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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Five Mysteries for You to Solve,
By Lonnie E. Holder "The Review's the Thing" (Columbus, Indiana, United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER) (VINE VOICE) (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)
This review is from: Alfred Hitchcock's Solve-Them-Yourself Mysteries (Paperback)
This collection of mysteries for young adults has existed since 1963 and has been through multiple editions. As far as I can tell, the most recent editions retain the text of the original. There are five mysteries. Each provides sufficient clues to let you have a reasonably good chance at guessing some or all of the solution for each mystery. However, the length of each mystery is such that it can be hard to find the clues.
The opening story is "The Mystery of the Five Sinister Thefts." Jerry Mason is helping his uncle Frank, owner of Clanton's Circus. Jerry is a helper at the circus, doing whatever odd job that needs to done. Jerry returned to the circus from mailing a letter for his uncle Frank to find that something at the circus had changed. He quickly learns that someone has taken one of Madame Winifred's snakes. This theft followed several other thefts, each of items of varying value but none seemingly worth a thief's time. Jerry tries to figure out why someone would steal the various items, using everything he has seen and heard around the circus. After thinking about the things he knows, Jerry suddenly realizes that he knows exactly who took the various items and why. Can you figure out who took each of the five items and why? Can you figure out where the snake is? The next story is "The Mystery of the Seven Wrong Clocks." Someone murdered Fritz Sandoz and robbed his store some time before Peter Perkins arrived at the store of his friend. Sandoz was able to modify a number of clocks to provide a clue regarding his murderer. Can you solve the mystery of the wrong clocks before Peter Perkins does? The third story is "The Mystery of the Three Blind Mice." Nigel Mayfair is a wheelchair bound millionaire. Someone is stealing some of Mayfair's most valuable stamps and Mayfair has asked detective Porterfield Adams to investigate the thefts and hopefully regain the valuable stamps. Porterfield brought son Andy, a stamp collector, as a consultant. No one, staff or family, likes Mayfair. It would be fair to say that Mayfair has no friends either. There is little surprise and even less grieving when someone shoots Mayfair while Mayfair is sitting in his bed, leaving a mysterious, incomplete sentence as his final words. The large number of people in the house at the time and in the house directly across from Mayfair's house, which is a small castle, makes this mystery a challenge. I thought this mystery was particularly difficult to solve because the most important clues are subtle. It helps if you read the story twice before reading the conclusion. In "The Mystery of the Man Who Evaporated," mystery writer Harley Newcomb has apparently disappeared from a locked house. The windows are boarded over and the door is nailed shut as well. The only clue is a mysterious note and footsteps that get smaller and smaller. English teacher and mystery writer Howard Matthews and one of his students, Jeff Landrum, try to figure out what the police could not, the location of Harley Newcomb. Can an English teacher and a student figure out how Harley Newcomb "disappeared" from a house without an exit? Can the pair solve the mystery when the police could not? Perhaps you can solve the mystery before Mr. Matthew and Jeff. The final mystery is "The Mystery of the Four Quarters." Nick and Bettye Layton find themselves kidnapped by mysterious men. The pair soon discovers that the men are spies looking for information from their father. They also think the spies are crazy because their father is not involved in any kind of military factory or research, but the men have kidnapped the brother and sister, so they know what they want. Their kidnappers ask Nick and Bettye to tell their father to provide certain information in order to secure their return. Nick and Bettye write notes to their father, carefully reviewed by the head kidnapper. Will Nick and Bettye be able to escape their kidnappers before their father gives it to the kidnappers? There is so much tension! A number of books that contain short mysteries with sufficient clues to solve the mysteries are available. Of course, this one is from Alfred Hitchcock. My experience has been that a book with Hitchcock's name on it is generally good, and this collection of mysteries is good. I did think that a couple of the mysteries were very difficult to solve. A couple I got reasonably quickly. These stories are good mental exercise and our brains always need a workout. If you enjoy mysteries and you like to be able to try to solve them yourself, this book could be for you. Enjoy!
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
"His heart was pounding and he seemed unable to get his breath. He couldn't breathe. He was suffocating already!",
By Mark Louis Baumgart (Michigan, USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Alfred Hitchcock's Solve-Them-Yourself Mysteries (Hardcover)
Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980) became involved in the movies in the late nineteen teens, became a director in 1922 (the uncompleted "Number 13"), published the first (of many) of his anthologies in 1945 ("Suspense Stories"), and published his first juvenile, "Alfred Hitchcock's Solve-Them-Yourself Mysteries", written by Robert Arthur, Jr., in 1963, in January, eleven months before John F. Kennedy was assassinated. In 1963 Hitchcock released "The Birds", and one year later "Alfred Hitchcock And The Three Investigators" (43 books 1964-1987 in American, 150 so far in Germany) started publishing. It was also the eighth year of ten, (1955-1965) for his television series, and in America it was the thirteenth year of America's involvement in Vietnam. This book was originally published without a dust jacket with the artwork printed directly onto the hard cover, and it contained five novelettes written by Robert Arthur, Jr., and ten full-page, and one double page illustration by one-time Paddington Bear illustrator Fred Banbery (1913-1999). The stories are not your choose-your-own-adventure types, nor are they the Encyclopedia Brown types. They are full-length stories in which the ending is cut off, only to be continued on the next page after giving the reader a chance to solve the story's puzzle. The first story is the circus story 'The Mystery Of The Five Sinister Thefts' and Jerry Mason is on his way to the small one-ring Clanton's Circus, which has just been bought by Frank Mason who is Jerry's uncle. As he arrives he realizes that the circus is too quiet, and finds that there has been a fifth theft. While each item stolen is of little monetary value, they are of high intrinsic value, with each theft happening over five consecutive nights. This time Winifred the Snake Charmers prize snake has been lifted. It's clear that these thefts are related to the theft of "The Green Flame" diamond that had been previously stolen from the Museum Of Fine Arts in Millerton, a town the circus had toured through. The story is interesting, and it features a classic MacGuffin, a standard plot device in Hitchcock's movies. I guessed the answer this time around, but you also learn a little about the lost culture of the small circuses. Four stars. The next story is 'The Mystery Of The Seven Wrong Clocks' and features (continuing character?) Peter Perkins, a professional puzzle and cryptogram writer who teems up head cop Detective Magrue's son to find the killer of Perkins' friend. The problem is based on how a series of seven clocks have been set up by his friend before his murder. I didn't quite get the set up for the solution, but the solution itself is based on the Sherlock Holmes story 'The Case Of The Dancing Men'. Margrue is an obnoxious idiot, and the set-up seems contrived, but in the end, Arthur played fair with the clues, so I can't complain. Four stars. When is a killer not a killer? The answer is in the next story 'The Mystery Of The Three Blind Mice'. Porterfield Adams is a detective specializing in forgery and embezzlement and he has been employed by the blustering and cartoonish Nigel Mayfair, a rich, obsessive, hateful, and controlling man who lives in the imported Castle Cragie, and who has found that somebody has stolen some of his more valuable stamps. Along for the ride is Porterfield's son Andy, who is an expert in stamps. Sometime during the night, Mayfair, who lives in a house of people who hate him, is impossibly shot while in bed. This story comes very close to being a lock-room murder mystery, along with being a theft story. I actually remember reading this story forty years ago as a lad, and it holds up very well as it actually involves several puzzles and mysteries. I don't believe that you can shoot three bullets through a pane of glass without shattering it (see customer images), but that's the only flaw. This story is very much like Hitchcock's more mystery oriented television episodes. The Hardy Boys have turned stories like this into whole novels. As an ex-stamp collector, I give this story five stars. The fourth story is 'The Mystery Of The Man Who Evaporated' and it deals with Jeff Landrum, who likes mysteries so much that he eventually becomes involved in a real life one. It all starts innocently enough. Jeff finds out that his English instructor Howard Matthews is writer of mystery short fiction. Then Matthews asks Jeff if he would like to go to a Mystery Writers Of America meeting and meet some mystery writers. Here Arthur does some name dropping as we meet Earle Stanley Gardner, Ellery Queen (both of them), Walter Gibson, and another neighbor of Jeff's, locked-room mystery author Harley Newcomb, who seems to be a thinly disguised John Dickson Carr. Newcomb is a compulsive writer who is enthusiastically working on what he considers one of his best novels. Excited about his novel, he leaves the meeting early, and then. . .just disappears. When Jeff and Matthews go to visit Newcomb they find that his rented house is in the same condition as the one that he had described in his new novel. It is locked and nailed up from the inside. Because the local yokels are as thick as fenceposts, Jeff and Matthews have to investigate the disappearance on their own, only to get into trouble by being too nosey. There is a hint of science fiction in this story that goes by the wayside at the story's end. While the story is a genuine locked room puzzle, it has a very disappointing, contrived, and ridiculous denouement. This is NOT a fair-play story, and there is no way you can solve the puzzle. Two stars. Nice set-up, but that's about it. The last story 'The Mystery Of The Four Quarters' finds twins Bettye and Nick Layton in deep trouble as they are kidnapped from the Blackwell Mansion by the fat Mr. Nemo and his oversize thug Fritz, because Nemo wants a new invention of their father's. This is a suspense story that concentrates more on the puzzle; how do the children contact their father, tell him where they are, and do so without their captors catching on to their scheme, than the story's probability of possibility. Again, here is a story that I don't think that there are many who could solve the oblique and contrived puzzle. It's entertaining and all, but the puzzle depends on knowing too much information that is barely touched on, and a puzzle that is almost impossible to decipher. Two stars. Robert Arthur (1909-1969) had a long career with Hitchcock, ghost editing nine of his anthologies, writing for his television show, his magazine, and creating the Three Investigators. He had also had a long career in writing for the pulps, he was one of Isaac Asimov's favorite authors, for radio, he co-created "The Mysterious Traveler" (1943-1952), and here he kick-started Hitchcock's entry into the juvenile mystery market. Each of the stories here features a teenage investigator, at least one illustration, and, like Hitchcock's tv show, is interrupted intermediately by comments from Hitchcock. Most of comments can be skipped if you want, but they are essential in 'Mystery/Four Quarters' to understand the puzzle. However, 'Five Sinister Thefts', 'Seven Wrong Clocks' and 'Three Blind Mice' are all stories that make this a four star read, even if 'Man/Evaporated' and 'Four Quarters' bring the collection down a star. I got this book from my library after it was culled from its shelves this year, altogether, it has been there (since 1966), and checked out and read, for forty-four years! For this site I have also reviewed the following juvenile mysteries: bigfoot by Hal George Evarts The Case of the Somerville Secret by Robert Newman Mystery Of Mordach Castle by William MacKellar The Road Of The Dead (Push Fiction) by Kevin Brooks Skull Island (Usborne Adventure) by Lesley Sims A Ufo Has Landed by Milton Dank & Gloria Dank X-Isle (Point Horror) by Peter Lerangis Return to X-Isle (Point Horror) by Peter Lerangis and all the Zodiac Chillers starting with: Rage of Aquarius (Zodiac Chillers)
5.0 out of 5 stars
A trip down memory lane - a great trip!,
By
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Hitchcock Solve-Them-Yourself Mysteries (Hardcover)
Growing up, this was one of my all time favorite books. First, its stories are very well written. They are "solve them yourself" and the cues and clues are both subtle and challenging. By the time I finished reading, I was both a better, more careful reader and a sharper problem solver. Quite an accomplishment for one book.
The seller delivered the book in great shape and it was exactly as advertised. It arrived quickly and it appeared to be "as new" or as new as a nearly 50 year old book could be. I am very pleased and recommend the seller. This is a time machine for me - taking me back to the best days of my youth - ones with a good book in my hand! You will enjoy reading this one - if you can find a copy...
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