As a puzzler and murder mystery lover, I was delighted to unwrap The Whodunnit Puzzle Book at Christmas. Especially so as I’d also received the gift of Covid, so was grateful for a fun diversion to while away the hours in my sick bed!
The book (by Gareth Moore and Laura Jane Ayres) encourages us to summon our inner Miss Marple. And with its quaint village setting and Marple-esque detective, the Agatha Christie influence is very much in evidence.
Our protagonist, Mrs Whitstable, is an amateur detective residing in the village of Bishop’s End, and much like Marple’s St Mary Mead, ‘there is a disproportionate amount of disquiet and deception in this quaint little village’. Mrs Whitstable recounts for us some of her most intriguing cases, whilst providing pieces of evidence and her notes so that we can take a stab at solving the cases.
There are 10 crimes which Mrs Whitstable happens to find herself embroiled in. Each scenario includes a variety of puzzles which, if solved correctly, unmask the culprit. A few further questions are posed after the case is solved to really put your memory skills to the test.
Start solving
We start with the story ‘Ticket to Die’, recounting the murder of a geography teacher at a local train station. Mrs Whitstable arrives not long after the murder has occurred, travelling home from a trip into town to buy a new cheese grater. The eight puzzles accompanying this story include anagrams written on lost-luggage ticket labels, one of which reveals the murder weapon, and a logic exercise to work out which platform the killer left from, the departure time, and the destination of the train.
Then follows the denouement, in which Mrs Whitstable explains the motive for the murder and we discover that alas, in all the excitement, she has lost her newly purchased cheese grater!
The crimes aren’t solely limited to murder though, there is also theft and forgery to investigate, and in perhaps the ultimate quaint village scenario, match-fixing in a lawn bowls league.
There’s a good variety of puzzle-types throughout the 10 stories, including logic, word, number and visual challenges. Hanji fans will enjoy the puzzle in The Writing in the Wall, and those looking to crack our Tree Dimensional teasers can get some practice on page 171, with a similar puzzle where we’re asked to find prize pumpkins buried in a compost pile.
From a simple dot-to-dot to trickier logic teasers, The Whodunnit Puzzle Book has something for puzzlers of all abilities. Plus the quaint village settings and character names — Mrs Cricket and Dr Missingtoe to name a couple — along with classic mystery tropes like a secret door in a bookshelf, will amuse fans of ‘cosy’ mysteries.
Once you’ve finished solving all 10 crimes, there’s a Detective Skills chapter with extra questions relating to each case. Can you remember, for example, the object that Mrs Whitstable had travelled to buy in Ticket to Die?
An open-and-shut case?
In her introduction, Mrs Whitstable recommends working through the book in order, from front to back. But personally, by the time I’d read and solved all 10 mysteries and made it to the final Detective Skills section, I struggled to remember smaller details about the earlier cases. So, depending on how good your memory is, or perhaps the length of time over which you read the book, you may want to visit the Detective Skills questions sooner after you’ve solved a case.
Those who enjoy only the most fiendish of puzzles might not find The Whodunnit Puzzle Book enough of a challenge. However, I very much enjoyed the pairing of fun and varied puzzles with ‘cosy’ mystery scenarios and would happily spend more time solving crimes as Mrs Whitstable’s trusty sidekick.
The Whodunnit Puzzle Book is available now from Michael O’Mara Books, £9.99
by Gareth Moore and Laura Jayne Ayres
