“Looky here, Huck, I’ll tell you one thing that’s mighty curious. Up to the time we went out last night the family hadn’t heard about Jake Dunlap being murdered. Now the men that chased Hal Clayton and Bud Dixon away would spread the thing around in a half an hour, and every neighbor that heard it would shin out and fly around from one farm to t’other and try to be the first to tell the news. Land, they don’t have such a big thing as that to tell twice in thirty years! Huck, it’s mighty strange; I don’t understand it.”Tom Sawyer, detective (1896) is a sequel of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), books that he wrote to earn his younger readers’ esteem. In this book, full of humor and influenced by Conan Doyle’s novels, young Tom (like Sherlock Holmes) tries to solve a mysterious murder helped by Huckleberry, who parodies Watson.