SUSPEK - Murder in Salem

47,000 first names. 17 clues. 1 killer.

Every October, Salem tells its children the same story. In the last winter of the witch trials, one family took eleven pieces of silver from the estate of an accused neighbor. When that old shame is about to come out, a hooded penitent walks the town with a single candle and leaves a numbered sign where the theft began.

On the Thursday night of Haunted Happenings, with fog off the harbor and candles burning in the Ropes Mansion garden, the story seems to come true. The chief curator of American decorative arts at the Peabody Essex Museum is found dead on the brick walk, an unlit ship's lantern beside her. A numbered brass coin lies in an empty sconce. Schoolchildren saw a cloaked figure at the hedge. A lantern moved over the graves of the Old Burying Point. Salem has a word for it: curse.

The town is sure the dead of 1692 have come back. Detective Hartmann is not. He takes the case and slides the Marine Society register across the table. Inside: forty-seven thousand first names from the membership roll the East India Marine Society of Salem opened in 1799. One of them belongs to the killer.

The SUSPEK Halloween special. Everything in this case looks haunted. Everything turns out human, and every explanation is a clue. The same fair puzzle as every SUSPEK case, dressed for Salem's most haunted week of the year.

SUSPEK is not a crime novel you simply read. It is a case you solve yourself.

Read the clues, cross out the innocent, and find the killer before the trail goes cold.

SUSPEK is puzzle-crime on paper. Reading, puzzling, thinking, no screen, no app. You sit at the table with the book, cross out names, compare lists, and follow every trace. At the end, one name remains.

What you are getting into

• A logic puzzle with 47,000 possible answers and one correct one
• 17 clues that bring you step by step closer to the killer
• A closed crime case to solve yourself
• Deduction, logic, and the real feel of a detective
• Puzzle pleasure as a series

For everyone who has finished Murdle. For everyone who already knows if Alice is a killer. And for everyone who does not want to merely watch while somebody else solves the case.

An interactive crime puzzle in which the reader becomes the detective. Perfect for travel, vacation, and quiet evenings.

Also works as a standalone.

Difficulty: Advanced. The clues form a cascade of near-solutions. Experienced solvers should plan 10 to 30 hours; for fans of layered logic puzzles.

Every volume is a standalone case. New city. New victim. New name list. New perpetrator, hidden among thousands of ordinary identities.

Help Detective Hartmann in his other cases as well. A fitting Halloween gift for puzzle-mystery solvers, fans of investigative fiction, and anyone planning to spend a dark October night with a pencil and a highlighter.

Open the book. Find the killer.