His parents, professors at the local college, have allowed him the use of the room over the garage, which he has converted into a crime lab, calling it his "inner sanctum."
Together they form the Benton and Carson International Detective Agency, for which they actually have elegant business cards.
Jimmy is the opposite of Brains in many ways--average height and build, he has a paper route for the local newspaper, the Crestwood Daily Ledger.
Jimmy adds a dimension of down-to-earth common sense to many of Brains' ideas and theories as they work on various cases.
[1] Charles Spain Verral's characters have inspired a generation of twenty-first century authors who endeavor to continue the Brains Benton series.
By Charles E. Morgan III: By Fred Rexroad By Scott Lockwood: The last two of these are set later in time, when Brains and Jimmy are adults.
Brains has taken a position with SwifTech Labs (headed by non-other than Tom Swift Jr.) and has a girlfriend who is an investigative reporter.