Читать книгу Five-minute Mysteries 5 - Ken Weber - Страница 6

Memorandum

To: ALL MYSTERY BUFFS

From: the author

Mystery buffs know there are only two kinds of people in the world: those who love mysteries and, well, that other kind. A tiny majority, the latter are, and that’s a good thing because they are missing something unique. For only in mysteries can a reader get a charge out of winning or losing.

It works like this. Nothing gives mystery buffs more satisfaction than getting ahead in a story and beating the writer to the punch. They get a special charge out of combining logic, analysis, intuition and insight so that before they turn the last page, they already have the problem solved. Yet — and this is what sets mystery lovers apart — nothing thrills them more than when the mystery defeats them, when they turn the last page and find a surprise waiting, something they’d missed.

In this, the fifth installment of the series, mystery lovers get noless than forty shots at the fun of winning or losing, in a set of wildly different stories. Every mystery in the book is set up for thereader to solve. At the end of each mystery there is a question: Whodid …? or What did …? or It seems the thief made a mistake. How could…? Like that.

There’s great variety. The settings range from city to country,from a bank to a beach, and from France to Australia. You’llencounter detectives, thieves and murderers, a sub-lieutenantsearching for deserters during the Napoleonic Wars, an undercoverKGB agent and a centurion in the Roman Empire.

There’s also variety in the level of challenge. As you turn thepages of Five-minute Mysteries 5 you’ll notice one, two or threesymbols — a gun — at the beginning of each story. The number ofguns suggests how easy or difficult the mystery is, one being easy,two being a little harder, and three, difficult. (Or, perhaps moreaccurately, how easy or difficult each one seems to me.) But don’tlet the ratings stop you from enjoying all the mysteries! One that Irate “difficult” might be an open-and-shut case for you, while youmight be utterly stumped by one I’ve rated “easy.” Try them all.Finally, all the solutions are at the back of the book, so you canprove you’re a winner or, once in a while, get a kick out of losing. Either way, enjoy.