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

‘Like any escape into fiction, it is a childish comfort, willfully ignoring the nuances and messiness of the world. But it’s a comfort we have sought for ages, across ages, and perhaps more now than ever before.’ Photograph: Maskot/Getty Images

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.”