Gordon Meyer

Book Review: Can You Solve the Murder?

I haven't had this much fun reading a book in a long time. Admittedly, part of the reason is that I rarely read fiction, but much of the credit goes to the author, Antony Johnston. Throughout my experience with the book, I often silently saluted him for the work's cleverness and construction.

Yes, I actually just said that reading this book was an experience. That's because it is a self-proclaimed "Interactive Crime Novel." And it definitely lives up to that promise. The book falls into the Choose Your Own Adventure genre, but it takes this simple idea into the stratosphere.

I haven't read a Choose Your Own Adventure-style book since 2021, and maybe I'm unfamiliar with how the style has evolved, but as far as I'm concerned, this book is very innovative. It incorporates puzzles, codes, loops, and variable branches to take the reader on an impressively interwoven path through the story. The shtick of stories of this ilk is that your decisions influence the outcome, but in other books, the decisions are typically simple choices. In this book, Johnston has crafted the story so that subtle character traits, implied by the overt decisions you make, shape the outcome. This isn't apparent until you begin to reach the conclusion, but when I started to see these factors interweaving, I put down the book and cackled at the accomplishment.

Some tips that will help you solve the murder:

• Take notes. Seriously. Writing details down will be rewarding.
• In your notebook, group the clues by letter. That is, put all the C's together. You'll thank me as you progress.
• SPOILER-ish: I didn't crack the fiendishly simple encoded messages, but I tried. (My wife did it for me.) The iOS app Sub Cipher will be useful if you don't have help.
• Overall, this is a book you should not just read, but consume. Write in it, dog ear the pages, etc. If you want to actually solve the murder, get your hands dirty. I found it particularly useful to check off each section and decision.

I ended up reading the book twice. The first time, it took about 90 minutes before my decisions resulted in an early ending. The next time, I spent about six hours with a more methodical approach. (This does not count the time my wife spent helping me.) The passage mark-up I had performed the first time through helped tremendously in making different choices and, ultimately, in appreciating the clever construction of the story and its devices.

I discovered and bought my copy at Barnes & Noble, but of course, the Amazon has it too.

P.S.: For more about interactive fiction, don't miss Stephen Boyle's collection of fascinating analyses of COYA books.