Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer Among The Indians is Twain’s first attempt to directly parody one of the nineteenth century’s most popular American genres – the Indian adventure story. The unfinished novel begins where every other sequel to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn begins – after the boys and Jim return to Missouri and Tom becomes restless.
Rather than amusing romps through popular contemporary genres, this unfinished Twain novel is an illustration of Tom’s bad habit of confusing genre fiction for reality and Huck’s generously indulging him to the point of no return. It’s also a kind of assualt on James Fenimore Cooper.
Tom Sawyer Detective, Mark Twain’s 1896 contribution to the incredibly popular detective genre, was published just two years after his spoof of the adventure story, 
Mark Twain, like most writers of any quality, had preoccupations. Mistaken identity, travel, Satan, ignorance, superstition, and childhood are all pretty obvious ones, but the most fun one is Twain’s almost obsessive preoccupation with what other writers were doing and why they should (or shouldn’t) have been doing it. Occasionally he wrote essays and articles to this effect (if you haven’t read “Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses,” please do so this instant), but he also spoofed writers all the time.
