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The Halmerton Case Files
50+1 floor-plan mystery puzzles. One verified solution per case, every answer explained, no guessing at any point.
The book
- 50 cases, and one more. The fifty run from a gentle four-by-four to a six-by-six that will take you an evening. The fifty-first is announced on the first page and waits at the end.
- Every solution explained. Not an answer key: the reasoning, step by step, in the order you would have found it yourself.
- Room to work. Large format, printed in colour, with a plan big enough to write on in pen.
- One house, one cast. Fourteen people, one Victorian manor, and a body in a different room every time.
Buy on Amazon Download four cases free
Italian edition coming: I Casi di Halmerton House.
A look inside
About the book
A house full of alibis, and one plan to test them
Halmerton House is a townhouse in Belgravia in the 1880s: a family, their servants and a few guests who stay too long. In every case someone is found dead or something goes missing, and everyone in the house tells the inspector where they were. Every statement is true. The floor plan does the rest.
Place each suspect on the plan, one to a row and one to a column, until everybody has a square. When the plan is full it points to one person, and you will be able to prove it. There is no trick hidden in the wording and no leap at the end: every case closes by reasoning alone, one step after another.
The book starts gently, with a four-by-four plan and a handful of statements, and ends on six-by-six plans that ask for a whole evening. If you get stuck, the hints after the cases give you one true step without spoiling the rest, and the solutions explain every case in full, in the order you would have found it.
It is for readers who like a murder mystery but would rather solve it themselves, for sudoku and logic-grid players who want a story around the grid, and for anyone who has never tried a logic puzzle: the first case teaches the method in five minutes.
Inside the book
- Cases
- 50, plus a fifty-first told as a story
- Plans
- 10 on four-by-four, 30 on five-by-five, 10 on six-by-six
- Levels
- Warm-up, Easy, Tricky, Hard and Fiendish
- Help
- a hint for every case, and every solution explained step by step
- The last case
- its solution waits online, behind the code on the last page
- Format
- paperback, 8.5 × 11 in, 114 pages, full colour
- Language
- English; the Italian edition, I Casi di Halmerton House, is coming
The house party
Fourteen people. One house, three books.
They live, work or stay at Halmerton House. Volume one sets them in fifty rooms; in volume two the will is read and the house turns on itself; four of them sail for New York in volume three. Who is likely to be in the cellar at midnight, who never goes near the library: by the end, you will know.
Your extras
The fifty-first case, and five more
The last case in the book keeps its solution off the page. Enter the code printed on the final page and one email brings you the full proof of the fifty-first case and a pack of five new cases from the same house. Nothing else, ever.
The code alone is not enough. The way in is the door described on the last page of the book: solve what you find there, and the door asks for your email and the code.
Solved a case and want to be sure before you turn to the solutions? Every case has a check code beside its hints: Check your solution.
Read the next one first
Join the advance readers
A small group of readers gets the first act of each Halmerton book free, with the explained solutions: Act One of The Halmerton Emeralds now, and The Halmerton Crossing before it goes on sale. A review is never a condition; if you write one, honest is all we ask.
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