This week, I was excited to receive an advanced reader copy of Antony Johnston's new interactive crime novel Can You Solve the Murder?
I was fortunate enough to be a beta reader for this last year. Since then a few changes have been made to the story, including the gender of one of the main characters, so it will be interesting to give it another read now.
Here's the publisher's blurb...
There’s been a murder at Elysium, a wellness retreat set in an English country manor. You arrive to find the body of a local businessman on the lawn – with a rose placed in his mouth. It appears he was stabbed with a gardening fork and fell to his death from the balcony above. But that balcony can only be accessed through a locked door, the key is missing, and everyone in Elysium is now a suspect…
Gather the evidence and examine the clues. Choose who to interview next, and who to accuse as your prime suspect. But remember that every decision you make has consequences – and some of them will prove fatal…
Do you have what it takes? Can YOU solve the murder?
The great thing about Can You Solve the Murder? is that while it isn't a gamebook in the style of Fighting Fantasy or ACE Gamebooks, it isn't simply a branching narrative like a Choose Your Own Adventure story, where everything is revealed at the end.
There are clues to be collected and a puzzle to be solved. At the end, in classic murder mystery style, you have to declare who you think the murderer is. But you can't just guess who it might be - you have to have the evidence to back up your suspicions.
I met Antony Johnston for the first time last year after Fighting Fantasy Fest, despite having both worked for Abaddon Books when the imprint started out, and he is a huge gamebook fan. In fact, he wrote a glowing review of Dracula: Curse of the Vampire.
Can You Solve the Murder? will be published by Penguin Books* in June 2025.
* Parent company of Puffin Books, who originally published the Fighting Fantasy series.
