Five-Minute Halloween Mysteries [Hardcover]

Ken Weber (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 28, 2007 | Age Level: 9 and up | Grade Level: 4 and up

It’s Ken Weber’s wildly successful Five-Minute Mysteries series-now in its second mini edition! The Five-Minute Mysteries books have sold over a million copies because they’re an anytime-activity that appeals to so many audiences: reluctant readers, bored kids in the backs of cars, families looking for a game everyone loves, amateur sleuths, puzzle-enthusiasts, time-challenged adults, and that burgeoning new crowd-baby boomers trying to exercise their brains. This harrowing collection of Halloween-themed mysteries is a great way to kick-off a fright night’s revelries and an equally great hostess gift for the Mom who’s letting the little ghouls have their post-game kick back at her house.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Ken Weber is an expert craftsman of the short, compelling tales of intrigue. He has written six previous Five Minute Mysteries books, and Games magazine selected one as a best book of 1989. He is also the author of One-Up Trivia, a unique take on trivia books. He lives in Toronto, Canada.

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 9 and up
  
• Hardcover: 128 pages
• Publisher: Running Press Miniature Editions; Min edition (August 28, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0762430761
• ISBN-13: 978-0762430765
• Product Dimensions: 3.1 x 2.7 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,394,579 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #69 in Books > 4-for-3 Books > Children's Books > People & Places > Multicultural Stories > General

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting for fans of the mystery puzzle genre, August 20, 2008

By 

Arthur M. Bullock (Los Angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Five-Minute Halloween Mysteries (Hardcover)

Like Weber's previous "The Mini Five-Minute Mysteries", this is in the tiny gift book format: the pages are 3 by 2.5 inches, so even though the cover is slightly larger than that, the book easily fits in a shirt pocket. However, the print is of normal size, so a story that would fit on 2 to 4 pages in a normal paperback takes 10 to 20 here. This means there are only 6 mini-mysteries, and makes it a bit harder to do a quick scan back and forth to try and put clues together.

The mysteries are typical of the genre - clues buried in descriptions of the locale, musings of the POV character (often a detective), etc., ending with some declaration by the protagonist and a question to the reader. In none of these cases is the challenge to solve a crime in the sense of determining the guilty party. Rather, the read just has to answer something like "How does detective X know the car was dented AFTER Friday?". The cases vary from ones in which once the key clue is spotted, everything quickly follows to ones that require additional reasoning that the reader may or may not find convincing after reading the book's solution. None of these is of the spot-the-silly-blunder type, with supposed ancient inscriptions including a B.C. date, or anything like that. One of the cases has a "spooky" theme in a general way, while the other five have an explicit tie-in to Halloween.

Overall, I'd expect most fans of mystery puzzles to enjoy this book. It's not what I'd consider an outstanding example of the genre. (I'm a big fan of the original puzzles of this type by Austin Ripley, despite how dated those are. E.g., Minute Mysteries) Unless the small size is an asset for some reason, I'd expect most people new to such puzzles would get more out of one of the ordinary-sized paperback collections by such authors as Weber, Ripley, Donald Sobol, Stanley Smith, Hy Conrad, and Jim Sukach, or bargain-priced hardback reprints.