Shelby Woo and the Mystery Genre

The Mystery Files of Shelby Woo
Next to Kenan & Kel and Hey Arnold!, this was one of my favorite Nickelodeon shows when I was growing up. Irene Ng played Shelby, an intern at her local police station in Cocoa Beach, Florida. She lived with her grandfather Mike, played by Pat Morita (this show was so much better than The Next Karate Kid). Although her boss, a very cranky detective named Hineline, does not like that she gets involved in solving various crimes they come across (Shelby's is a desk job, not one in the field), some end up being very personal if that isn't how they started. As a result, even though I knew he was one of the good guys, I didn't like him that much as a character. Shelby's friends (Cindi, a photographer, and Noah, an aspiring actor who works with Cindi) would also get involved, as well as her retired San Francisco P.D. criminologist grandfather, providing valuable clues and insight.
My favorite episode was a mystery involving a stage play. Like one of my favorite episodes of Monk ("Mr. Monk Goes to the Theater"), the "here's what happened" reveal is put together onstage as Shelby, a voiceless extra, suddenly blurts out she knows who the culprit is and provides explication, interrupting and grinding the play to a halt in the process. This episode was used by Nickelodeon in its run of weird, psychedelic 3D attempts it was experimenting with at the time as a gimmick (Hey Arnold! had one too - the one where Helga considers using a love potion on Arnold - as well as a few other shows). The show kind of went downhill for me when Mike's past came back to haunt him and he took Shelby and moved them back to San Francisco. In my opinion, Cindi and Noah were irreplaceable and I wasn't all that interested in the new cast members. I would see them from time to time on that Nick game show Figure It Out as panelists, but the show itself was over.
There was also a series of novels produced, and I have three of them. I think the best one I've read is The Rock'n'Roll Robbery. It's a parody of a tribute to Elvis, right down to the rumor that the character in question had faked his own death. Like all the episodes set in Cocoa Beach, they are enjoyable reads and if you can check out either the episodes or the books, I suggest you do so.

Police procedurals are the new mystery classics of our time. The writing for them has to be spot-on and the characters engaging or relatable in order to keep folks watching. My current favorites are NCIS (though even that is beginning to wane), CSI, Psych, and Castle. Growing up reading mystery novels, the ones that drew me in the most not only had to have good stories (arguably) but also engaging lead detectives. IMO, Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes didn't do it for me. They were just a bit too condescending to me, not only to women but to their assistants as well. As for Monk, Monk was mean at times but you still cared about him overall (blame the writing staff, like Lee Goldberg). My favorite Agatha Christie novels featured Miss Marple or no lead detective at all (such as And Then There Were None). I even liked the episode of Dr. Who that was about Agatha Christie. There was one movie I remember seeing part of that featured the character Miss Marbles, a spoof called Death by Murder.
Other children's novels I read included Encyclopedia Brown, the Clue novelizations based on the game, the Boxcar Children, and possibly even Homer Price if you want to go that far back. Nancy Drew was okay too, I guess, since as a little girl I couldn't really relate to The Hardy Boys. I even enjoyed Murder, She Wrote a lot back then, even though most people my age didn't (but hey, I knew who Angela Lansbury was from Bedknobs and Broomsticks, and I knew she voiced Mrs. Potts from Beauty and the Beast).