‘Exspecta Inexspectata’: The Rise of the Supernatural in Hybrid Detective Series for Young Readers

Abstract

Since its transference from an adult, professional environment to an amateur, child-centric one in the early twentieth century, British detective fiction for young readers has been a hybrid mode, attempting to blend detective elements with characteristics of other genres. The difficulty of achieving a balance between the genres employed, however, becomes apparent in the earliest hybrid form — the detective school story — which became popular in Alfred Harmsworth’s juvenile story papers in the early twentieth century.¹ While the shift to the school environment afforded juvenile detective characters a degree of investigative independence and, often, a prominent role within the series, the conventions of the school-story genre — such as schoolboy pranks, house rivalries and battles with acerbic schoolmasters — often clash with and overcome the detective elements of the narrative. This foray into the school environment paved the way for Enid Blyton’s popular school holiday-set series, which blends detective elements with holiday-adventure fiction. Although series such as The Five Find-Outers (1943–61) and The Secret Seven (1949–63) have strong detective ties, her longest running, best-known detective-based series The Famous Five (1942–63), is not always firmly situated within this genre: the characters’ interaction with and exploration of new environments often overwhelm the detective plot and obscure the protagonists’ detective role.