Can You Solve the Murder?
by Antony Johnston
ISBN-13: 9780143138884
Paperback: 304 pages
Publisher: Penguin Books
Released: July 1, 2025
Source: Advanced proof review copy from the publisher.
Book Description from Goodreads:
There’s been a murder at Elysium, a wellness retreat set in an English country manor. You arrive to find the body of a local businessman on the lawn – with a rose placed in his mouth. It appears he was stabbed with a gardening fork and fell to his death from the balcony above. But that balcony can only be accessed through a locked door, the key is missing, and everyone in Elysium is now a suspect…
Gather the evidence and examine the clues. Choose who to interview next, and who to accuse as your prime suspect. But remember that every decision you make has consequences – and some of them will prove fatal…
My Review:
Can You Solve the Murder? is an interactive mystery, where you decide who the Inspector interviews next. It's set in England, so 'you' are the Inspector. You work with a Sergeant and Constable on the scene and get reports back from forensics and such. You read a section that may include clues, then you go to another section based on the clues you have and the choices you make.
You write down clue codes, like A3, which help direct which sections you read next. Some clues can be found thorough several routes, but most can only be found by following one route. Some choices end the story early but most will get you to the end. It does matter who you interview first as clues picked up early allow you to ask better questions later. However, you don't get to follow up every lead before you (the Inspector) suddenly decides you know whodunit and gather the suspects to do a Big Reveal and make an arrest.
I was enjoying the story up until this abrupt end. While I knew who didn't do it and suspected whodunit, I didn't have proof. In fact, on a second try through focusing on whodunit, I still didn't have proof. I only succeeded because whodunit confessed in front of witnesses. You need one of two specific clue codes (out of about 52 clue codes) in order to get this outcome and otherwise end up not solving the murder due to lack of evidence even if you have the right whodunit. I found this frustrating as I expected detective fiction have definitive proof to find, not just suggestive evidence and clues.
The author had the detectives ask good questions and discuss some of the evidence to help the reader reason through the clues. There's a cipher to decode, and you get bonus points if you figure out the ciphers before forensics explains how to decode it. At the end, you count up points for various clues that you found and are rated as a detective based on this. I just barely rated Master Detective through the points even though I didn't successfully prove whodunit. There were no sex scenes and only a few uses of bad language. Overall, I'd highly recommend this fun interactive mystery. I'll certainly look forward to any similar mysteries by this author in the future.
If you've read this book, what do you think about it? I'd be honored if you wrote your own opinion of the book in the comments.
Posts
