Customer Reviews

Five-Minute Mysteries: 37 Challenging Cases of Murder and Mayhem for You to Solve

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book contains thirty-seven puzzles aimed at testing your logic, perception and knowledge, and which only take around five minutes to read and solve.
Organized in a numbered format and placed in the first section of the book, the puzzles are presented as a short story of a mystery or an unsolved crime-case, posing, at the end of each, a question or two for the reader to answer. The assortment of mysteries offered includes murder, theft, blackmail and deception, among others; and they are often clever, engrossing, and even funny. These mysteries will test both your reading and comprehension skills, as well as your problem solving abilities.
The solutions, sequentially arranged in the second section of the book, can usually, and frequently too easily, be arrived at through the clues contained within the mysteries. Only a few exceptions, which rely on what seemed to me as somewhat esoteric facts, not necessarily familiar to every reader, are a bit frustrating. But, since each solution gives both the answers to each mystery and line of reasoning used in figuring them out, some light is shed on those obscure facts.
One thing lacking in this book is an introduction or foreword, which might have given this volume a better overall presentation, the author a way to explain his purpose in putting this book together, and the reader a chance to get to know a little more about the author.
Overall, this book is a good and entertaining way to get launched into the world of the games of logic.
--Reviewed by M. E. Volmar

Most of these terse stories are sharp and clever in their ability to give you the clue that will "solve the case" right within the short tale. The few that do this poorly you can easily forgive in that at least a couple of stories will force themselves on your mind or create a bit of trivia that you will never forget. For parents with young readers these mini-mysteries are especially useful in identifying those readers who can sort through a varity of information and discern what is needed or what is false. For voracious readers you will find these are similar to, and condernsed versions of, the famous "Encyclopedia Brown" and "Mini-Mysteries" series of tales by Sobol (which were aimed expressly at youth).

If you like solving puzzles, but want something different from the traditional word or logic puzzles that you are used to, you'll like this book. The idea of making each puzzle a mystery that needs to be solved is both clever and engaging.

One of the nicest things about each mystery is that it does only take about 5 minutes to read through, making it easy to pick up the book at any time and complete an entire mystery.

The biggest problem with the book is that the solutions oftentimes rely on facts that I find a bit esoteric, such as how certain airplane models are built. But, not all of the mysteries are like this. I would recommend this book to any puzzle lover.

The stories are written with a sprightly kind of grace that recalls the ghost writers who write Murder She Wrote Jessica Fletcher mysteries for her. I wonder if Mr. Ken Weber uses any pseudonyms. The only problem is that the solutions are too hard. I couldn't solve any of the first fifteen problems I tried, and I was really busting my balls to be frank, trying to work out the weaknesses in the witnesses' stories. I think the answers depend on facts of the natural world that nobody knows, not even the experts. And plus, well, how about the solution which proves that people couldn't have seen what they claimed to see because, if they had been out on their lawn the way they said, mosquitoes would have bitten them? May I humbly add, WTF? Mosquitoes don't bite everybody for one thing, and secondly, they never said mosquitoes didn't bite them, so where's the lie?

However, I should be blaming myself, not Ken Weber, because he constructed the trap, I just fell into it. He duped me good and isn't that why we buy these crazy puzzle books anyhow?

A few other comments, I was surprised by how Canadian these puzzles were! The very first one sort of assaults you with Canadianness. It's all about a "police constable," he's the hero who has to determine if a deaf woman is lying or not. "Constable"? That's not an American usage is it? Thus we learn a little about our neighbors to the North every time we buy a Ken Weber book. They must be awfully proud of him up there, I hope that he is properly respected in his native land.

Other reviewers have said that this book is too easy for them! That'll show you, I'm probably just a dummy so don't go by me.

I love logic puzzles and the like so this seemed like it would be something I'd enjoy. I found the book to be interesting, but the solutions to the puzzles were generally a bit easy, I often managed to pick out the clue and solve the puzzle after just one read through. I have read all the Sherlock Holmes books though - so I am kind of attuned to such foreshadowing....This would make a great book for younger people, who might find such a book a good introduction to logic puzzles.

Great to wake up your thinking in the morning with a cup of coffee. They are short yet challenging. Also, a good coffee table book. Someone could pick it up and enjoy a quick read. Highly recommend.

I bought this book before I went to Hungary to teach English to high school students. I wanted to have something fun to do each day for a few minutes that would also work on their English skills. This worked perfectly. I would read it slowly and they had to solve the mystery. Since the "mysteries" were easy for high school kids to solve, it came down to listening comprehension. This worked much better than other listening comprehension things that I tried because this became almost a contest to see who could solve it the fastest. The kids loved the book so much that I left it in Hungary for future teachers to use. If you are going to be using it in a similar situation, I highly recommend it.

If you enjoy logic puzzles this one is for you! I loved it! Most were easy to figure out-but fun anyway!

When you begin to read this book, it appears as if all of the minimysteries will be surprisingly easy (the first one is), but I was readily awakened to that ever so opposite fact that the mysteries (some) can be extremely hard. Most of them rely solely on your knowledge, and not on the clues given in the minimystery themselves. Example: In one story the validity of a story of gold is shot down when an orange X is painted on the left bank of the river instead of the (geographically correct) right bank of the river. The mysteries relying on clues in the story as extremely easy, but very entertaining. Expect hours of brain-teasing when you read this book. It's fun, but not a real deep read...