Danny Dunn, Scientific Detective

Danny Dunn #14

by Jay Williams, Raymond Abrashkin, Paul Sagsoorian (Illustrator)

As a boy detective Danny Dunn has lots of competition but the young scientist performs creditably here. Amateur sleuths are unlikely to lose any sleep over the crime or its What could be a more obvious setup than an uncrackable safe? And who could be a more likely suspect than the store manager, Mr. Anguish, who asked Professor Bullfinch to design it? Yet the gadgetry Danny improvises would be the envy of any junior Sherlock; having learned the principle of Professor Bullfinch's watchdog safe (the owner's individual smell is its uncrackable combination) Danny builds his own radiometer from an old vacuum cleaner and is soon hot on the trail of the missing Mr. Anguish. With help from his pal Irene, occasional poetic encouragement from his non-scientist buddy Joe, and with fatherly, black Detective Ellison to keep their investigations in line, Danny keeps up a brisk pace. And young investigators will want to track down the pedigree of the Professor's chemical bloodhound. (Kirkus Review)

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Mystery, Childrens, Adventure, Young Adult, Juvenile

146 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1975

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

Jay Williams (May 31, 1914–July 12, 1978) was an American author born in Buffalo, New York, the son of Max and Lillian Jacobson. He cited the experience of growing up as the son of a vaudeville show producer as leading him to pursue his acting career as early as college. Between 1931 and 1934 he attended the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University where he took part in amateur theatrical productions.

Out of school and out of work during the end of the Depression, he worked as a comedian on the upstate New York Borscht Belt circuit. From 1936 until 1941, Jay Williams worked as a press agent for Dwight Deere Winman, Jed Harris and the Hollywood Theatre Alliance. And even though he played a feature role in the Cannes prize winning film, The Little Fugitive produced in 1953, he turned his attention to writing as a full time career after his discharge from the Army in 1945. He was the recipient of the Purple Heart. While serving in the Army he published his first book, The Stolen Oracle, in 1943.

Williams may be best-known for his young adult "Danny Dunn" science fiction/fantasy series which he co-authored with Raymond Abrashkin. Though Abrashkin died in 1960, he is listed as co-author of all 15 books of this series, which continued from 1956 until 1977. Jay Williams also wrote mysteries for young adults, such as The Stolen Oracle, The Counterfeit African, and The Roman Moon Mystery.

In all, he published at least 79 books including 11 picture books, 39 children's novels, 7 adult mysteries, 4 nonfiction books, 8 historical novels and a play.

Williams and his wife Barbara Girsdansky were married June 3, 1941. They had a son, Christopher ("Chris"), and a daughter, Victoria. Jay Williams died at age 64 from a heart attack while on a trip to London on July 12, 1978.

Reviews

[Joan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I just discovered I had a copy, so I grabbed this and read it since I'm pretty much out of easy reads at the moment. Danny and his 2 friends and the Professor are off to another mystery. Danny speculates that there isn't much difference between the ways a scientist and a police detective work which leads to the story. A guy asks the professor to make an unbreakable safe for the main department store downtown. Danny mentions odors and the prof runs with it and makes a safe that would only recognize 2 people's odors, the guy who ordered it and his subordinate in the store. Of course, the guy who ordered it disappears, as does the prof, but at different times and places. How is Danny to solve this one? After making a disastrous mistake, Danny gets back on track, more cautiously, and of course figures out whodunit. This is not one of the better stories although the basic scientific concept was interesting: identification through a specific odor unique to each individual. I have to admit these stories are somewhat outdated but I still think they served a valuable purpose in making science interesting to youngsters. I applaud the series doing that today and hope the series do very well! (Nick and Tesla, and others)

[Lynn · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book in the Danny Dunn series has a few new wrinkles to it. For one, there is a character who is black, a police detective, named Ellison (perhaps after Ralph Ellison). Also, Prof Bullfinch is suspected of being involved in a crime. Danny has to just the scientific skills of hypothesis, observation and testing to figure out who did what to whom.
Good lessons in scientific methodology here.

[Kent Archie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I started reading these books in early grade school and enjoyed them a lot.
I don't think I would have read this before as it was published when I was in high school and
I had moved to more Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein and company.
I liked this book and it felt like what I remember from my childhood.
It was a little different, bringing up the possibility that a missing person had been murdered.
It was fun to read and I think it holds up pretty well even though it was written in the early 1970s.
I'm planning to read (or re-read) the rest of the series over time.

[Lost Planet Airman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Somewhere, maybe a year ago, I discovered that I was disappointed that I had never finished reading the "Danny Dunn" series of books for young people (I am also disappointed that I never finished the Encyclopedia Brown series, nor Tom Swift, the Hardy Boys, and several others), so I set upon a quest to finish the series. Danny Dunn, Scientific Detective is the second-to-last published book. We have gone from the fantastic and imaginary (Danny Dunn and the Anti-Gravity Paint and a trip into space) to the real-world and realistic (Danny Dunn and the Automatic House where the kids must work their way out of a failed home-of-the-future), and several stops in between.
This book lies at the real-world end of the spectrum, and unfortunately it feels out-of-place. Midston used to be a small college town, but now has a city-like feel. The kids still seem very 1950 but set into a simplified 1970s world. The technology central to the plot never really developed, and has been end-run by biometrics and facial/retinal/fingerprint recognition and even the cultural underpinnings have been outstripped by modern crime dramas and police procedurals and antiterrorism concerns. Overall, the story does not translate well either as representative of its time or a slide into 2016.
I'd have to say my favorite Danny Dunn stories lie somewhere in between -- preteen problems like outwitting bullies and youthful adventure, with some science stirred in at the believable but just-over-the-horizon level.

Onward to the last in the series!

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the 14th of 15 Danny Dunn books I will be reading and it is the best so far. The story actually involves a crime that needs to be solved and I enjoyed it.

[Shawn · Rating 4 out of 5]

While not as revelatory in its digressions as Danny Dunn, Invisible Boy, this penultimate installment in the long-lived series has a lot going for it. Jay Williams is now thoroughly comfortable with the general characters and set-ups (and has slightly aged the cast enough) that he can ring different changes on the basic themes - this is another low-level, real world plot for the series, more in line with, say, SWAMP MONSTER than SMALLIFYING MACHINE. The areas of concern are biochemistry, electronics and logic-as-applied-to-police work (how the scientific method is similar to and different than a detective's "ratiocination", essentially). Also, hearkening back to earlier books, there's emphasis on judging by appearances and jumping to conclusions.

Basically (after an introduction in which Danny & company use a radiometer to try to hunt a ghosts by looking for cold spots and instead meet a hulking detective named Mr. Ellison) the book has Prof. Bullfinch (here described as dressing a bit "shabby") hired by Mr. Anguish, the manager of Midston's downtown department store Frognall & Pounder’s (aka "The Frog Pond"), to invent an uncrackable safe. Bullfinch, with inspiration from Danny, comes up with a lock that will only open for the specific scent of a person's skin. But, almost immediately after being installed, the safe is burgled and Mr. Anguish is kidnapped. The police think that Prof. Bullfinch, who is also missing, may be the culprit, and so Danny sets out to prove his mentor innocent....

Interesting bits: Irene is now noted as wanting to be a Physicist again, and has begun dressing a bit more feminine. Much like INVISIBLE BOY, there is a long time gap between the inspiration and execution of the technology, so Williams continues to stress the real-world aspects of science and invention. There are a number of good scenes where the kids interact with adults - Mr. Ellison gives them a sharp talking to about involving themselves in police affairs, they interview various people, and are even threatened with being shot to death at the climax, after a rousing chase through a supermarket. In fact, Ellison even has to tactfully ask the kids if the scent-lock would work on a "cold hand", which shocks Irene a bit when she figures out his implication. Time has marched on, as hippies are mentioned, and Irene has this run in with a suspiciously dressed ragged teenager who turns out to be benign:


“I’m studying the psychology of merchandising,” he went on. “That is, what makes people flock into big stores, what makes them buy things, and all that jazz. I had to get permission from Anguish to hang around and observe, so they wouldn’t think I was a shoplifter or something. You dig?”

“I dig,” said Irene, in a very small voice.


Professor Bullfinch's missing status, btw, had to do with a hush-hush top secret meeting with Dr. Grimes and other scientists in Washington, DC, of which he can say no more. My theory that Midston is in the locale of Germantown/Boyds, Maryland could be undone by Bullfinch's need to fly to D.C.

I'd be remiss in noting, even if it has to be in spoilers, that the Danny Dunny series has come a long way from ice-cream sodas and homework machines when it has a climax in which Danny, Joe & Irene are threatened at gun point by a man in drag!

We'll leave the last word to Euclid Bullfinch:

“Come, come,” said the Professor. “Don’t you know that the more you try to hide something these days, the more people try to find it? The best way to keep something secret is to say it out loud, then nobody will believe you.”

[martha]

[2005 review.] I used to love these books as a kid, so I grabbed one at the Boston Public Library booksale the other day. The whole series is kind of pulpy kids' scifi -- I'm pretty sure the other ones (with, like, time machines and homework machines) were better, 'cause this one was just lame.