About a boy who builds a computer I think he names alec and uses to solve crimes at school.
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3Hi, welcome to the site. This is a very terse description though. Please take a look at the prompts in this thread, and then edit your question to add any more details you can recall.– LogicDictatesCommented Dec 11, 2021 at 20:27
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3I'm really at a loss why people are voting to close this. I count six individual piece of information (children's book/80s/boy/builds computer/named Alec/solves crimes at school) that in combination are likely to lead to a unique identification– ValorumCommented Dec 12, 2021 at 13:29
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@Valorum "A boy builds his own computer " -- isn't this real-world science?– SpencerCommented Dec 12, 2021 at 15:06
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@Spencer - 'A boy who builds his own computer to solve crimes' could theoretically be non-science-fiction– ValorumCommented Dec 12, 2021 at 15:12
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1 Answer
Perhaps this might be one of the books in the "Microkid Mysteries" series?
In particular, I'm thinking of either the first book ("The Great Gradepoint Mystery" by Barbara Bartholomew) or the second book ("The Fox's Lair" by Ian McMahan).
From the Goodreads page for The Great Gradepoint Mystery:
When the grades of twelve-year-old Ricky and his friends inexplicably drop at the beginning of junior high, they suspect someone may be tampering with the school computer during a competition with a rival junior high.
Here are photos of the cover and the final page:
(Note the "Introducing Ricky and his computer sidekick ALEC" in the bottom-right-hand corner.)
From Google Books:
Now for the second book!
From the Google Books description for The Fox's Lair:
"With the help of ALEC, a personality brought into being by some freak accident in the circuits of giant computers, Ricky Foster clears his friend's father of charges of computer fraud."
The Google Books search results for
crime-solving-computer alec
contain an excerpt from the book's back blurb:
The Microkid Mystery Series Follow the adventures of Ricky Foster , the Microkid , and ALEC , his computer sidekick . Together these Computer Age detectives solve challenging mysteries in this ...
A 1984 copy of "Boys' Life" magazine includes brief descriptions of the above two books (link):
Goodreads also gives us the blurb for the third book, entitled "Lake Fear":
While investigating the source of a strange disease, Ricky and his computer friend ALEC uncover a case of computer fraud, chemical pollution, and the illegal production of explosives.
and the fourth ("The Lost Forest"):
ALEC, a disembodied personality inside the circuits of a giant computer system, helps Ricky Foster investigate his mother's mysterious disappearance in a forest wilderness.
NOTE: I made a major edit to this post in July 2022. I had relied heavily on the Goodreads page for the series when researching my original answer, and it turns out that page omitted the first book in the series.
