The Bookshop Poisoning

The Bookshop Poisoning is a short story in the tradition of Sherlock Holmes mysteries, although Watson has become an Edinburgh police officer and Holmes is called Bell. Bell will attempt to solve a murder in a bookshop, but you, the player / Watson, have to activate his thinking by showing him books that contain certain keywords. To take an example that does not appear in the game, you might have to come up with a book title that contains the word 'poison' -- e.g., "Strong Poison" by Dorothy L. Sayers. You can type in any book title you wish and the game uses, I suspect, some kind of online database to check whether the book exists and who its author is. This works very well.

It's a nice and original puzzle idea, perhaps let down a little bit by the fact that there are so many books that just attempting titles at random is a pretty successful strategy. The game is short and the story appropriate to the puzzle theme, if not particularly engaging. Three stars because it is worth trying.