The Guidebook Murders

Forty short murder mysteries that you solve yourself, with a pencil and a grid. You are given a few suspects and a list of clues, and you work out exactly who was where, with what, and when. One fact about the crime then names the murderer, and you can prove it.

It is 1934. Miss Verity Sloane inspects hotels for the Lantern Guide, and on her longest tour, forty stops from a Connecticut tea room to an Alaska steamer, people keep dying in them. Along the way she collects twelve letters about a death at the Guide's own dinner table. They are the clues to the last case.

Who it is for

Adults who like a mystery and a puzzle, including anyone who has never solved a logic grid. There is no arithmetic, no trivia and no guessing. It is cozy in the Agatha Christie sense: no gore, and safe to give as a present.

What you will be able to do

• Read a logic-grid clue and know at once what to mark.
• Chain one deduction into the next until one answer is left.
• Handle timetables, floor plans and five suspects at once.
• Catch a liar by logic alone.

Inside the book

• Two lessons and a worked first case. The grid, the two marks and the three habits of every solver, then Case 0 solved with you one mark at a time, with the grid shown at every step.
• Forty cases in four parts that get harder steadily. Three suspects at first, then four, then five. Each part opens with a page that teaches its new kinds of clue with small worked examples: either/or, earlier and later, rooms joined by a door, two people at once, and finally one suspect who lies.
• A case file for every case. An illustrated scene, the story, and a portrait and a short note for each of 169 suspects.
• A full-page working page for every case, with a large grid, the clues beside it and room for notes. Black lines on white.
• Three hints for every case, from where to start to one sure fact, printed well away from the answers. No hint names the murderer.
• The full reasoning for every case, one case to a page: every move in order with its reason, the complete answer, and what really happened.
• A last case that ties the book together, solved with twelve clues you collect from earlier solution pages.

Every puzzle was checked by a computer program: each has exactly one answer, it is the answer printed, and it can be reached by deduction without guessing.

Your files

• The Guidebook Murders (PDF, 147 pages, color, US Letter landscape). Linked contents and page links from each case to its hints and its solution.
• Case Pad (PDF, 41 pages, black and white). Every working page again, one to a sheet, for cheap printing and second attempts.
• A ZIP with both PDFs and a short start-here note.

The PDFs are for printing at home or for marking up on a tablet with any PDF app that has a pen. They are not fillable forms. On A4 paper, print with "fit to page." No physical book is shipped.