The Undertaker’s Casebook

Dr. Septimus Dole signs every death certificate in Sorrowby-on-the-Wane with the same two words: natural causes. Josiah Coffinwright, undertaker and seven feet of polite gloom, keeps a casebook of the ones that weren’t. This year you are his new apprentice.

Forty short murder cases, one macabre year. Every case fills a two-page spread: the deceased, the doctor’s certificate, Josiah’s three observations, the people in the house, and a chain of two or three mixed puzzles whose answers unlock one another. Solve the chain, then close the case in the Casebook: who, and how. Some cases close with a black thread tied to the page.

Then, in the last week of February, a coffin is ordered in Josiah’s exact measurements, to be collected on Friday. The finale asks for everything you have learned.

Inside you will find:

• 40 cases plus a five-puzzle finale: 91 puzzles of 10 kinds
• Logic grids, time-of-death timelines, cipher notes, deathbed floor plans, wake interrogations with truth-tellers and liars, poison-garden deductions, coffin arithmetic, obituary word searches, headstone letter puzzles and code-breaking locks
• A Puzzle Guide, plus a “How it works” box the first time each kind of puzzle appears
• Hints, two-digit answer checks and full solutions with the reasoning
• Every puzzle checked by computer to have exactly one solution
• Large 8.5 × 11 inch pages, ink illustrations, a portrait gallery, a map of Sorrowby, and a one-eyed raven hiding in seven pictures

For adults who love dark, witty mysteries, gothic humor and a good logic puzzle. The difficulty rises through the seasons, from gentle to fiendish. Book five of the Owlbrook Grim Tales; every book stands alone.