My Back Pages #01: The Usborne Detective’s Handbook

My Back Pages is what I would call an irregular feature that I’ve got going here. Essentially, every now and then, I dig out a book from my old shelves and my childhood to examine it with a new perspective and more than a hint of nostalgia. I have no idea why I’m doing this, and what I’ll end up with, but I figured that it might be slightly interesting. More interesting than what usually happens here anyway. Yes, it takes its name from the Dylan song, and yes, this is a standard introduction. You can read more about it from the introductory page I’ve written for it.

A Block Of Information

Title: The Usborne Detective’s Handbook
Authors: Anne Civardi, Judy Hindley, Angela Wilkes
Illustrator: Colin King
Other folks: Donald Rumbelow (Consultant), Heather Amery (Series Editor)
Publisher: Usborne Publishing Ltd
First publication: 1979
Edition: 1989, 9780860202783

Just Like Dick Tracy

So here we go, with our first book and the truth is I almost couldn’t start with any other book because this was a book I just went back to time and time again. I suppose you could very well think of it as one of the favourites, in that case.

It’s exactly what it says it is, Usborne’s guide to becoming a detective. All the little tips and tricks that you have to know to foil those nefarious criminals. There’s a rather large variety of things in here. Apart from a number of case studies, there’s spot-the-difference, general knowledge, sneaking around, how to judge distance, a lot about forgeries and phoneys, identifying people in disguises, exposing fake evidence or alibis, walking in the dark, making maps, scouting, what villains do, how people react to interrogations, identifying handwriting, and so on. It’s kind of like an activity book, I think, and that’s how I approached it. Every other day, I’d take it out and open it to a random page to see what I’d do on that day.

And I think it worked for me in part due to the same reason detective fiction tends to work with kids in general. Nevertheless, there was just something more about this, something special. Unlike your Famous Fives and Fantastic Fours (wait, I really don’t remember the group with four intrepid kids… Fabulous, maybe?), you weren’t trying to get in on other people’s adventures. You were on your way to your own. You were going to become a detective.

Now that I look at it, I think it’s ingenious, primarily because… a detective. It’s just one of those things that you imagine yourself to be when you’re a kid. Like in that picture just above, with the stake-outs and all that stuff. It’s exciting stuff for a child. And add that to the fact that whenever I read this, I was always quite convinced that it was entirely legit, that detectives all around the world had started out reading this. (Okay, so I was easily deceived.) So it was brilliant simply because it just fit into that imaginative pocket so well and really met my childhood expectations of what it’d be like to be a detective, and it did well enough to convince me that I was onto something.

There was always that careful balance between the real and the fantastically simple. I mean, if you looked at this page now, about detecting forged paintings, you wouldn’t seriously think that you could successfully learn it from a book like this, but back when I was still young, it just seemed perfectly realistic.

I absolutely adored this book. I always did wonder if Mr. Rumbelow was a real detective, though.

A Little Bit Of History

I actually inscribed the date on the front page of the book, a habit I’ve long since lost. Then again, someone probably inscribed it for me since handwriting is not exactly a strong suit of mine. I also used to have this lovely stamp for my name, as you can see there, and I would get so terribly amused with it that I’d put it on everything that wasn’t of immediate significance.

My mom tells me that it was my aunt who bought this book for me after she had brought me to the optometrist’s where I had my first pair of spectacles done (an ill-fated pair that didn’t last long, really). Apparently, I had been (surprisingly?) well-behaved, and so it was a reward of some sort. Thank you, Aunt!

Dodd And Trapper

These guys are the two detectives in the book. Dodd is the guy without the moustache. Trapper is the other one.

Detective Trapper was the older (from the moustache of course), more serious (from the moustache too) bloke, typically in blue, looking all so serious and proper. He barely broke a smile in the book, as I remember, and when he did, it was a smug one for having thwarted a villain of some sort. I couldn’t quite identify with him. He was just so composed and cool and apparently experienced that he seemed to be, I suppose you could say, at a distance. He was some high-ranking Jedi and I wasn’t even a Padawan, for Pete’s sake.

So I always thought of him as the big gun, the one that you’d call when the business was serious. He didn’t have time for our petty thefts. He wasn’t the one to get his hands dirty. He didn’t dash about, swashbuckling and suave. No, no, no, he was the big shot, and we were best off watching in the distance in awe of his deductive prowess and ingenious planning.

The one I found myself more able to identify with was Detective Dodd. And by identify with, I really mean aspire to, because (let’s be frank) these two detectives were really non-characters (it wasn’t a storybook) so I had nothing to identify with, and I wanted to be a detective so the goal that seemed within reach was to step into the shoes of Detective Dodd.

He was a different character altogether, a hands-on man (a fact I deduced from purely from the tone of his cases), a lower-ranked detective (he was younger so it seemed to make sense) who was all-action (I couldn’t have known but that seemed fitting). To me at that time, he also had a goofy sort of face and a goofy sort of name, a friendlier prospect than Detective Trapper, to say the least.

There was also a dog named Petal and her trainer but this pair only appeared at the beginning of the book. The trainer appeared near the end of the book demonstrating an armhold. I guess Dodd and Trapper were just too awesome.

A Couple More Memorable Things

Here’s one of my favourite pages. It’s not the most colourful or the most frightening, and it certainly doesn’t have those lovely action sequences in the other case studies, but I loved this page because it’s the only one that has a realistic-looking criminal. It’s like the sort of thing you see in Crime Watch, and you start thinking, if I was a real detective, I’d nab you for sure.

Then the opposing page had some silly game where you identified him out of nine ‘photographs’ and it really just spoiled everything.

I was always a little freaked out by this fake mermaid illustration. There was just something about the smile that really got to me. Because there were so many pages without such freaky things, and since I would dive into random pages every time, I had a very low chance of flipping to it, but a low chance is still some chance and so I saw it every now and then. On those occasions, I would just quickly turn the page away, as if her smile would turn me into… well, her.

A while later, I got used to it and could even stare at it. It was then that I began to wonder why she was always picking her nose.

Quotes

Page 130: “A good detective is very crafty. He always outwits crooks.” (I certainly hope so.)

Page 34: “A hat, dark glasses or a false moustache are all very useful disguises.”

Page 181: “Look closely at lumpy bandages and slings. They may be hiding something.” (And for some time after I read this, I thought that people with bandages and slings were all secret agents.)

Page 183: “If your suspect struggles to get away, do not hit him. Try to knock things out of his pockets. He will be confused and stop to pick them up.”

Brilliant stuff.

Last Words

You can still get the book. I discovered that it’s still being published by Usborne, and hey, that’s not bad for a book that’s all of 30 years old. So if for some reason you want to buy it, try looking around here. It has a fancy new cover and all, but I believe the inside is still mostly the same, though I suppose the section on faked photographs will have to be updated to include Photoshopping. It is a tad expensive, but my experience with children’s books has always been on the pricey side anyway.

Pretty amazing, now that I think of it, that fifteen years on, you can still get this book somewhere, some place. And somewhere, some place, another child is having the same little adventures, arranging stake-outs, arresting crooks and thieves, detecting forgeries and waiting for that realistic-looking criminal to one day appear in their lives. Somewhere, some place, Dodd and Trapper are still dashing about, sneaking around, and saving the world.

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My Back Pages

I love children’s books. Good children’s books to me are these self-contained marvels that are able to fuel and spark the imaginations of (who else) children, and put that way are really marvels in their own right. I think they’re difficult to craft, wonderful to hold and just a joy to read. To that end, I’ve even planned for a children’s book section in my personal library, though it’s still just getting started and is really made up of a few select volumes now.

Fact is, I think children’s books, like children’s television programmes, are important. There’s a certain nobility about it, I guess, that we should always strive for more, for better, because children deserve more and deserve better. They deserve to be shown that there’s always something greater, that they should ask for more. And I think about the books I see children reading in this part of the world (if we presume to be optimistic enough to say that most of them still do), and not forgetting the TV shows, and I always wonder if there’s more to be had. Because children should get more. They ought to be enchanted, enthralled and scared out of their wits. They shouldn’t be afraid to imagine, because a child’s imagination is precious, and it’s something you want them to hang onto. That sense of fear, that reckless abandon, that willingness to be swept by magic and wonder, those are things that help you keep your imagination, I’d like to think.

I think this fairly recent (a year or two, maybe?) fascination with children’s books came about because one day I looked back and I realised how tragically limited my childhood catalogue was. I didn’t get many really nice books like Where The Wild Things Are (which, incidentally, appeared on my shelf in 2008, about fifteen years later than it should have), didn’t have many memorable stories that I could tell. It wasn’t until much later that I dove into Alice, read fables, and actually treasured books. It made me sort of sad to note this.

What I did have, however, was plenty of non-fiction books. I had tomes about animals and Mother Nature, about bugs and the night sky and trees and geese. I had science books too difficult for myself then. I had encyclopaedias about vampires and sea monsters and geese, I mean, ghosts. I also had plenty of puzzle books, brimming with adventure and intrigue, and always affixed with the solutions so I could sneakily peek at them.

That’s not to say I was short on fiction either. I had some pretty memorable books, some of them bought (though rarely, I think) and others as prizes for placing well in class. It’s just that I think I didn’t spend so much time on fiction back then, and when I did, I pushed up a bit higher and left children’s fiction behind.

I still think it’s a pity though.

Yesterday, I took a look through the old shelves where I keep books that I don’t consider to be a part of my library. I started flipping through one at a time, those children’s books, and I got quite caught up with all the memories. It was great, really, to see them all again, with different eyes, in a different perspective. So, I thought it’d be a nice feature to have them up here, one at a time, every now and then, say, two weeks, maybe three. An irregular feature, let’s say, just to talk about what it used to be, what it still is now, and all that stuff.

I’m not sure if it’ll make a nice feature, but we’ll have a shot at it, won’t we?

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[This is from the actual page that I've put up, and I'll be regularly updating that page with the list of featured books.]

Thursday Photo: the curve

My block is green.

Yes, green.

For some reason they decided to spruce up my HDB block a little. Cleaning, refurbishing some concrete and painting. Hey, no complaints from me. We always needed a new coat of paint. But for some reason they decided to paint over the bricks, so all the pretty bricks that used to punctuate the flat yellow walls are now painted over rather unkindly.

And it’s green. A shade of green that I don’t really like. Kind of pale, like the sort of colour you get when you mix milk with some peppermint oil. And while it’s not my least favourite colour, they could have at minimum have spared the bricks.

Studies

I’ve been studying (yay!) but it’s not been getting into my head (not so yay). There’s a lot to deal with and I’m not so sure things will look any better closer to the end of the week, but hey, at least I’m managing something.

The bad feeling that you get before each exam or test period hasn’t quite sunk in yet, but I’m confident it will soon. A punctual fellow, that.

Chatty

I am enormously chatty these days for some reason. I can just talk and talk about this thing or that, jump from one topic to the other, with this person or that. If only I could have the same output volume with writing.

Hazardous

I was just thinking, a month before the release of the Decemberists’ The Hazards Of Love, that I ought to do something I’ve always thought I’d for this album or that. I’m going to take photos, one for each track, related by theme or lyrics or title (I suppose the last being the rare case). There are seventeen tracks that don’t look to welcome this, but I’ll see what I can do when I get the album.

Gaming Note

Recent break times have been invested in improving my PixelJunk Monsters proficiency and also a side dish of Noby Noby Boy.

And that’s all, I think. Sorry for the disjointedness of this post. Back to work.

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On drinks.

No, I don’t love ginseng. I love Orangina. And local or Hong Kong-styled milk tea. And my official drink is bandung.

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Tuesday Photo: brand new day

New Cat

Here’s my new cat.

He doesn’t yet have a name. At least not a fixed one.

We found him outside sleeping under a car. He was wearing a collar that seemed too tight for him and his fur was all up in tangles. The car went driving off and he didn’t move an inch, and it was then that we realised it would be dangerous for him outside.

He’s four years old.

We snipped off the knotted fur, removed the collar, and fed him. He seems happier now.

He mews very loudly.

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Tracklist

Sing, Sing, Sing

Here is a list of stuff that’s been hogging my Songbird lately:

• Radiohead: Mostly Hail To The Thief. for some reason, although I’ve also returned to In Rainbows and the live album I Might Be Wrong.
• Doctor Who OSTs: I started with a few favourites, like the theme song and All The Strange, Strange Creatures. I then took a liking for Doomsday. But most recently it’s been about the songs with lyrics, especially Love Don’t Roam performed by Neil Hannon and The Stowaway performed by Yamit Mamo. I’ve also grown to really like Voyage Of The Damned Suite. I think it all somehow reminds me of when I was in the school band.
• The Decemberists: In anticipation of The Hazards Of Love, I’ve been listening to excerpts from The Crane Wife and Picaresque. Colin Meloy’s live album has also been a regular feature. We’re about a month away, and I really can’t wai.
• You Only Live Once: The song by the Strokes. Rather frequently, too. For some reason, it gets me going in the mornings.
• And…: Well, the rest has mostly been mood-dependent, though it’s included Southern All-Stars, Muse, The Flaming Lips, Gil Shaham, Thelonious Monk and Lykke Li.

Week Ahead

The week ahead is my recess week, though I suppose that gives the impression that it’s meant for my annual holiday. Well, it’s not. It’s the time when I’m meant to be catching up on work and worrying about tests. Well, it’s less than ten days so I suppose it will all pass very quickly.

Any Better?

Not really. Still not sleeping. Still rather incredibly sad every now and then. But I think the dust is settling and it’s not like anything else has been messed up because of this anyway. I’ll be back, I think, or maybe I already am, albeit somewhat changed. But you know that old saying about things changing and nothing perishing.

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Thursday Photo: bright lights, big city

Wednesday Morning

Saving Mankind

Yesterday, I saw this:

‘In a crowded subway car, I hear a male voice, close to my ear. We’re on an express train somewhere between Grand Central and Union Square, and I worry that I have a situation on my hands. But he isn’t talking to me. He’s reading out loud from “Only You Can Save Mankind,” by Terry Pratchett. His head is a mass of dark, wayward curls, and a young woman leans into him, listening and idly tugging on his Harry Potter-esque scarf. She’s wearing purple leg warmers with oversized yellow buttons down the sides. Between her boots, laced tight with rainbow laces, is an orange bag stuffed with smaller white plastic bags—it looks like a creamsicle. A single, surprised “Oh!” escapes her chapped lips at something he’s read. They aren’t on the subway; they’re in the story, saving mankind. He holds her head against his chest with his gloved hand, and she turns the page for him.’

[via The Book Bench]

Writing Blind

I’m chipping away at a Biomaterials paper which is proving to be a little like eating a tough steak using plastic utensils. I also wrote a little of Bukit Merah. The thing that these two have in common is that I’ve been quite incapable of writing at length. I just do bits and pieces, take my mind off of it and do more bits and pieces.

Getting Better?

Not exactly feeling much better, but at least it’s settled into a form of consistency and I can function at some basic level right now. Been talking to a few people, and no matter how I’ve come across these few days, if you’re reading this (you ought to know who you are), I’ve had a good time talking to you guys.

Right, back to work.

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