I
enjoy books where the characters have to solve puzzles as part of the plot.
This includes middle-grade children’s books such as The Westing Game by
Ellen Raskin, The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart,
and Escape from Mr. Lemoncello’s Library by Chris Grabenbstein. But it
really annoys me when I’m expected to solve a puzzle on my own without any help
from the characters.
It
isn’t that I don’t like puzzles. On the contrary, putting together jigsaw
puzzles and solving crosswords are among my favorite pastimes. What I don’t
like is when I’m reading a book and a puzzle takes me out of the story.
I
recently read The Christmas Murder Game by Alexandra Benedict. The
guests at a country house have been invited to solve twelve days of riddles, many
of which are based on family experiences that are unknown to the reader. That
means the reader can’t solve the riddles but must wait for one of the
characters to announce the solution.
That’s
not what annoyed me, however. No, I was annoyed
by the puzzles that the author wove into the text but not the story. Looking
for those answers would have been a distraction that would have ruined the book
for me. Fortunately, they were hidden well enough that they didn’t create any
bumps in the story, so I simply ignored them.
But
I’ll never understand why an author would choose to use a device that takes
readers out of the story.
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