Philo Gubb, Correspondence-School Detective

One of the first and funniest send-ups of the detective genre, this 1918 gem introduces Philo Gubb, a wallpaper hanger from Iowa who decides, through a correspondence school education, to become a master detective. He hangs out a shingle advertising his two professions, detective and paper-hanger, and stumbles into cases with the confidence of Sherlock Holmes and the competence of a man who learned his trade through mail-order courses. His roommate, Mr. Critz, an aspiring con artist who schemes with gold-bricks and small swindles, provides the perfect counterweight to Gubb's earnest fumbling. The comedy crackles from the collision between Gubb's unshakeable self-regard and his spectacular incompetence, between his mail-order methods and the real crimes he stumbles into. Butler understood something essential: the detective genre was ripe for affectionately getting the stuffing knocked out of it. The book endures because it's not mean-spirited satire but warm, generous humor that delights in its hero's absurd determination. It captures something universal about self-improvement, about the gap between ambition and ability, and about the peculiar American faith that you can become anything through correspondence school.