A MOST PUZZLING MURDER

An orphaned “enigmatologist” works feverishly to discover her true parentage and prevent a murder.

Brilliant young Destiny Whip is contemplating a bleak future and bantering with her annoying best friend, bossy Bex, when the arrival of a mysterious letter from one Mordecai Scruffmore changes everything. The writer captures her inquisitive imagination, offering her a position as the Scruffmore family historian and promising access to a vault full of secrets from all over the world. Thus begins a labyrinthine odyssey for the heretofore isolated Destiny. Along the way, the reader is invited to join Destiny as she faces a series of 16 puzzles she must solve to reach the ultimate answer, the identity of her mother. These include word puzzles, number puzzles, hieroglyphs, and more. There’s often a solving tip included in a footnote: “If you’re a fan of the movie Fight Club, you’ll have all the information you need to solve this minipuzzle.” As the character names indicate, the prose is frothy and frivolous, with a Victorian patina reminiscent of Ronald Firbank. New sets of characters are introduced periodically, not so much to deepen the mystery as to add some diverting froufrous. These include blacksmith Ian Montgomery, who lives on Eerie Island; Gabriel Morezzi, closely involved in an earlier incident when Destiny barely escaped death; and chatty siblings Hexabus, Newton, and Tempest. Their details, like so many others here, remain cloudy but fanciful. Enjoy the prose but don’t sweat the mystery. Just read on for the next puzzle.

A cheeky, convoluted whodunit, with a bonus collection of puzzles…or vice versa?