The Clues Challenge

1 

 

Hey, you can hear me, right? Yeah, I know, it's weird, me calling out to you even though we can't see each other. But I know you're there, so listen to me. I need your help. I am supposed to research a book called Zarathustra no Tsubasa, but I have no idea what it is or what it exactly is I am supposed to research. I'm just not good with this thinking stuff. So I thought, perhaps I should get some advice from someone who's better at that. Yep, it's you I am talking about. So perhaps you could tell me what do do?

 

To help ⇒ Go to 2.

To not help ⇒ Go to 6.

 

2

 

Great, we're a team now, the two of us! Should we come up with a team name? No? Oh, okay, well, you might change your mind later on. Anyway, we're going to investigate this Zarathustra no Tsubasa or whatever it is called. But don't worry, I haven't come completely empty-handed. For example, did you know Zarahustra no Tsubasa is Japanese? It means The Zarathustra's Wings. What? You ask me whether I know Japanese? Well, to be honest, the English title The Zarathustra's Wings is just one I noticed on the cover of the book, as it has both a Japanese and English title. I also found out that the book was written in 1986 by Okajima Futari and that it is apparently a gamebook. What should we do first?

 

Look up the author of the book ⇒ Go to 3.

Look up what a game book is ⇒ Go to 4.

 

3

 

Oh, right, Okajima Futari. I've heard of him. Or to be exact: them. It was the pen name of Inoue Izumi and Tokuyama Junichi, who were active between 1981 and 1989. I think they also wrote Klein no Tsubo and Soshite Tobira ga Tozasareta. Apparently, this is the only gamebook they ever wrote, though Klein no Tsubo does begin with a man writing a gamebook, which is then going to be changed into a virtual reality game. Guess the theme of a gamebook must've remained interesting to them, as Klein no Tsubo was released almost ten years after The Zarathustra's Wings. But that's all we need to know about Okajima Futari for now, right? What next?

 

Add (W) to your inventory. 

Look up what a game book is ⇒ Go to 4.

Look up what The Zarathustra's Wings is about ⇒ Go to 5.

 

4

 

So I looked around on the internet, and I think a gamebook is a type of fiction where the reader participates in the story themselves by making choices, which changes the outcome of a story. They're also known as a Choose-Your-Own-Adventures.The choices you make as you progress in a story, for example by choosing to go either left or right in a maze, will lead to different narrative branches, all with varying outcomes. Some gamebooks also have more complex systems built-in, like an inventory mechanic or a story flag system which allows the game to check whether you have done certain segments already or not. Gamebooks were especially popular in Japan in the 1980s, ranging from both original gamebooks to gamebooks based on for example films like Laputa Castle in the Sky and Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind.  You even have gamebooks based on Famicom (NES) video games, like the ones based on Famicom Detective Club Part 1 and Part 2. So The Zarathustra's Wings is one of these books, huh? And there are of course (board) games like Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective which are design-wise very close to a gamebook.

 

Add (F) to your inventory. 

Look up the author of the book ⇒ Go to 3.

Look up what The Zarathustra's Wings is about ⇒ Go to 5.

5

 

Oh, that's funny. The Zarathustra's Wings is about this detective, he's not really bright, so he needs help when it comes to the mental stuff. So he starts taking advice from some person we can't see, telling him to do this or do that... sounds familiar? Yeah, he also talks to that person directly sometimes. Anyway, the detective is hired to investigate the murder on Kashima Eizaburou, the wealthy businessman who was found dead in his study three months ago. He had recently obtained a jewel called the Zarathustra's Wings and shown it off to some house guests, but the following morning, he was found murdered in his study, and the Zarathustra's Wings were missing! What's more, the study was locked, and the key found on the desk inside the study, so this means it was a locked room murder! This detective is hired by the son-in-law to find out who the murderer is and to find the missing Zarathustra's Wings. Sounds like an interesting adventure! Should we read it?

 

Inventory check.

Do you have (X) in your inventory?   ⇒ Go to 8.

If you want to read the book  ⇒ Go to 7.

6

 

The murderer suddenly appears behind you, plunging a knife into your back. If only... we had made a different choice, I might've been able to save you...  

 

BAD END.

 

7

 

Wow, that took a bit more time than we had expected, didn't it? For the most part, it does what you'd expect of a gamebook, allowing you to choose who to interview or where to go. By using a special story flag checklist, the book also makes sure to know what pieces of information you have obtained (or not), which will become important later on. A common problem with gamebooks also seen in The Zarathustra's Wings is of course that each section of a gamebook is fairly short, so it reads quite differently from a novel: a lot of the story feels quite shallow and too much to-the-point and all the characters kinda feel the same. But at least the book makes you feel like a detective. Kinda. The book is basically divided in two parts, the first part being more focused on the murder investigation, and the second part on the search for the missing jewel. In the first half, you will be interviewing the suspects, see what you can learn from them and explore the study where the murder happened and the other rooms of the house. While the murder took place in a locked study, the trick used to accomplish this is very, very basic and the tricky part of the gamebook is basically activating all the story flags necessary to "solve" the murder: you might have a very good idea of what happened, but if you happened to miss a section and not have activated Story Flag A for example, you might fail in the "accuse segment" anyway because you didn't discover all the evidence. Perhaps this would have felt more satisfying if the trick itself had been more complex, but because the trick is so simple it almost feel like nitpicking... And in general, the necessity of "activating story flags" (= proving you obtained certain pieces of information) is a style that works very well with Ellery Queen-esque "elimination" deduction styles (where you cross off suspects of a list), but not so much as with a locked room... The second part of the book is focused on learning the whereabouts of the Zarathustra's Wings and a certain coded message is a vital key to learning its location. The code itself is in hindsight pretty simple, but there aren't really good hints beforehand, and you can't advance in the book without breaking this code: you only learn which section to go next if you decipher the coded message. When The Zarathustra's Wings was originally released in 1986 (before Internet!), apparently a lot of people got stuck there so when the book was re-released as a pocket in 1990, they added a segment with sealed pages at the end, with a hint (basically the answer) to solve the code, out of fear of people getting stuck there again. But what did you think of this second part? I wasn't a big fan of it myself, because it was so focused on the code, and if you had missed certain story flags in the first half of the book, you'd be punished here severely.

 

Inventory check.

Do you have (F) and (W) in your inventory?   ⇒ Go to 9.

If not  ⇒ Go to 6.

 

8

 

It is impossible to have (X) in your inventory. You cheat! I didn't know I was working with a cheater! Forget it, I'm outta here!

BAD END.

 

9

 

Guess we're done now. We've looked into Okajima Futari's gamebook Zarathustra no Tsubasa or The Zarathustra's Wings. I guess it's more interesting as a concept, as there aren't that many mystery gamebooks, and certainly not by mystery novelists. But the mystery itself in the book isn't super exciting: if this had not been a gamebook, but a normal mystery novel, the locked room murder trick would be very disappointing and one could also argue that a locked room murder on its own doesn't work very well with the way the gamebook handles story flags, and that a pure whodunnit would've been better perhaps. The code too is a major part of the story that might not be really what people were looking for when they opened this book wanting to play a murder mystery gamebook. So Zarathustra no Tsubasa is only worth looking into if you are specifically interested in trying a murder mystery gamebook, as there simply aren't many, but don't expect a hidden gem here. Anyway, that's it for our team-up for now. Perhaps we'll meet again, but until then, stay safe and don't make any wrong life choices.

 

The End

Original Japanese title(s): 岡嶋二人『ツァラトゥストラの翼』

Game, Set, Murder

"“It’s a great huge game of chess that’s being played—all over the world—if this is the world at all, you know. Oh, what fun it is! How I wish I was one of them! I wouldn’t mind being a Pawn, if only I might join—though of course I should like to be a Queen, best.”"

"Through the Looking Glass -- And What Alice Found There"

Back in November, I wrote a short post on trying some mystery board games: while I play a lot of mystery video games, I had never really played board (tabletop) games of the mystery variety, but luckily the two games I tried then (Decktective and MicroMacro: Crime City) were both amusing, and the latter even ended up on my list of favorite mystery fiction of last year. I think most reader could've guessed I'd try out more of these games, and it didn't take long for me to do some more exploration into this medium.

I have a feeling the best-known mystery board game besides Cluedo (Clue) might be Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective, a game which was originally released in 1981 but has since seen several (revised) releases and is currently being sold as Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective: The Thames Murders and Other Cases (and there are several sequels). I had known about this game long before I even started looking into mystery board games, and I had even already played a form of this game: there is a video game adaptation, based on the cases in this board game, and I had played it in the past. So I was already somewhat familiar with the Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective: The Thames Murders and Other Cases before I actually started wtih the original board game last month. This game is perhaps best explained as a kind of gamebook (Choose Your Own Adventure), though it takes on a format that allows for both more, and less freedom than an usual Choose Your Own Adventure story. In the game, you take on the role of a Baker Street Irregular, and "compete" against Sherlock Holmes himself to see who will solve the case the most efficient (spoiler: you'll never, ever be able to beat Holmes in a fair way).

When you unpack the (fairly large!) box, you'll find it holds a map of London, the London Directory, a set of newspapers and ten case books, one for each of the cases ("campaigns") you can play alone or with up to about 8 people (though I think 1~4 players is probably the best). Each case is dated (allowing you access to the newspaper of that day, as well as any older back numbers that may be available) and opens with a short introduction to the case (written in the style of a Holmesian story), which briefly explains what the mystery is, the major characters involved and after that, you're on your own! In a "normal" Choose your Own Adventure, you'd usually now be presented with choices like "If you want to visit A, go to page 110" or "if you want to visit Lestrade at Scotland Yard, go to page 220". None of that here. Instead, the game offers you the London Directory, which is a booklet which lists the addresses of all characters, facilities, shops and much more. Every person or place you can visit has a specific address, and by looking up the address you want to visit in the case book, you'll find another story entry which will tell you what happens there. For example, the introduction tells you Mr. A. Victim was killed, so you look up A. Victim's addresss in the London Directory, find out it's 1EC (East Central), so then you look up "1EC" in the case book to read what happens at this address and what clues you might learn there. So unlike a conventional gamebook, which presents you a number of choices, Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective: The Thames Murders and Other Cases challenges you to figure out yourself which places you should, or perhaps more importantly could visit to find the clues necessary to solve the mystery, making it much more challenging. Some addresses are easily found, some not at all, and often, you'll just come up empty-handed at an address you were sure was going to be important. Once you think you have gathered enough clues, you go to the back of the book to find a few questions you have to answer, and finally compare notes with Sherlock Holmes himself, to see who needed fewer leads to solve the case (It's ALWAYS Holmes, so don't even bother to compete with him, he's a psychic).

The game can be played with one player or more, and while this game is reminscent of a gamebook, it definitely also works as a multiplayer game, because it can be pretty hard to figure out where to go next on your own and it helps to have more people thinking along. The cases start out easily enough, asking you to look up the address of a name mentioned in the introduction in the Directory and then looking up the addresses of any characters or locations that happen to be talked about at that location, but it quickly becomes much more challenging. That's where the map of London, the newspapers and the list of informants come in: sometimes you have to actually look at the map to figure out a certain address to visit (for example, something is mentioned about a neighbor and if you look at the map, you'll notice there's only one other house on that street) and the map is also important to determine whether people's alibis actually hold, by noting the times of their alibis and their distance to the crime scene. Newspapers are a treasure cove of information too: at first glance they just look like pieces of paper with "flavor" news articles and advertisements, but you'll soon realize they too are a valuable resource. Sometimes a person you are looking for happens to be mentioned in an advertisement, or you notice an article with some familiar names who happen to be member of some club or something like that. What's fun is that you not only have access to the newspaper of the day of the case, but also of back numbers, and sometimes you come across an article in an older newspaper (used in a previous case), which suddenly turns out to be relevant to a more recent case. The game thus offers a lot of ways to hint at which addresses you can visit, but the more vital ones are hidden in rather clever ways, making this a surprisingly challenging game, which can be great fun if you play it with multiple people as you can all check different sources and discuss what to do next ("Hey, didn't that guy over at B. Witness say something about a restaurant? What if we visit that restaurant...?"). Other times, you'll get to the list of questions at the end of the book, only to find out you missed a lot of the story because you didn't think of visiting location X or Y, or never managed to find the address. 

A major difference with a conventional gamebook however is that each case is presented in a completely non-linear format. You, as the player, can choose what places to visit in what order, which means "story developments" are not really possible, as the game never forces you visit one specific location before another.  Therefore, there are never moments where your actions as a player have direct influence on the story or where "something" happens to change the story. This is quite different from a normal gamebook, because that will always be able to present a story in a certain, chronological manner and thus introduce story developments. To those who do play video games, I think Her Story makes for a good comparison: in Her Story too you have the freedom to choose how to proceed in the story (finding clips) in a non-linear fashion, and it's up to you to piece all the clues in the clips together, but depending on the order chosen and whether you managed to think of specific keywords (addresses in Consulting Detective), you can figure out the mystery much sooner or later.

I have only played about three of the ten cases in Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective: The Thames Murders and Other Cases at this moment, but I can definitely recommend it! It's a game that really challenges you to write down every clue and carefully consider where you should go next, and the writing is pretty good too, invoking a Holmesian atmosphere (which is also aided by the newspapers and maps!). While each story entry tied to the addresses is pretty short, the characterization is surprisingly okay, especially for the recurring characters like informants whom you can visit in each case. In the end, I think it took me well 60-90 minutes for each of the cases I have completed already  The official site has a whole case you can try out for yourself (or with others) by the way, as well as the material necessary for remote play, so have a look if you're interested!

In the previous post about board games, I also asked for mystery board game recommendations, and a commentator mentioned having played, and enjoyed Suspects recently. At that time, Suspects wasn't released locally here yet, but to my surprise I saw it was released here last week, so I decided to pick that one up too. One of the things that piqued my interest was one name in particular: The game hails from France and was designed by Guillaume Montiage, but of the three cases inside the box, one was written by a Paul Halter. I don't actually know if it's the Paul Halter, but given that this is a French mystery, I'm going to guess...probably? In Suspects, all the players (1-6) take up the role of female detective Claire Harper, an adventerous traveler who was one of the first women to graduate from Oxford. Set in the 1920s, each case (probably taking about 60-90 minutes, also depending on number of players) has Claire take on a mysterious death in a world inspired by the works of Agatha Christie, which is by the way also visualized by the gorgeous artwork of this game. As a board game, I'd say that Suspects too is very much like a gamebook/Choose Your Own Adventure, even though it uses cards to present its story. A lot of cards!

Like Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective, each case begins with a short introduction explaining the basics of the mystery and the primary characters. Additional documents are also provided, like floorplans or family trees. And at the end of the introduction, the main questions are asked which you'll have to solve at the end of the game (culprit, motive etc.) From there, the game allows you pick your own route through the story of the game. Each action you can take within the game is tied to a card in the deck with a specific number: for example, the husband of the victim might be Card 1, and if you look at the floorplan, you'll find each room also has a corresponding card number, for example the Library being Card 34. To take a certain action, you simply take the corresponding card, flip it around and read the story section written on the back. Usually, a card will also point you towards other cards: on the first card with the husband, he might tell you about his alibi, but it might also mention follow-up cards you can read where they talk about their wife, or about the other suspects. The latter cards especially do help with fleshing out the characters. At times, you will also stumble upon physical evidence (cards) or other important information and the game actually uses nifty little tricks to actually incorporate the actual, physical cards into the mystery solving process, asking you to put cards together to make certain connections etc. It's a fun idea that helps strengthen the feel you are playing a physical board game. As you read more and more cards, you'll learn more of the story, slowing making connections between testimonies and physical clues and hopefully figure out whodunnit.

Suspects, at a glance, feels quite similar to Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective, as far as the free-form Choose Your Own Adventure style goes. Like in Consulting Detective, you are mostly free to choose what to investigate in what order, but instead of using a case book and a London Directory, everything is written on numbered cards, and you're only allowed to pick a card that has been referenced on a card you have already read. A difference would be that many cards in this game can only be read after reading certain preceding cards, allowing for some kind of  linear story developments). But where the two games do differ greatly is the objective: In Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective, you are challenged to follow the least number of leads in order to solve the case, thus asking you to read as little of the game. In Suspects, you will always read all of the cards available, after which you'll be allowed to open the sealed solution to see how well your deductions fared. However, Suspects does ask you to try to answer the main questions early. Once you have read about half of the cards in the case, you can make your first guess, and you get another turn at about 75% in, and one final time once all the cards have been read. You earn points for every correct answer you have at the end of the game, but you earn more points the earlier you made the correct guess. It's of course easier to make a correct guess at the end of the game, once you have all the information available, and the game does allow you to change your answers midway, but the better sleuths will still earn more points because they'll be able to make the correct guesses earlier, when there are fewer cards/information available. I do like that the game doesn't "punish" you for reading all the cards eventually, as opposed to Consuting Detective, where you are supposed to read as little as possible to "win". This point system leads to an interesting multiplayer experience with Suspects: you discuss with each other which card to read next and read the contents together, but you can choose whether to make the guesses together, or have everyone make their own guesses, adding a competitive element. If you play alone, the points are used for the simple multiple ending system (very short, one sentence epilogues that change depending on how many points you got).

At the moment, I have only played the first case of the game, and I have to admit it was a lot trickier than I had expected at first! It was an enjoyable session though, as neat things were done with the cards. The game also feels quite fair: the sealed solution doesn't just say "The killer was X!", but refers to all the relevant cards, allowing you to re-read the cards and see how the clues were laid out. And of course, I'm quite curious to see what the final case will bring, written by a Paul Halter of whom I am not completely sure whether he's Paul Halter. Perhaps that will become more clear once I've actually played it!

As mentioned before, I don't play board games in general, but I think that both Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective and Suspects are very enjoyable experiences that should appeal to fans of the mystery genre. These two in particular have a lot in common with gamebooks (and Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective in particular uses very prosey writing), so they also feel closer to a traditional mystery novel than say MicroMacro: Crime City, so perhaps these games are easier to ease into for fans who usually only read.These games do a great job at allowing the player to try and solve things on their own and making them work for it, while also being accessible enough to not require you to 4D chess your way towards the solution. Anyway, if you have played these games, or even better, have more suggestions for mystery board games, please leave a comment, because I'd love to try out even more in the future!

The Strange Message in the Parchment

Caveat lector

Oh man, that Lost Winner mentioned two weeks ago in the comments sounds amazing...

Last year, I discussed Murder Off Miami (1934), the first in the Crime Dossier series by Dennis Wheatley and J.G. Link. These Crime Dossiers were not ordinary mystery novels, but instead presented the reader with a folder containing all the relevant documents and physical pieces of evidence regarding a crime that "really" happened. The story was solely told through hand-written letters, typed telegrams, newspaper clippings etc., while further clues were also provided in the form of photographs, pieces of hair and broken matches, all included physically inside the folder (so seperately printed telegrams, matches kept in little pockets etc.) At the end of the book, the reader would find a sealed section, in which the true solution to the crime was revealed. While one could argue that this was more gimmick than truly a game-changer for mystery fiction, I have to say I did like "playing" the first Crime Dossier. It reminded me of Escape Room games, where a story is told minimalistically through objects with which the player/reader can interact and that coupled with a Challenge to the Reader, made Murder Off Miami a unique experience, even if the fundamental mystery plot was fairly simple.

As these Crime Dossiers can be relatively expensive even on the used market, I wasn't planning to go after them, but a while back, I came across the second and third volumes in this series at a local used book store for a neat price, so I picked them up. Who Killed Robert Prentice? was released in 1937, followed by The Malinsay Massacre in 1938. In terms of presentation, both booklets don't differ too much from Murder Off Miami. The first book presented a rather classic closed circle situation, with a murder on a yacht out on sea, but Who Killed Robert Prentice? has a rather mundane crime in return. The titular Robert Prentice is a succesful businessman, who never had much luck with women until he met and fell in love with Cicely, a single mother with one boy. After their marriage, Cicely tried to get Robert into high society, but that also gave him more confidence, and to Cicely's great shock, he fell in love with his beautiful new secretary Suzanne L'Estrange. Hoping it would just be a whim, Cicely agreed to close her eyes for the affair for a short while so Robert could get it out of his system, but he was murdered before it was all over. One morning, Robert's body is found in a little cottage house he rented for his numerous rendezvous' with Miss L'Estrange. But it was not only Cicely who may have had a motive to kill her cheating husband: Cicely's son was also in love with Miss L'Estrange, so that love triangle could also be a motive. Cicely decides to write to Lieutenant Schwab, who is visiting the UK from the US and hopes he can solve the murder on Robert Prentice.

The core mystery plot is fairly simple, and follows a similar design to the first book. You'll be looking for contradictions between the narrative as you learn them from the various documents like personal letters (which may contain lies or not), newspaper articles and the physical evidence you also have, like photographs. Sometimes things said, don't comply with what you see in the photographs, and that's the starting point for your deductions, though as I said, the core plot is ultimately quite simple, so after you pick up on a few discrepencies, you'll quickly have an idea of what really happened. This second volume has some interesting pieces of evidence: there's a torn-up photograph, a train ticket stub and even a complete newspaper, which includes updates on the police investigation and the coroner's court. Going through all these things as you try to solve the mystery is still fun, and like Murder Off Miami, Who Killed Robert Prentice? can provide for an evening of detecting fun. Personally, I liked Murder Off Miami better as a story though.

The Malinsay Massacre has a promising title, but the reader will also quickly notice that this volume is less intricately designed compared to the first two Crime Dossiers. I assume there's a financial reason for this, but the change can also be detected in the narrative. The Malinsay Massacre refers to a series of murders that occured in 1899 and is not a case where Lieutenant Schwab has personally worked on as a police officer. The murders started with the death of the fifth Earl of Malinsay, Malinsay being a small island in Scotland housing Malinsay Castle, a small village of fishermen and some cottage that can be rented. George Malinsay's death had been odd, but further examination proved he had indeed been murdered. He had inhaled a poisonous gas, but strangely enough, it seems impossible anyone could've gone in his bedroom to make him inhale the gas that night, making it a locked room mystery. After George's death, his brother Henry became the next Earl, who is determined to find out who killed George. He not only has his own son come to the island, but he also writes to his nephew Colin, the brains of the family, hoping he might act as their armchair detective. For death seems to be lurking still on the island. Soon after Henry settles on the island, more of his family is murdered, resulting in a massacre of the Malinsay family. The case would remain unsolved, but when Schwab gains access to the old documents of the Malinsay family, he realizes that the murderer had been hiding in plain sight all along.

The Malinsay Massacre has less 'gimmicky stuff' than the previous two volumes. Most of the files includes are just type-written letters, accompanied by 'paper-based' evidence like the Malinsay family tree, a floorplan and a few photographs of the suspects. The only physical piece of evidence is a tablet laced with arsenic, with the helpful note Note to readers: The poison has been extracted from this tablet, in case you were planning to use the poison tablet you got with a book to murder someone. I liked how we got a completely different type of story this time, with a whole family being killed off on some remote island, but focusing solely on the core plot, it does disappoint at times. The locked room murder is not really clever, as there's basically no evidence to what happened and the story is basically just saying "what if you imagine this or that was there, then the murder would've been possible!" Yes, of course, but it's not a proper detective story if you don't properly hint or foreshadow that. The clewing to the solution of a mystery story should never be a digital manner of 1) Either you think of The One Solution or 2) You don't think of the One Solution. It should be clewed, there should be build-up, there should be hinting. I also didn't like how some of the hints to the identity of the murderer were supposed to be visible on the photographs, only not really due to the resolution of said photographs. Obviously, I understand that it's also a matter of the technology at the time of publishing and the previous books had similar issues too, but I think it's a bit more troublesome in this case, as The Malinsay Massacre's hinting is both not as extensive, as well as not as good as the other two books, so it really hurts the narrative when a clue turns out to be barely discernable.

On the whole, I'd say these two volumes share the same basic issues I also had with Murder Off Miami, being that the story can be really dry as there's no narrative voice, no characterization or quotable prose. The cheap paper and enigmatic way in which these books are bound are understandable, considering the contents, but when asked the question of whether these stories couldn't have been written as normal prose stories, I'd say it wouldn't be too hard to change a few clues to make that possible. So the necessity of these Crime Dossiers is definitely a possible topic of discussion. They are fun, gimmicky forms of mystery fiction, but not much more than that. In case you hadn't read the review of Murder Off Miami yet, please do. The three volumes are quite similar, so most of what I wrote there will apply here.

There is a fourth volume titled Herewith the Clues, but again, I am not actively chasing after it unless I happen to find one cheap. While funny anecdotes in the annals of mystery fiction, mystery games and interactive fiction, I don't think these Crime Dossiers are something you should pursue at all costs. If you can find them cheap though, try one out, as they provide an entertaining experience that shows off the possibilities of mystery fiction. If I had to choose one, I still think the first, Murder Off Miami, is the best. Who Killed Robert Prentice? is fairly similar to Murder Off Miami, so if you want to choose two, I'd say The Malinsay Massacre would prove to be the more interesting companion pick, as it's quite different in atmosphere due to the setting.

The Three Tools of Death

"Professor Peach, in the library with the lead piping?"

"Doctor Who: The Unicorn and the Wasp"

Obviously, Japanese comics are often featured here, but I have also reviewed Dutch and Italian comics here before. I do think however this is the first time I'm doing an American comic...

And most readers will probably have noticed I also like playing videogames, but it may surprise some I have no affinity whatsoever with board and card games. Yes, they're games too, but the experience is so completely different, and I simply never got into board games. I guess that gamebooks are the closest I ever got on this blog. I do know there are also interesting mystery-themed board games out there. Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective is probably one of the best known board game/gamebook hybrids. Funnily enough though I haven't played the original game, but I have played the videogame adaptation of it...

I'm going to take a wild guess and say that Cluedo, or Clue as it's known in the US, is probably the best known mystery board game in existence. Until only a few weeks ago, I never realized the title Cluedo is read "clue-dough" actually. I haven't seen television commercials for this board game in ages, but when I was a kid, they always pronounced it as "clue-ay-dough" in the commercials over here, so that's how I always called the game in my mind. Anyway, I've always known roughly how the game worked from seeing it in pop culture references, and phrases like Colonel Mustard In The Kitchen With The Wrench were familiar to me, but I never played the game myself or even seen in in real life. And nope, I haven't seen the 1985 Clue film. Anyway, I personally have no bond with the board game, so perhaps it might sound weird I decided to read and review a comic adaptation of the board game, which if you think about it, must be a very niche product.

Yet, the reason is very, very simple. For soon after Dash Shaw started his three issue comic Clue: Candlestick in 2019, I saw a lot of positive reviews popping up, praising it as a captivating mystery comic, one that did justice to the whodunit aspect of the game. So when the trade paperback was released late January 2020 (collecting all three issues), I didn't hesitate to pick it up, even if I didn't really know the original board game that well myself. But even to newcomers to Cluedo, the set-up must sound very familiar as a detective story: the story starts with Professor Plum receiving a letter from his friend Mr. Boddy, who says that of late, he's been receiving death threats. Boddy thinks it may be wise to prepare for the worst case, and make sure the key pieces in his unique crime collection, which includes the knife of Jack the Ripper, the revolver that assassinated President Garfield and more, go to people who can appreciate it. Boddy and his housekeeper Mrs. White receive Professor Plum, femme fatale Ms. Scarlet, auction master Mrs. Peacock, war veteran Colonel Mustard and the shady businessman Mr. Green in Boddy's grand manor, but Colonel Mustard is shot during dinner. As it's not clear whether Mustard was shot by someone at the table or a third party from outside the dining room, they decide to split up and search the manor, but the killer is not done yet. Can the survivors figure out whodunit before it's too late?

Even to someone who has no history whatsoever with the original board game, Clue: Candlestick is an interesting. The art is unique (note the board game space motif!), often tense, but at times deformed to 1930s newspaper comic style on purpose, which goes really well with the black comedy found within the pages. While the characters in the original board game are of course little more than caricatures with some minor profile details, the suspects are fleshed out into far more interesting characters in this comic (issue 2 for example is mostly about the backstory of Ms. Scarlet), providing the characters with motivation and agency. I guess fleshing things out was a theme for Shaw, as even the six weapons used in the board game are given backstories, reimagining them as actual murder weapons which have been used in the past and found their way into Mr. Boddy's collection of crime. It's Shaw's own unique interpretation of the Cluedo world, but that is what makes this comic accessible, as it does not rely on decade-old lore.

Given the source material, it's only natural that Shaw decided to set Clue: Candlestick up as an interactive experience, a murder mystery where the reader is invited to think along, and while I do think the concept is really fun, the execution is also slightly flawed. I guess the thing that comes closest to the concept of Clue: Candlestick is the Professor Layton videogame series, in the sense that the narrative is sometimes 'interrupted' by puzzles that at times do feel disjointed from the actual story. For example, Clue: Candlestick opens with a scene where Professor Plum hears a sound coming through the window. As Plum narrates "Lying in bed, awake, I imagine the path the wind takes through my bedroom" we see how the wind apparently goes through a maze before it reaches Plum. Not only is this a maze puzzle, but it does work really well in showing off how Plum's mind works. At other times though, the puzzles feel a bit unnatural, for example when you're suddenly asked to recall some details from the previous page without turning back.

Ultimately, the mystery of whodunit is also treated as an interactive experience, but it doesn't really work well. At the end of Issue 2, the reader is challenged by the message "You can solve the mystery before the third issue if you do all of the puzzles in issues one and two, and if you have a "Clue" game board for reference... Good luck!". Technically, this is true, but as a mystery story, it's not really satisfying. The most important hint to allow you to pinpoint the murderer is hidden within a puzzle is completely disjointed from the narrative, while you also actually need the Cluedo game board for reference if you want to solve it in issue 2. Which obviously, is not included with this comic. Hiding an essential clue in a puzzle that has nothing to do with the story, and also requiring information from outside the story, is not really fair. What's absolutely odd however is that Clue: Candlestick could've been made a much fairer experience: some scenes seen in issue 3 do make this a fair mystery puzzle, but as you only get to see them in the last issue, you can't use that information in issue 2. Had those scenes been moved to the second issue, Clue: Candlestick would've worked so much better. Also, I think it's really a shame how that vital clue was only hidden inside the puzzle. At the start of the story, there's a puzzle that shows how everyone searched the manor (the order in which they visited the rooms). But even if you didn't solve the puzzle based then, you could also figure the order out by paying attention to the artwork, as Shaw also shows in the backgrounds how the characters moved around. So you could either try the puzzle out, or work the thing out through the story. This isn't the case with the vital clue, which can only be obtained through the puzzle which is completely disjointed from the rest, so that feels very cheap. The whodunit aspect is by the way not extraordinary surprising (in fact it's quite simple), but the concept as an interactive experience is interesting. I guess that players of Clue will have an edge here, something that could've been prevented with some simple scene shuffling.

As a standalone mystery comic, Clue: Candlestick is perhaps not completely fair, which is a shame as relatively simple changes would've done wonders for it, by either pushing the Challenge to the Reader back or pulling some scenes to the front. And certainly don't expect Detective Conan or Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo-esque plots with some ingenious murder method or something like that. Ultimately, Clue: Candlestick is still an adaptation of the original board game, and I think that it does work mostly: the emphasis on character movement, fleshing out the character/weapon lore, the interactive aspect of the comic makes it feel like a comic board game and taken simply as a comic book story, the tale it tells is quite amusing. I definitely enjoyed reading it, even if it could've been even more fun with some minor changes.

Who Took the Book?

"Don't judge a book by its cover"

Idiom

Last year, I reviewed Ashibe Taku's Double Mystery, which had an interesting set-up as a physical product: the book consisted of two seperate narratives, each starting at a different end of the book. You could start reading from either side, and in the middle (where the two narratives meet), there was a sealed section, which you had to cut open to find out the solution to the two mysteries presented. ....And next I was going to write that somebody in the comment section there dropped the name Dennis Wheatley in regards to me writing about sealed pages in mystery fiction and how you'd sometimes see them in relatively modern Japanese publications, but.... there's no such comment. Huh. So err, I totally forgot where I first learned of the name Dennis Wheatley. Anyway, Wheatley was an English writer and in the 1930s, he came up with a series of mystery fiction not presented in a novel (story) form, but as actual case files. Inside the folder-like productions, you'd find official police reports, photographs, telegrams, handwritten letters and other physical pieces of evidence like strands of hair and matches. The idea was that you'd get to examine all the facts and evidence yourself. At the end of the booklet, you find a section with sealed pages, and by cutting them open, you could find out whether your solution to the mystery presented was correct.

A while ago, I happened to come across a complete copy of the first of the four Crime Dossiers Dennis Wheatley and writing partner J.G. Links published, titled Murder Off Miami (1934). When you open the folder, you first find a telegram sent from the yacht the Golden Gull, which had left Miami earlier that evening. One of the guests on board of the Golden Gull, the British soap magnate Bolitho Blane, had apparently committed suicide during its trip, prompting the immediate return of the Gull. The next document you find is an internal police memo where Police Captain Schwab puts Inspector Kettering on the case. The Golden Gull is the property of Carlton Rocksavage, a rival soap magnate who lately had been in a very fierce product war with Blane, leaving both of them close to self-destruction. Blane had been invited for the yacht trip, among some other guests of Rocksavage and his daughter, to see if they could work something out that would be less harmful to both of them. Before dinner however, Blane disappeared from the yacht, and in his place a suicide note was found. At first, the case seems simple, but some marks in the carpet indicating a body had been pulled across it then appear to suggest Blane didn't jump out of the window of his cabin on his own. What follows are all the police reports (with the testimonies of all the witnesses and suspects) and the evidence found by Kettering addressed to Schwab. At the end, it seems Kettering is completely baffled by the events, but Schwab manages to solve the whole case based solely on everything Kettering himself had gathered.

I have not played any real Escape Room games myself yet, but I had to think of them constantly as I was going through Murder Off Miami, for the basic concept is the same: within a very minimalistic approach to narrative, "you" (the reader/player) use "real" evidence and reports to solve the crime yourself. It is a game set-up in a sense, but modern mystery videogames are narratively speaking far, far deeper than what Murder Off Miami offers. The whole "narrative" of Murder Off Miami is solely presented through official documents and piece of evidence, so as a tale it's rather bare-bones. You won't be here for the deep characterization, the witty author's voice or for some quotable prose. The exact intention might not be the same, and there is of course the limitations in technology back then, but an actual videogame nowadays usually offers everything Murder Off Miami has (you basically always collect evidence and testimonies in mystery games), but usually presented with an actual story and characters, rather than getting to know everybody through police testimonies. Again, presenting a prose story is not the intention of Wheatly and Links here, but I think it is worth noting that Murder Off Miami will remind of modern mystery videogames, but is at the heart also very different.

The goal is to put yourself in the place of Captain Schwab, and figure out what happened to Blane aboard the Golden Gull based solely on the information obtained from the dossier. As you go through the five different reports of Kettering, you get to know the cast of suspects, among them a wealthy widow who's whole fortune depends on Rocksavage making it through, a Japanese negiotiator who hopes to get a soap deal for his government and a sly society man who is more than meets the eye. But you'll also find a wealth of other evidence: photographs taken from the suspects during their police interviews, a lot of handwritten letters (even on in Japanese!), telegrams, diagrams of the Golden Gull. Heck, even strands of hair retrieved from a comb and a match are included in the dossier!

Given you get all these kinds of documents and pieces of evidence, you of course expect the mystery plot to make use of this fantastic gimmick, right? And in a way, it does. And in a way, it does not. First of all, I think the main mystery is perfectly solvable without even looking at the physical evidence like the hairs and photographs. It's pretty easy to figure out who did it (even if the motive is a bit... undeveloped) based solely on the police interviews. In fact, I pretty much guessed who'd it was in the very first report, even before I got to the photographs and stuff, and all the subsequent reports by Kettering only support my theory. And once you figured out who did it, all the rest is just bonus points. That said, the physical evidence collected in the dossier does help further support the solution, though some of these clues can be a bit hard to figure out (the printing isn't really good and some of the clues I shrugged off as "I totally thought that was how things were in the 30s). I would guess that most people who are able to solve this mystery, figure it out based on the police interviews. Once you think you're done, you have to cut open the seal of the last few pages, in which Schwab explains to Kettering who the murderer is and how he figured it out. My copy was already unsealed of course, but if you happen to have a copy too, you could just seal it yourself with some tape before you start with it, of course.

When these dossiers were first published, there were of course worries about whether they would sell, as they took on a very curious form. In fact, it's insane how they did these books. Everything is printed in different kinds of paper in different formats (the telegram is small on cheap paper, the police reports are on typing paper, a letter is written on good quality paper), there's a sealed section in the back, there's friggin' hair and a match in a little plastic bag... No normal publisher could just print and bind the thing, so it must've taken a lot of labor to put these things together. The whole package reminds more of a board game than a book. Apparently, Murder Off Miami managed to sell 120,000 copies within six months (and it is even said Queen Mary bought six copies on release date), so it definitely did hit it off with this concept, but was it really necessary to publish Murder Off Miami in this manner, in the sense that the mystery plot actually demanded this? No. Not really. They could have just printed the whole thing like a normal book, with photographs of the evidence and it'd still work exactly the same. Of course, it's more fun the way they did, but practical, it certainly was not. Apparently, they later made cheaper versions of the four Crime Dossiers without the physical evidence, sealed pages and the ten types of paper and ink and stuff, and at least for Murder Off Miami, I can't see it hurting the mystery plot in any manner. Funnily enough, it appears there's an actual videogame based of Murder Off Miami too.

I did enjoy Murder Off Miami as an experience: it's really fun going through all the police reports and looking with your own eyes, and even holding all the evidence that is usually just described in a few sentences in a story. As a mystery story however, Murder Off Miami is a bit simple, and it's not a story that is made possible because of the concept, but more a story that also makes use of the concept. So that was a bit disappointing, because I was expecting san experience that could only be presented in this way. As complete, good condition copies of the actual dossiers aren't really cheap, I think that if I were to return to this series, I'll try to find the cheaper reprinted versions.

Cold Reading

Please Set Disk Card

(Famicom Disk System boot-up screen)

Prologue

Takada Naoya is the young assistant of private detective Utsugi Shunsuke, a man so trusted by the authorities he's called in when the lifeless body of 17-year old Youko is recovered from a river. Naoya discovers that Youko has been strangled before she was thrown in the water, thus making it a case of murder. Because Utsugi is busy with a different case, young Naoya is put on this case, which brings him to Youko's high school. There he meets Youko's friend Ayumi, who tells Naoya that Youko, as a member of the school's Detective Club, had been investigating the school ghost story of "The Girl Standing In The Back": a ghostly figure said to haunt the school by manifesting herself behind people's backs. Naoya suspects Youko's death might be connected to this ghost story, which finds its roots in the disappearance of a student of the school 15 years ago. Whether his investigation in Ikeda Misa's Famicom Tantei Club Part II - Ushiro ni Tatsu Shoujo ("Famicom Detective Club Part II: The Girl Who Stands Behind", 1989) is succesful, is completely up to the reader's choices.
Go to 1.

1

As you read the text on the back of the book, you realize that this is a gamebook. The name Famicom Detective Club and Ikeda Misa sound familiar too. You know remember that you already read a review of the gamebook based on the first game on this series a while back. Where do you want to start your investigation?
Read up on gamebooks and Famicom Detective Club ⇒ Go to 2.
Read Famicom Tantei Club Part II - Ushiro ni Tatsu Shoujo ⇒ Go to 3.
If you have read everything ⇒ Go to 4.

2

You remember that Famicom Detective Club was once a mystery adventure game series by Nintendo. Some might be surprised that this Nintendo series was about murder cases that were steeped in legends, ghost stories and other supernatural backgrounds, but the Famicom Detective Club games used to be a fairly well-known series among adventure gamers, though Nintendo hasn't touched the franchise in decades save for ports of the old games. The first two games date from the late eighties, which was also when gamebooks were popular in Japan. The gamebook Famicom Tantei Club Part II - Ushiro ni Tatsu Shoujo is based on the game with the same title, which was originally released in 1989 on the Famicom Disk System (NES) as the second entry in the series. An enhanced (and fantastic!) remake of this game was also released on the Super Famicom (SNES).

Gamebooks, or Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books, have the reader make choices as they read, which lead to branching storylines. Whereas in a normal novel, the protagonist is destined to take the left turn in the maze, in a gamebook, the reader might given the choice to go left, right or back, each choice leading to a seperate outcome (in a gamebook, each choice will lead you to a different page). Many of the choices will eventually lead to a bad ending, and only the true detective can make it to the end of the case. Famicom Tantei Club Part II - Ushiro ni Tatsu Shoujo has some extra mechanics besides making choices: you also need to collect necessary clues and useful items as you fight against time, because movement between locations, but also fruitless lines of investigation all cost time, and you only have a limited amount of time units.
Go To 1.

3

Famicom Tantei Club Part II - Ushiro ni Tatsu Shoujo is set some time before the first book and details how the protagonist and Ayumi, his later colleague at the Utsugi Detective Agency, first met. The story in the gamebook is a more streamlined version of the one featured in the game, with fewer characters and some changes in how the story develops, but is at the core the same. People who have played the original game might be surprised by the changes that do exist though: some of them I had never expected, but I quite liked them in this version of the story. As a detective story, Famicom Tantei Club Part II has always been an engaging experience, as it mixes the murder investigation at a school with a more ghostly substory involving the rumors of the Girl Standing In The Back amidst a cast of rather unique characters in an engaging manner. In comparison to the gamebook of the first game, the prose of this second volume is more enjoyable, with more text before each choice, which helps fleshing out the story. Because you keep on flipping between pages as you make choices, it's easy to lose track of the story, but this book has several moments where the story gives you a breather, and helps you organize all the facts you have collected. Like in the previous gamebook, the focus lies not on figuring out who did it on your own, but on finding all the relevant evidence yourself. A classic Challenge to the Reader gives you all the hints, and then asks of you to deduce who the murderer is. It's difficult to do justice to that in a gamebook, so while the story will make all the necessary deductions for you in this book, it's up to you to actually find all the evidence needed for those deductions. Your choices will bring you along different routes, and choosing to talk with a certain person at a certain time might result in getting your hands on a crucial piece of evidence (or actually missing out on it, as you're supposed to be doing something else).

This gamebook appears to be easier than the one based on the first book. The mechanics are slightly different, but at least this second book doesn't have red herring pieces of evidence that lead to game overs once you get your hands on them. Though this book certainly isn't easy: there are still some items you absolutely need to find if you want to complete the story and it's easy to miss them. There are also many bad endings. Being taken off the investigation because you didn't find enough evidence before a certain point in the story is one of the better bad endings. In a fair number of them, the murderer actually goes after you and the murderer is rather good at err, murdering. The first book is more challenging, but in terms of overall enjoyment as both a game and a tale, this second volume manages to win.
Go to 1.

4

You have gotten a good idea of what Famicom Tantei Club Part II - Ushiro ni Tatsu Shoujo is. Are you satisfied with this review?
Yes ⇒ Go to 6.
No ⇒ Go to 5.

5

The murderer suddenly appeared behind you, driving their knife inside your back. If only... you had been content with the review.... THE END.

6

 

You have decided that you've gotten all you needed out of this review.
Go to Epilogue.

Epilogue

You come to the conclusion that Famicom Tantei Club Part II - Ushiro ni Tatsu Shoujo is an enjoyable mystery gamebook that does justice to the original game. You are now also of the opinion that this should be the last review written in gamebook format. As mystery gamebooks are fun, they'll probably appear on this blog in the future again, but it'll be in a normal review format then.

HAPPY ENDING

Original Japanese title(s): 池田美佐 『ファミコン探偵倶楽部　Part II　うしろに立つ少女』

Play It Again

Please Set Disk Card

(Famicom Disk System boot-up screen)

Prologue

You wake up in a room to find you have lost your memory. Next to you lies a small pocket-sized book. On the cover are a young man and a girl, with a backdrop featuring a great mansion, gravestones and what appears to be the horrifying image of a ghostly samurai warrior. You look at the title. Famicom Tantei Club - Kieta Koukeisha. While you have no memory of who you are and what happened to you, you do know you can read Japanese and, you interpret the title as Famicom Detective Club - The Missing Heir. The title sounds familiar. Perhaps this book has something to do with your past. The cover also notes this book is part of the Famicom Adventure Game Book series. Flipping the book open, you find out it was written by Ikeda Misa and published in 1988. The introduction explains that this is no normal novel, but a game book, where the reader can choose their own destiny. You are shocked to find out that your own situation mirrors that of the book: a young detective lost his memory after a nasty fall of a seaside cliff, and the only clue he has is that he was investigating the suspicious death of Ayashiro Kiku, head of the Ayashiro clan, in the small village of Myoujin. All of Kiku's relatives appear to have a motive for killing her, but then more murders happen, and the villagers think that Kiku has risen from her grave to avenge her death. As you read on, you become convinced this book will serve as a clue to regain your memories.
Go to 1.

1

You are convinced this book will be the key to retrieving your memories. But in what way? What should you do next? (You can't choose the same option twice).
Find out more about Famicom Tantei Club ⇒ Go to 2.
Find out more about gamebooks ⇒ Go to 3.
Read the book ⇒ Go to 4.
Quit investigation ⇒ Go to 5.

2

You decide to first find out more about Famicom Tantei Club. Luckily, you come across a lengthy review on some random blog on Japanese mystery fiction. Apparently, Famicom Tantei Club was a mystery adventure game series developed and published by Nintendo. While Nintendo hasn't touched this series for twenty years now, it still has some cult status as one of the creepiest games Nintendo has made in the past. In all three games, the young detective protagonists has to solve a murder case related to local legends and ghost stories. The book you know hold in your hands is an adaptation of the first game in the series, which was also published in 1988 with the exact same title. The story of the game, featuring serial murders among a wealthy family living in a secluded village and legends of the dead reviving is obviously inspired by Yokomizo Seishi: in fact, Sakamoto Yoshio (co-creator of acclaimed game series Metroid), who wrote and designed the original game, had little experience with mystery novels and had only read some by Yokomizo, which is why the atmosphere of the game feels so familiar. The gamebook adaptation of the story is largely similar to the game, but there are still some changes that will certainly surprise people who have played the original.
Add (F) to your inventory.
Learn more about the book ⇒ Go to 1.
Quit investigation ⇒ Go to 5.

3

A gamebook, also known as a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book, is a type of fiction where the reader can participate in the story themselves by making choices. The choices you make lead to different narrative branches, all with varying outcomes. Some gamebooks also feature extended systems, like inventory mechanics or luck mechanics with dices. Sound/visual novel games, such as Kamaitachi no Yoru and Machi are in fact nothing more but (highly complex) gamebooks brought in digital form (which seperates them from adventure games like Ace Attorney). Gamebooks were especially popular in Japan in the 1980s, with many gamebooks being published based on Famicom (NES) games. The book you are holding now was also published during the gamebook boom. In this book, you are given choices like where to go next, or what to ask to whom. As you progress, you collect clues and red herrings (which you add to your inventory as alphabet letters), which allow you to eventually solve the case.
Add (G) to your inventory.
Learn more about the book ⇒ Go to 1.
Quit investigation ⇒ Go to 5.

4

You realize that this book is quite unique, as it's a detective gamebook, whereas most gamebooks are in the fantasy genre. The story in this book is basically the same as the original game (though it does have some surprising changes), but adds in more narrative branches and game over scenarios, some of them quite original and almost hilarious (there is no game over in the original game). A gamebook is a distinctly different experience from a normal novel: here you are forced to make a choice every couple of paragraphs (or even sentences). As such, it's definitely more interactive than a normal book, as you keep flipping back and forth through the book as you keep notes of your clue inventory. In detective stories with a Challenge to the Reader, the reader is often asked to present their own chain of logic to prove who the murderer is. In regards of having to deduce something, this gamebook is very simply. In fact, most of the time, the protagonist will make the connections himself and at set times, the book will also help organize all the hints you've collected until then. What does make this gamebook difficult, and interesting as a detective gamebook, is that you do need to collect all the necessary clues yourself. Forgetting to ask someone something crucial, or accidently going to the village instead of to the doctor's might mean you'll miss out on an important clue. Some clues are vital to proceed in the game, and without them you're forced into a game over scenario. There are also red herrings, which can also prevent you from getting to the end of the story, as simple possession of them already means you're fooled by them. In a Challenge to the Reader-type of story, the story presents you with all the clues, and then asks you to deduce the truth yourself. In this gamebook, you'll have to find the correct clues yourself, but then the story will deduce the truth for you. It's a very different type of experience, but quite unique and a neat way to apply the gamebook mechanism on a detective story. This book is really difficult by the way. Even people who have played the original game will sometimes get tripped up by fake clues and there's very little leeway for mistakes on your way to the end.
Add (C) to your inventory.
Learn more about the book ⇒ Go to 1.
Quit investigation ⇒ Go to 5.

5

It might be time to wrap up your investigation of this book. As you examined it, you could faintly feel your memory returning.
Inventory check.
Do you have (F), (G), (C) and (X) in your inventory? ⇒ Go to 6.
If not ⇒ Go to 7.

6

It is impossible to have X in your inventory. You cheat! As you do not take your investigations seriously, you are unable to retrieve your memories.
BAD END

7

Do you want to want to put the book away?
Yes ⇒ Go to Epilogue.
No ⇒ Go to 1.

Epilogue

You suddenly remember everything. You were so captivated by Famicom Tantei Club - Kieta Koukeisha that you were walking around reading it, and you slipped on the rug in the living room, hitting your head, causing temporary amnesia. Even though you already knew the original game (or perhaps because), you really enjoyed this gamebook, as it was a surprisingly good example of how to do a mystery story in the form of a gamebook. You are now convinced of its possibilities and hope to find more of these.

HAPPY ENDING

Original Japanese title(s): 池田美佐 『ファミコン探偵倶楽部　消えた後継者』