Encyclopedia Brown is a series of
children's
mystery books by
Donald J. Sobol. Each
book contains several
short stories ending with a mystery for the reader to solve along with "
Encyclopedia" Brown, the
protagonist.
Brown, along with, I suspect, much of the Encyclopedia Brown readership, was definitely fated to be a geek when he got older. Nice to see intelligence portrayed as being unquestioningly a good thing to have, for once, without any weird nerd stigma attached to it.
Sobol also wrote a novel for slightly older kids called Secret Agents Four.