I’ve noticed a lot of interactive mysteries that you can solve yourself, so I thought I’d tell you about them. Please note that I am not talking about mystery puzzle books, such as Murder either murder. They’re fun, but they’re logic puzzles with a touch of mystery. The following are variations of mysteries in which you play as a detective.
Let’s start with a classic: Who killed Harlowe Thrombey? by Edward Packard was recently reissued. Originally published in 1981, it was the ninth book in the popular choose your own adventure children’s series.
It’s a classic style mystery. A rich man has died and as you investigate, you can interrogate various suspects, review the crime scene, and interact with a bumbling police detective. There are only 14 endings, but they’re well structured, twisting around and sending you through various activities as you find out who did it, with the help of a female detective.
The solution to the mystery is the same in each case, so once you’ve solved it (or been told it’s solved) you’ll know what happened, but different paths reveal different details.
Murder on Christmas: you solve the crime by GB Rubin has a similar idea, but for adults. (Note: The author, like Gareth Rubin, wrote the most recent Sherlock Holmes novel authorized by Doyle-estate, Holmes and Moriarty.) You are a pathologist in 1932 London and choose whether to help a friend of a friend in what turns out to be a murder or go to a party at a country house where poisoned letters have been causing problems. So there are two complete cases in the volume.
Each scene takes up several pages, so you navigate by sections rather than pages. And if you do things wrong, you often end up dead… but they tell you to “go back to the beginning and start again.” The period setting and atmosphere, combined with the holiday, create the perfect feel for fans of classic cozy things, even if some of the deadly endings seemed a little whimsical.
Murder in Tinseltown: A Choose Your Own Story Mystery by Max Nightingale is similar. (It doesn’t appear to have been released in the United States, but you know, on the Internet.) Only this time, we’re in Hollywood in 1958 and a famous actress is found dead in her hotel suite. You are a police homicide detective on the scene.
An interesting change in this book is that when you have a bad ending, which happens often, whether you get murdered or your boss steals the case, the book returns you to the place where you made the previous decision, a big help for those of us who like to make sure we’ve read all the endings. For the rest, I didn’t care about this one as much as the others; He didn’t seem particularly attractive or authentic to his surroundings.
(I’ll pause here to mention that all of these books assume you’re a man. Which is strange given how many cozy mysteries women research and read.)
You Are the Detective: The Creeping Hand Murder by Maureen Johnson and Jay Cooper is very different. It’s more like a file. In 1934, a group of socialites (or people associated with them) received nasty notes accusing them of bad things, compiled from newspaper letters, and when they meet as ordered one night, one of them is stabbed.
Beginning with newspaper articles and a case file, the book continues with illustrated maps and photographs, evidence, and interviews with suspects. On the back is a sealed envelope with the solution attached. (I guess. I haven’t solved mine yet, so I haven’t opened it.) It’s all in white, black and red, and it feels very dissolute.
Can you solve the murder? It is the book that led me to this topic. It’s by Antony Johnston, who I know best as a graphic novel author (The fuse, atomic blonde), although he has also written prose mysteries that I have enjoyed (The Dog Sitter Detective series).
This volume is more like a real investigation. There has been a murder in an old ruined mansion that has been converted into a flower-themed spa. You decide where to look and who to question, and as you progress through the book you collect “clues” (letter-number pairs like A5, C2, etc.) that then affect the next step. I found the scenery and characterization convincing. The mystery here is solved through police procedural, not drama, and is my favorite of these gamebooks, as it was the most satisfying. There is already a sequel The forest of death.
Here’s the full set, with the UK (top row, larger size, French flaps, better presentation) and US (bottom row, duller cover) editions of Can you solve the murder?.
