Murder in Large Print

A whole murder mystery that you solve yourself, one puzzle at a time, in print big enough to read without squinting.

On Monday morning the director of the Alder Falls Public Library is found dead among the local history shelves. Seven people could have done it, and one of them is Mrs. Opal Winterbourne, the reference librarian, who insists on being counted. She does not guess. She looks things up, and for six days she has you do the same.

Every piece of evidence is a puzzle: a note read backward off a blotter, a diary in code, a shredded letter, a bus timetable, a maze through the basement stacks. Each answer goes into a notebook of thirty sentences. At puzzle 27 the notebook fills in a chart of the suspects, one name is left, and three more puzzles prove it.

Who it is for

Adults who like a cozy mystery and a puzzle book, and would like them to be the same book. It is written for people who have never met a cipher, and set in large print for people who are tired of puzzle books in small gray type. There is no gore and no bad language. It makes a kind present for a parent or grandparent who does the newspaper puzzles.

You need a pencil and either a printer or a tablet with a pen. You do not need the internet, a calculator or any outside knowledge.

The 30 puzzles

Seventeen kinds, and never the same kind twice running:

• Word searches with a hidden message (3). The letters you do not use spell a clue.
• Crosswords (3), small ones with plain clues. The shaded squares spell the answer.
• Codes and ciphers (8): shift ciphers, cryptograms, pigpen and book ciphers, each used twice, the second time a step harder.
• Code locks (2): work out the door code and the cash-box code from a few notes.
• Paper trails (3): check what a suspect says against a timetable, a booking sheet and a copier log.
• Shredded strips (2): put a cut-up letter and a torn receipt back together.
• Shelf order (2): shelve the books by call number and read the first letters.
• One each of mirror writing, spot the difference, a route on a map, a maze, and matching a broken pair of glasses to the right frame.
• The suspect board and the last word, which use your own notebook.

What makes it easy to use

• Large print throughout. The story is in 18 point type. Nothing you have to read is under 16 point, including the clues, the hints and the answers. The typeface was designed for readers with low vision. Word-search letters and crossword squares are big enough to write in.
• Every kind of puzzle is taught first. The first time a kind appears, a card on the page explains how it works, from nothing. The second time, a note says what is new.
• Everything for a puzzle is on one page. No flipping back to find a key or a list.
• Three hints for every puzzle, in their own section: where to start, a push, and one piece given away. None of them is the answer.
• A full answer page for every puzzle, one puzzle to a page so you cannot see the next one by accident: the solved puzzle, how to get there step by step, and what it tells you about the case.
• The story matters. Every answer is used. The notebook checks itself with a crossword before you name anyone, and a last page tells the whole of Sunday night and shows where the clues were all along.
• Checked by computer. A program solved every puzzle again from the same data the pages are printed from and made 1,649 separate checks: every word is in its grid once and only once, every code lock has one answer, every cipher decodes with the key printed, every crossword's numbers and clues match its grid, and the notebook leaves exactly one name.

Inside the book

• Start here, how the book works, and how to print it or use a tablet
• The library (two floor plans), the eight people with a photograph each and what every suspect says, and what is known on Monday morning
• Your notebook: thirty sentences with gaps
• Six parts, Monday to Friday: 30 case pages with a photograph and the story, and 30 puzzle pages
• Hints, answers, and how it happened
• 45 photographs made for the story, and every puzzle drawn in clean black line

Your files

• Murder in Large Print (PDF, 123 pages, color, US Letter). Bookmarks, a linked contents page, and a link from every puzzle to its hints and its answer.
• Print Pad (PDF, 34 pages). The 30 puzzle pages and the 3 notebook pages again, black on white with no photographs, one to a sheet, for printing at home. Four of the drawings keep their color.
• A ZIP with both PDFs and a short start-here note.

Good to know

• The PDFs are for printing or for writing on with a tablet's pen. They are not fillable forms.
• The pages are US Letter. On A4 paper, print with "fit to page."
• Spelling and wording are American.
• It is one story, so it is solved once. You can print clean puzzle pages as often as you like, for a second person or a second try.
• This is a PDF download. No physical book is shipped.