Murder Mysteries

Logic puzzles for children

Before I made the first Murdlea murder-mystery logic puzzle that anyone can learn to solve - I was working as a tutor, helping young people in America get into the college of their dreams by teaching them logical reasoning and I had become obsessed with figuring out how to help someone break complicated problems into simple elements that they could understand.

At night, I would read Agatha Christie mysteries, and I would marvel at the way that she could give you so much information, but present it in a way that made it easy to understand. A lot of people think mysteries are all about confusing the reader, but the best mysteries aren’t about confusion - they’re about understanding. If you don’t remember who all of the suspects were, then when you get to the big reveal, your only response might be: “Who?” But, if you’ve been carefully misdirected, like in all the great Christie mysteries, then when you reach the reveal, you’re astounded: “I never suspected them for a moment, and yet it’s so obvious in retrospect!” Part of it was Christie’s genius, of course. She was a once-in-a-generation talent. However, it’s also just the case that murder mysteries are a lot more interesting than analytical chemistry (sorry, chemists, but it’s true).

With Murdle, I combined the dry and boring nature of logical reasoning with the vivid and exciting world of murder mysteries.

Instead of trying to solve a complicated problem about the velocity of a falling rock, you’re trying to catch a criminal before they get away!

People loved Murdle: in the UK, it was the #1 book of Christmas 2023 and it won the British Book Award for Book of the Year. Nobody felt like they were doing homework. In fact, before the first book was even published and we were still working on it, a curious thing started to happen: kids started to play with the book - on both sides of the Atlantic, children were already playing Murdle, which was unbelievable!

Anyone who works in book production encounters children who aren’t into reading, called ‘reluctant readers’, and yet, with Murdle, kids were fighting to solve this book of puzzles for adults. From the very beginning, we wanted to make something just for kids, that they would love solving as much as they loved doing the simplest problems in the adult books, and parents were overjoyed.

Solving puzzles has been proven to provide a whole host of mental benefits, such as improving your focus, your critical thinking and your analytical reasoning abilities. But aside from all of these studies, I know from personal experience just how well - as they say - practice makes perfect.

The first Murdle Junior is on its way to bookstores now and I cannot wait for kids everywhere to get it. I hope they’ll love every page of it, following four kid detectives as they solve world- spanning crimes. They won’t even notice what they’re really doing: reading a book, honing their powers of logical thinking, increasing their ability to focus.

Murdle is made to teach kids how to sharpen their thinking, but it’s built to be a fun adventure because, in my mind, the world of thoughts and ideas is a fun adventure and adulthood is full of mysteries you’ll have to solve. So I hope that, with Murdle Junior, a new generation of readers, thinkers and mystery-solvers will be made.

Murdle Junior by G.T. Karber is out 24th October 2024 (Souvenir Press).

G.T. KARBER Author www.gtkarber.com

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