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Growing up during the Cold War years, I just missed the “duck-and-cover” exercises in the classrooms, but hit the peak of spies, secret agents and private eyes on TV.
That, coupled with my Twilight Zone-fueled aversion to dolls, meant that when my dad built me a fine playhouse in the back yard and my mom furnished it with miniature kitchen appliances, my girlfriends and I stacked the tin fridge with Trixie Belden and Alfred Hitchcock & the Three Investigators books, stuffed the toy oven with “case file” folders and waited for clients to call on the black plastic phone. Oh, and by saving enough Dum•Dums sucker wrappers, we were able to order – practically free – a box of pencils engraved with “Secret Agents Inc.” Game on.
We would gladly have solved any neighborhood mysteries, but as I recall we usually solved mysteries of our own creation, with most cases punctuated by breaks for Mom’s fresh chocolate-chip cookies. Decent pay for decent work, I’d say.
Back then, all a mystery book needed to entertain me was a rich kid who could have horses and cool stuff, a normal kid who couldn’t have horses (like me) and a reasonably plausible plot line that gave enough clues for me to solve the mystery. Either those things or Illya Kuryakin (one of the men from U.N.C.L.E.) and I was happy.
My tastes, of course, have grown a little more sophisticated. I traded dreams of an intelligent Russian-accented, blond spy for a real-life, intelligent, dark-haired journalist. I now want my mysteries to have characters with substance and complex, full lives and the stories to provide a lot more than just a few clues to solve the case. (That dark-haired journalist, by the way, prefers hard-boiled noir novels, in which I suspect he encounters a few good-looking blondes, with and without accents.)
Fittingly for an issue that brackets Halloween, we’ve filled these pages with mysteries.
Both the husband and I would love the work of the mystery writers in Julie Buckles’ story “A Lovely Place for Murder.” These top-notch writers have spread mayhem across all shores of the Big Lake and written Lake Superior as its own character into their novels.
The hills of the Penokees in Wisconsin might be something of a mystery to most Lake residents and visitors; the beautiful wild area is little traveled. Photographer Joel Austin introduces us in words and photos to this spot in “A Visit to the Penokees.”
Guests at Sir Benedict’s in Duluth are well familiar with its liquid spirits, but they may not realize that some other kinds of spirits linger downstairs, occasionally making their presence known to the pub’s owners and employees. We chat with one owner and learn about investigations there by two sets of ghost hunters.
In our Recipe Box, Juli Kellner solves the mystery of what to do with more apples than you can shake a tree branch at when she turns her friend’s harvest of “Ample Apples” into the stars of some great apple butter recipes.
Our Travel & Events pages open with an interview of a man who’s devoted his career to solving underwater mysteries.
James Delgado, the keynote speaker at this year’s Gales of November program, has gone diving on some of the best known wrecks around the world, including the Titanic. We also reveal loads of haunting opportunities with listings of Halloween festivals and events, plus a peek at when zombies will take over the William A. Irvin.
Finally, the short life of Douglass Houghton is likely a mystery to most readers, and author Steve Lehto, who did a biography of the famous geographer and statesman, gives us a glimpse into both the man, his work and his untimely end in the waters of Lake Superior by Michigan’s Upper Peninsula in “The Amazing Young Mr. Houghton.”
That’s plenty of mystery to float you through this fall season … leaving just two mysteries to solve: Where did I put those leftover Secret Agents Inc. pencils … and where are my car keys?