My kids love detective stories – and, as I read with them, I can see why | Sophie Brickman

I look forward to our nightly literary escapades. In a day-to-day in which so many things are a mystery, it's comforting to immerse myself in a world in which problems have solutions

I've been living in an active crime scene for the last two weeks. So you can imagine my relief when the investigator finally cracked the case.

The ice pop must have come from the camp freezer, and not the counselor's lunchbox," the hardboiled PI pronounced, brandishing a piece of construction paper with a complex series of diagrams on it, one of which was labeled salami". At first I thought he could have kept it cold with an ice pack, or a cold water bottle, or even cold grapes! But putting it all together, and retracing his steps, that is obviously the only solution."

Sophie Brickman is a contributor to the New Yorker, the New York Times and other publications, and the author of Baby, Unplugged: One Mother's Search for Balance, Reason, and Sanity in the Digital Age