PLAYING DETECTIVE
A Self-Improvement Approach to Becoming a More Mindful Thinker,
by
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PLAYING DETECTIVE A Self-Improvement Approach to Becoming a More Mindful Thinker, Reader, and Writer Through Solving Mysteries By Robert Eidelberg PLAYING DETECTIVE is a two-in-one book and more than an “elementary” experience. The two dozen classic and contemporary (as well as complete and unabridged) detective stories to be found in PLAYING DETECTIVE can certainly be read as “play” – just “for the fun of it.” But these nineteen short stories and five plays can also be experienced as another kind of “play”: play-acting the role of the practicing detective as he or she uses evidence and brain power to solve the puzzle of a mystery. It is in the “playing detective” way of this book’s playful title that PLAYING DETECTIVE becomes a self-improvement approach for anyone interested in becoming, overall, a more mindful thinker, reader, and writer. More specifically, what makes it possible for the reader to achieve the self-improvement goals of the book’s more straight-forward subtitle are PLAYING DETECTIVE’s four unique interactive features: Suspicions?, How Clever?, DetectWrite, and Don’t Peek! More about how this special interactive approach works -- both within and after each story -- in just a bit. But first, it’s important to note that the twenty-four detective stories contained in PLAYING DETECTIVE are, in number, seventeen regular-length short stories, two long short stories, one even longer-than-long short story (a novella, actually), one full-length play, and three one-act plays. Making up close to 500 pages of clue-packed wonderment, the remarkable mysteries in PLAYING DETECTIVE are purposefully grouped into six types of “whodunit” solvers; they are, in the order of their appearance in the book: amateur or off-duty detectives, professional private eyes, crime-solvers seeking the key to a locked room mystery, police procedural inspectors, four celebrated sleuths of American and British fiction, and, lastly, mysteries with no other detective than “you, Sherlock,” the story’s reader. If you are the kind of person who is interested in mystery stories both for the fun of it and for self-improvement, you are the very reader PLAYING DETECTIVE has in mind. As that reader, you can expect to be asked, literally time and time again, to use your powers of observation and reasoning to discover what may have been evident all along. In other words, you will be given ongoing and repeated practice in detecting and reflecting, in noticing and thinking, in seeing and realizing. In order for you to progress toward your self-improvement goals of becoming a more observant reader and a more mindful thinker, during your reading of the twenty-four detective stories in PLAYING DETECTIVE, you will be provided with “Suspicions?” breaks -- strategically placed questions in the margins of each story to help you to think both like a detective and like a good reader. “How Clever?” questions and activities, located immediately after each mystery’s conclusion, will 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,” which follows all “How Clever?” sections, will provide you with “prompts” and other structured writing aids to get you thinking and writing even more mindfully -- and, if you choose, to get you writing “the way” the best authors of detective stories write. Finally, in the last fifty pages of PLAYING DETECTIVE, Don’t Peek! will share one consulting detective’s “possible” and “probable” explanations to all the “How Clever?” challenges – but only after you, in your progress toward self-improvement, have “played detective” by thinking through a particular mystery in your own mind and rightly resisting the temptation to jump to conclusions. In order for you, the for fun and for self-improvement reader, to have a preview of the quality of the two dozen detective stories contained in PLAYING DETECTIVE, the complete CONTENTS pages follow. If you are, at the moment, suspicious (a thinking thing to be) as to why you won’t be sampling a page of the book showing any of its interactive features such as Suspicions?, well, you’ve probably figured it out that that kind of clue removed from the context of its story would be too much of a give-away and potentially spoil some of the fun. And you, Sherlock, would be right -- and that’s no red herring.
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About the Book
The intentionally long subtitle to Detectives comes close to saying it all about this unique two-in-one book – but not quite. Detectives 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 reader, thinker, and writer.
The for-the-fun-of-it part comes from reading and wondering about the mystery-solving skills of the contemporary and classic detectives showcased in these 24 remarkable mystery stories and plays. The self-improvement part comes from the book’s four special 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 to note and track clues and to make predictions while you are 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 giving you opportunities to even write like a detective story author.
At the very end of the book (but don’t jump to any conclusions!), the almost 50 pages of the Don’t Peek! section provide “one reader’s” explanations of the solutions to the 24 mystery stories and plays.
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 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 and at Queensborough Community College of the City University of New York. For the past 15 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 also regularly teaches the culminating secondary English education practicum seminar at CUNY’s Hunter College campus. Mr. Eidelberg is currently completing a book on what it takes to be a successful teacher; like Detectives, it makes use of the lives of some twenty-odd fictional characters in the service of a long subtitle -- So You Think You Might Like to Teach: 23 Fictional Teachers (for Real!) Model How to Become and Remain a Successful Teacher. Mr. Eidelberg lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his life partner of 40 years and their part Doberman, part hound dog Marlowe, named after the fictional American detective Philip Marlowe created by Raymond Chandler because when he was adopted as a nine-week-old rescue, his intensely observant and inquisitive nature demanded that he be called 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.