PLAYING DETECTIVE

About the Book

PLAYING DETECTIVE

A Self-Improvement Approach
to Becoming
a More Mindful
Thinker, Reader, and Writer
By Solving Mysteries

By Robert Eidelberg

The intentionally long subtitle to PLAYING DETECTIVE comes close to saying it all about this unique two-in-one book – but not quite. PLAYING DETECTIVE is both a book to read for the fun of it and a book to read for self-improvement if you are looking to become a better thinker, reader, and writer.

The for-the-fun-of-it part comes from reading and wondering about the mystery-solving approaches and skills of the contemporary and classic detectives showcased in these 17 remarkable mystery stories. The self-improvement part comes from the book’s four special interactive features: Suspicions?, How Clever?, DetectWrite, and Don’t Peek!

Multiple Suspicions? “intermissions” in the margins of each mystery are strategically placed to help you to think like a detective – and like a good reader. Their provocative questions prompt you, as you read, to note and track clues and to make predictions while immersed in the mystery.

How Clever? questions and activities, located immediately after each mystery’s conclusion, give practice in the skills of detection and reflection so vital to the self-improvement goal of becoming a more observant reader and more mindful thinker. How Clever? sections enable you to review the now-solved mystery, analyze the strengths and weaknesses of your own Suspicions? speculations, and evaluate just how capable both you and the story’s fictional sleuth were in arriving at a solution.

DetectWrite writing prompts following all the How Clever? sections of each mystery help you to establish your own voice as a more effective writer in a variety of writing forms while also giving you many opportunities to write like a detective story author.

At the very end of the book (but don’t jump to any conclusions!), the more than thirty pages of the Don’t Peek! section provide “one reader’s” commentary: mindful explanations and a “best reading” of the solutions (not necessarily “the answers”) to the 17 case studies in PLAYING DETECTIVE.

About the Author

A former journalist, Robert Eidelberg served for nineteen and a half years as the chair of the English department of William Cullen Bryant High School in New York City and a total of 32 years as a secondary school English teacher in the New York City public school system.

Upon “graduating” from Bryant High School, Mr. Eidelberg was an educational and editorial consultant and author for Amsco School Publications and a writing instructor at Audrey Cohen Metropolitan College of New York as well as at Queensborough Community College of the City University of New York.

For the past 16 years, Mr. Eidelberg has been a college adjunct supervising undergraduate and graduate student teachers in secondary English education for both the State University of New York at New Paltz and the City University of New York, where he has also specialized in teaching the culminating secondary English education practicum seminar at CUNY’s Hunter College campus.

As a working author with a fondness for fictional characters and somewhat lengthy subtitles for his books, Mr. Eidelberg recently published a careers book on what it takes to become and remain an effective secondary school teacher and not burn out – SO YOU THINK YOU MIGHT LIKE TO TEACH: 23 Fictional Teachers (for Real!) Model How to Become and Remain a Successful Teacher; he is also the author of the companion book to PLAYING DETECTIVE entitled GOOD THINKING: A Self-Improvement Approach to Getting Your Mind to Go from “Huh?” to “Hmm” to “Aha!”

Robert Eidelberg lives in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, with his life partner of 40 years and their 13-year-old part-hound, part-Doberman dog Marlowe.

Marlowe was named after the fictional American detective Philip Marlowe created by Raymond Chandler because when Marlowe was adopted as a nine-week-old rescue, his intensely observant and inquisitive nature almost demanded that he be called by some detective’s name – and Sherlock seemed just too obvious. Also, like his namesake, Marlowe, beneath his tough-guy exterior, is quietly contemplative and philosophical.