(M.J.E. / Book Listings / Children's Fiction / Verral, Wyatt)
Charles Spain VERRAL, George WYATT
Possibly complete listing
Charles Spain Verral: U.S.A., 1904 - 1990 [a]
George Wyatt: U.S.A., ? - ? [a]
Brains Benton series[b]
1. The Case of the Missing Message (Verral) 1959 Illustrated by Hamilton Greene
2. The Case of the Counterfeit Coin (Wyatt) 1960 Illustrated by Hamilton Greene
3. The Case of the Stolen Dummy (Wyatt) 1961 Illustrated by Walter Dey
4. The Case of the Roving Rolls (Wyatt) 1961 Illustrated by Al Schmidt
5. The Case of the Waltzing Mouse (Wyatt) 1961 Illustrated by Al Schmidt
6. The Case of the Painted Dragon (Wyatt) 1961 Illustrated by Hamilton Greene
Further links
There is very little information on Charles Spain Verral or George Wyatt or
the Brains Benton books on the Internet. If you enter the authors' names or
"Brains Benton" in a search engine, you will very likely turn up a number of
book stores offering them for sale: a useful resource if you are looking for
copies to buy - but be prepared to pay reasonably high prices for them. If
you are looking for information about the stories themselves or their author,
or discussion about them, I have not yet seen any of these book-selling sites
that go into such matters.
http://www.locusmag.com/index/s1029.html#A17906 - Locus Index to
Science Fiction: the page is gone now; it disappeared before August, 2002, so
this is probably permanent; but it merely indicated the year of Verral's death
SF
Timeline 1990-2000 - mentions that Verral was an author and illustrator,
and indicates the year of his death aged 85 (about 5/6 of the way down the long
page)
Brains
Benton - brief discussion of the series and list of titles
Brains Benton Mysteries - a nostalgic memory of the series by the web page author, Dylan; front cover scans are given, and the blurbs on the back of the books are quoted; there is also a link to a Brains Benton mailing list on Yahoo! Groups
Brains Benton - very brief discussion of the books, and a list of titles
Brains Benton Children's Mystery Series by Charles Spain Verral or George Wyatt - this page doesn't discuss the stories much, but gives useful information about the various editions of the books that appeared
The Last of the Best: The Brains Benton Mysteries by Don Holbrook - interesting discussion of
the series, reprinted from the Summer 1986 issue of The Mystery & Adventure Series Review
[Note on this link: The link above is the current location of this page, as of Thursday, 13 February, 2003; but this page appears to have changed location quite often, and I have no way of knowing whether this will continue to happen. I suppose old locations for the page are not likely to be used again, but, just in case it moves again, and you wish to check, I will now list all locations I have known this page to exist at:
http://seriesbookcentral.tripod.com/benton.html - obsolete now, and the first location I saw the page at;
http://members.aol.com/Hardyboy02/benton.html - obsolete now;
http://users.arczip.com/fwdixon/seriesbookcentral/benton.html - the current location, linked above.
If, at a future time, you cannot find the page, I suggest you go to Google and enter the words "brains", "benton", and "holbrook" (with the quote marks themselves not being necessary). If the page currently exists, this should probably turn it up, wherever it is at that time.]
Notes
[a] Charles Spain Verral, George Wyatt: I have no information whatever
about either author, and even their nationality is only my surmise. I wouldn't
say these books were ever well-known, but there was a time in the 1960s
when they could be quite commonly seen in book-shops. Now they are long out
of print, and only rarely turn up in used book-shops.
I cannot in fact be totally sure the above listing is complete, but I
believe it is. At any rate, it appears certain there are no more Brains
Benton books than the six ones listed above, and I have never seen any other
books by either of these authors either, and neither have I ever come across
any references to other titles anywhere.
If anyone knows of any further titles by either of these authors, or of
any more material on the Internet about the ones listed above, I would
appreciate them contacting me.
[Back to top of listing]
[b] Brains Benton series: The books are numbered as shown above, so that
series order can be regarded as definitive. According to the third of the
sources linked above, Charles Spain Verral wrote virtually the entire series,
in spite of George Wyatt's name appearing on all the books but the first.
[Back to top of listing]
Introduction - Front page, which leads to Contents
Web Site of Michael Edwards - Contents
Site Map
Book Listings
Children's Fiction
Charles Spain Verral, George Wyatt (this page)
This page created on Sunday, 5 November, 2000;
last modified on Friday, 14 February, 2003.