Author Donald J. Sobol described Brown as having read so much, "whenever he did cartwheels it sounded like a whole library full of bookshelves were falling over in his head". He was very methodical during his investigations, especially during the cases he worked for his father; he would always close his eyes when concentrating the hardest, then ask a single question that would help him crack the case.
Sobol relied on logical inconsistencies that required readers to pay very close attention. This dates some of his earlier books, which assumed the reader knew the rules of etiquette or other now-archaic knowledge. However, Sobol has continued to faithfully publish books in the series through 2010, and the years of inflation still haven't changed the boy detective's fee of 25 cents per case.
But what if Encyclopedia Brown were re-imagined from the ground up, a new creation of the digital information age? Would he be intended for children, adults, or somewhere in between? Would he even still be the "boy" detective?
