Crime and Puzzlement: 24 Solve-Them-Yourself Mysteries

by Lawrence Treat

Book Overview

You are the detective with these 24 fiendishly clever picture mysteries.

Eli P. Harvard was found dead inside his ski lodge, a revolver in his hand and a bullet in his brain. He'd broken up with Sally the night before. Had despondency driven him to suicide? Or had the vengeful Sally done him in? The clues are in the picture; it's up to you to find out who killed Harvard and why. Here's how...

* Read the story
* Ponder the...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0879234059
• ISBN13: 9780879234058
• Release Date: October 2003
• Publisher: David R. Godine Publisher
• Length: 78 Pages
• Weight: 0.33 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 6.9" x 8.5"
• Age Range: 9 to 12 years
• Grade Range: Grades 4 to 7

Customer Reviews

LOVE THESE!

I just love these books. It's an easy read, but it makes you think and use your reasoning and observation skills.

Gamut Ordway's body, pierced by two bullets, was discovered in a New York hotel suite. Can you gues

Man, these books were my _favorites_ in middle school. Fifteen years later, the original still hasn't lost its sheen. Looking for mystery picture puzzles with charm and wit? Plunk your $8.95 here. Adults will like them as well as teenagers. Each puzzle greets the reader with a detailed mise-en-crime scene (or piece of evidence) and a few short but vivid expository paragraphs. Each of the subsequent yes-or-no questions prompts the armchair detective to examine a different aspect of the evidence closely, leading her down the path of deduction toward the proper conclusion ("Do you think Rubitsh had been fishing?" "Is there evidence of a fight?"). Not that these will always make the solution apparent, of course, but if you don't care for the hand-holding, you can, as the text suggests, dive right for the final question. Do, though, stick to working through the entire question list for the toughies; it points your eyes to the details which pack the pictures and might otherwise escape notice. (Bonus: the questions are a useful aid in teaching logic to younger readers - if the perp used an everyday object from the scene as a weapon, for example, was the crime likely premeditated or spontaneous?) Competently-constructed mystery puzzles litter the market, though; the style is why these books have stuck with me for fifteen years. Cabarga illustrates with homey detail but also deliberately co-opts the dramatic lighting and shading (and occasional fedoras) of '40's noir. (There's even the tiniest splash of Art Deco.) As a result, every focal point has stage presence and a little "Maltese Falcon" mystique. Treat's writing lays out exposition crisply and cleanly, but he also grabs you with wry humor dropped coolly and off-the-cuff, mixing the droll with the daffy ("As the clock struck five, ninety-year-old Mrs. Mirabel Fallwell dropped out of the window of her spacious twelfth-floor apartment. On the fourth stroke she struck." "Romano Rubitsh was undoubtedly the most hated man in Endicott County, and his life was often threatened, even by children."). As I can personally attest, even if you've already solved every puzzle, the prose and illustrations are a pleasure to revisit. Together, the artists create menace and atmosphere, painting in the corners and making these goofy little scenarios come to unique life in the space of an investigation. (About that menace - as several of the puzzles evince, Treat and Cabarga understand that intrigue and mystery can benefit from a *touch* of the macabre. The curtain from Mrs. Fallwell's apartment window flies ripped in the wind, still fluttering from her lapsed grip; a burlap hood shadows the mouth and eyes of a strangled bookworm while a smiling Santa doll perches on his chest; the childlike scrawl and misspellings in the "note from a desperado" convince us that, yes, something "terribel" will happen to Josephine if the villain is not stopped. Nothing's overtly gory, mind you, though much is