of
children who ‘put one over’ on the adult world, since so often
the youngsters manage to solve mysteries by observing what
has been overlooked, ignored or dismissed by adults. Then
there is the escapist element, which allows readers to lose
themselves in a different world, which even when the threat of
violence is present is still ultimately a safe place to go, and
Penny Billyeald (L) with Carol Botterill (R)
there is the pleasure of imagining what it would be like to be
the character concerned. Finally, detective fiction for children
often explores the tensions and differences between adulthood
and childhood.
Children’s fiction, like its adult counterpart, also features
differing types of detective. There are amateur detectives such
as Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, and the characters in
Swallows and Amazons, the Roman Mysteries and Lady Grace.
Not surprisingly, police detectives are unusual in children’s
fiction, though there is Sam Hutton’s Special Agents series,
where the special agents are teenage employees of Scotland
Yard. There are private investigators such as the Diamond
Brothers, there are forensic investigators such as Luke Harding
and his right hand robot; and there are government secret
agents such as Young James Bond and Jack Stalwart.
Whenever they were written, whether this century or the last,
what is both notable and a consistent theme in many of these
series is the frequent absence of parents, and particularly of
mother figures, who are either absent or passive and almost
silent, like Aunt Fanny in the Famous Five series. The absence
of a mother, or sometimes both parents, eliminates the conflict
of loyalties with which the protagonists might otherwise have
The SL 58-4 Winter 2010 203
 Features
to struggle, and their loyalty can be directed to their peer
group, which often becomes a surrogate family. However, a
father figure is more often present, and it would seem that this
is because fathers are not as observant, or too busy, or out all
day and therefore less inclined to enquire into what children
are up to, leaving them free to engage in their detective
activities. True, Emil has no father, but his mother fulfils the
male role of wage earner, and she is thus significantly too busy
to accompany him to Berlin. The earlier examples of the genre
such as Swallows and Amazons and The Famous Five were
written at a time when women did not, as a general rule, work
outside the home, and mothers were and often still are the
parent who wants to know where their children are going,
what they will be doing, whom they will be going with and
when they will be home. So Nancy Drew is motherless, with a
father who is a busy attorney. Young James Bond’s parents are
both dead, as are those of the young Sherlock Holmes. In
Caroline Lawrence’s Roman Mysteries, three of the four child
protagonists initially appear to be motherless, and one is an
orphan. In Grace Cavendish’s Tudor Lady Grace mysteries,
Grace has no mother because she drank poison that had been
intended for Elizabeth I, though the Queen herself constitutes
a mother figure for Grace. The popular Cherub series by
Robert Muchamore begins just after the death of James
Adams’s mother.
The near-invisibility of parents thus permits freedom of
movement for both single detectives such as Lady Grace, as
well as the surrogate family of the peer group. In addition, the
groups of children who form detective units are almost always
composed of both boys and girls, as in for example Chris
Ryan’s Alpha Force books. As well as permitting the author to
endow characters with varying skills, this also allows their
novels to be non gender-specific in their appeal, and this
absence of gender specificity constitutes a substantial element
in their popularity.
Part of the wish fulfilment appeal of detective fiction for
children is that the children are very largely free to roam
unhindered through both town and country. No-one doubts
the competence of the characters in Swallows and Amazons to
crew a boat. No-one compels them to wear life jackets, or
worries if they spend nights on
their boat all alone. No-one
enquires if they have washed,
cleaned their teeth, and changed
their socks. They have a degree
of autonomy that would be
unthinkable for children today.
Modern series that have a
204 The SL 58-4 Winter 2010
historical setting benefit from the same advantage. Today,
children tend to be ferried everywhere in cars, and society is
very much more aware of the dangers that they may encounter.
Certainly these child protagonists encounter threats and
danger, but not the sort of danger which so preoccupies
parents today.
A historical setting also offers the author freedom from the
restrictions of formal education as well, which for most
modern child detectives tends to limit possibilities for
adventure and mystery to the school holidays. Neither the
Hardy Boys nor Nancy Drew seemed constrained by the
demands of their education, but usually education is one
element which is not amenable to the suspension of disbelief,
and thus both Swallows and Amazons and The Famous Five
are necessarily limited to the summer holidays, or sometimes
the Easter holidays, for their adventures. In the twenty-first
century Robert Muchamore eschews
the endless summer of so much
children’s fiction and sends the
children of CHERUB to school in
normal fashion, although their lives
are far from what is normal for
children. The children in The Roman
Mysteries have a tutor but no formal
structure of education to consider, and
Lady Grace’s education never features
since the stories are set at a period of
history when girls frequently received
little or none. Charlie Higson struggles with the demands that
education makes on the young James Bond, and the dichotomy
between the perceived importance of Eton and the restrictions
that this necessarily places on what Bond can and cannot do.
However, Justin Richards rather skims over the question of
education in The Invisible Detective series, and the five
members of Chris Ryan’s Alpha Force use school not so much
to educate themselves but to hone their particular skills,
whether in languages, code breaking or martial arts.
It should be acknowledged that there are a number of essential
contradictions built into these stories. One of them is the
extremely unlikely event of so many different adventures
happening to the same characters. There are only so many
treasures to be found, mysterious strangers to be followed, and
criminals to be outwitted.
Then there is the question of the failure of some characters, for
example The Famous Five, to age significantly. However,
reading fiction involves a suspension of disbelief, and that is
something that most of the time troubles most child readers
not at all. What is essential is that the author is sufficiently
good at convincing their readers that their fictional construct
works, and they can therefore be trusted to suspend disbelief
for the period of time that the child is reading that novel.
It will be of interest in the future to see if significant critical
attention is focused on this very specific genre. Its many facets,
and its popularity with child readers, make it worthy of more
consideration than it has hitherto been accorded.
■ Penny Billyeald is Sessional Lecturer, Institute of Education,
University of Reading. Dr Billyeald wishes to acknowledge
the generous help in terms of research and preparation of
this article given by Carol Botterill, Librarian at Elstree
School.
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