Book Review: Can You Solve the Murder? by Antony Johnston

Do you remember reading ‘Choose your Own Adventure’ books as a kid? Make the wrong decision and your story ends abruptly, but make the right decisions, and your story continues on so you can experience more twists and turns. Can You Solve the Murder? by Antony Johnston is an interactive crime novel for adults that replicates this feeling, but this time in the case of a detective trying to solve a murder mystery. Not just a novelist, Johnston is also a video game writer, and his love of puzzles is on full display here. Are you the type of reader who flips back and forth through their mystery novels to arrive at a theory of whodunit, or are you content to just read your way through and discover the culprit as the author reveals it? Depending on which category you fall into will determine whether you will enjoy this book.

Plot Summary

The reader is the ungendered and unremarkable detective in charge of discovering who murdered Harry, a businessman at a countryside spa, his body being stabbed with a gardening fork and pushed off the balcony of one of the hotel’s suites. But like all light-hearted mysteries, the victim was a person who wronged many in his life, so motive for his murder is not in short supply. You are accompanied by a Sergeant McAdams, a fast-driving, hard-rock loving mother and wife who likes to bend the rules to get ahead in her cases; she’s also fairly new to this force, so as you work on the case together, you are also still deciding how competent she is at her job, and if you can trust her instincts as well as you trust your own. There are approximately 6 suspects, ranging from the massage therapist who rebuffs Harry’s sexual advances, to the owner of the spa who also happens to be in desperate financial straits. Harry’s widow is also a suspect, and she proves to be a surprising character when confronted by police as she tries to run away and even punches one of the spa staff members! A local MP is also a suspect when it’s discovered she has numerous ties to Harry’s past, but she’s even more annoyed that this case has interrupted her tennis lesson. Each scene ends with an instruction to write down a code (P6, C12, etc.) and then flip to a numbered section to continue on; sometimes this comes with a choice, sometimes it doesn’t. There are also three sections in which you return to numerous times as you decide which location to investigate further, or which interview you wish to conduct to gather more clues. If you’ve managed to make it through most of story without making a grievous mistake that removes you from the case, you’ll have a list of over 30 codes and reach a point that gives you the choice to accuse one of the six suspects.

My Thoughts

Placing the reader in the detective’s shoes could prove to be difficult in less skilled hands, but it’s clear Johnston has experience in ensuring the player feels like they are right in the game. There are very few distinguishing features in the internal dialogue of the detective, but just enough to feel like they have a bit of a personality, mainly when it comes to their (humorous) reactions to McAdams. Interestingly, when I was choosing which paths to take, it’s inferred that these choices are meant to not only solve the crime, but also mentor the Sergeant and Constable on your team, so I made my choices based on this mentorship role I felt I had as the leader of this crew. As I look back on the path I chose, I realize this in itself was a red herring; I wasn’t always making the best decision to solve the case, instead I wanted to give McAdams a chance to prove herself.

Despite my initial excitement when I received this for review, and the incessant banging on I do about how Jessica Fletcher is my hero and I wish I could be her, is the stark reality that I am actually terrible at puzzles. Escape rooms, cracking codes, all of that tends to sail right over my head. I’ve realized that instead I just like reading and experiencing mysteries, I don’t want to take any actual responsibility for them. So in this case when we’re offered the chance to crack some complicated codes, we’re given a general instruction of how to do it, but it would have involved me sitting down with a separate piece of paper (not just the one I was using to write down the code numbers given) and puzzling this out on my own, which likely would have taken me 20-30 minutes or more. I completely opted out of that (which doesn’t prevent you from completing the mystery, instead it hinders your ability to make the right guess). I just wanted to read and turn pages and occasionally write down a number, I didn’t want to puzzle anything out at my kitchen table. Now that my shame has been revealed, you can decide if you are the type of person who likes to do these things, in which case you should definitely pick up this book. The crime is interesting and in-depth enough to hold one’s attention, but it’s also an entertaining read with a believable solution. If this sounds like something you’d want to attempt, you’ll definitely want to have a go at this mystery. If you’d rather passively read a book like me, I’d stick to the regular whodunits.