Mystery Challenges 2017

Always ahead of the game, Bev at My Readers’ Block has posted her sign up pages for next years’ mystery reading challenges. This year I took part in the gold card of her Vintage Mystery Scavenger Hunt Challenge, where participants had to read books, originally published before 1960, with certain images on the cover e.g. a revolver, a coffin or fishing equipment. I finally completed this challenge today, with my review of Dermot Morrah The Mummy Case Mystery (1933) – never has it been so hard to find a coffin on a front cover! Next month I will most likely be doing a round up post of the books I read for the challenge.

So next year I plan to do this challenge for a second time and for those who have been playing this year, you’ll notice there are some changes to the items needed to be found.

If you are interested in taking part either on your own blog or even through your Goodreads account, click here for the signup post with further details.

I have also decided to take part in a second challenge next year called Follow The Clues Mystery Challenge. In Bev’s own words this challenge involves following:

a set of clues furnished by the mystery books you read to create a body of evidence to support a book court case. Each book clue should lead you to your next read. The connection can be anything at all from author names to motive for murder to type of mystery (police procedural, espionage, romantic thriller, etc) to an item on the cover, but you must be able to make your case to the jury on your detective logic. I would prefer that you not read eight books from the same author and use the author/series character/etc. as the clue link, however.

Evidence Trail Example: if the first book I read is by Agatha Christie, then my next book could be Arrow Pointing Nowhere by Elizabeth Daly who has often been referred to as “Agatha Christie’s favourite author.” Using “Arrow” from the Daly book’s title, then House of the Arrow by A.E.W. Mason (published in 1924) could be next and it might lead me to another book published in 1924…and so on.

There are different levels of participation and recklessly I have decided to go for the hardest level: Capital Offence, where I have to make a chain of 12 books. Hopefully this won’t lead to too man sleepless nights. Again here is the link to the original signup post.