A forgotten genre of fiction: 'Kid Noir'

While stuffy literary critics and essayists are busy coughing out cobwebs and brushing the dust off their leather-upholstered sportcoats, a crucial genre of fiction continues unnoticed. I'd like to refer to it as "Kid Noir" - volumes upon volumes of breezy, escapist fiction that generally center around a group of kid sleuths. Not only has it inspired countless movies and cartoons ("The Goonies", "Scooby Doo", among others), its serial format probably influenced genres that I know nothing about, ranging from The X-Files to Harry Potter. A couple of my favorites:

The Hardy Boys

One bizarre thing about the Hardy Boys was their penchant for devising and implementing the flying tackle as their strategm for just about anything. Need to catch an escaping villain? Catch him in a flying tackle. Need to unlock a safe filled with incriminating secrets? Give it a flying tackle. Works every time. Of course, some other critics have led to far more controversial conclusions.

The Hardy Boys also introduced a huge plot device by killing off Frank's girlfriend, Iola, in a car explosion. This automatically bestows us with the following knowledge: we now know where the 90210 writers got the idea of killing Dylan's dad, and we also know that the perpetrators of said crime would meet their grisly deaths at the receiving end of a brutal, merciless flying tackle. Also, the name "Iola" is rarely seen outside of The Hardy Boys and the "Mama's Family" series.

The Three Investigators

A couple of great things here: their "office" was a trailer buried deep within a junkyard, and they had a series of elaborate secret passageways to get inside. What kid didn't want something like that? Also: the similarities to Goonies are unmistakable - the overweight one even dresses like Chunk! (right)

Encyclopedia Brown

What hasn't already been said about this amazing series? I usually don't divulge much about my past crushes on fictional characters, but Sally Kimball could've kicked my butt any day.