The Mystery Squad and the Mysteries of the Mystery Squad

The Mystery Squad is an interesting little series of semi-adventure gamebooks, published between 1984 and 1986. I say "semi-adventure gamebooks" because the only form of interactivity is trying to solve puzzles based on illustrations; they're halfway between a Choose Your Own Adventure book, and, I suppose, an Usborne Puzzle Adventure such as Murder on the Midnight Plane.

The Mystery Squad themselves are a thoroughly Blyton-esque outfit (indeed, the "interactivity" of their adventures is not dissimilar to The Famous Five and You, previously mentioned here, only considerably less boring): the narrator is Bodger Bacon, whose parents apparently hated him and his sister Beans, but not their brother James, and the final member of the squad is Casey, who in a blatant case of nepotism won the post of Chief of the Mystery Squad because his father is a DI. The Squad got up to eight adventures in all - including a serial vandal at the local carnival, a haunted castle that turns out to be a case of insurance fraud and a gang of antiques thieves - although if you compare the photographic covers on Demian's Gamebook Webpage it looks like the pictures may have been taken much closer together than the books were released. One wonders if any of the original models could be tracked down; the photos were taken by Peter Greenland, who appears to still be working as a professional photographer today.

The author, Martin Waddell, is better known for a large number of children's picture books such as Owl Babies and the Little Bear series; this was his only venture into any sort of interactive fiction. The covers also feature a banner proclaiming them to be a "Solve It Yourself" adventure, although this was apparently the only series ever to have such branding, and indeed the only sort of adventure gamebook the publishers ever came up with. (The copyright page claims the "Solve It Yourself formula" is copyrighted to Waddell, which... I'm not totally convinced would stand up in a court of law, but never mind.)

The series' puzzles are generally rather entertaining for their age range, and the author also allows himself to be a bit snarky if the reader gives an obviously wrong answer (effectively, each puzzle is just a multiple-choice quiz, although there are obvious limitations with the format; several of the puzzles just ask the reader whether or not they've managed to solve it before going on to the next section). Where the books stand out are with their illustrations, which are consistently of a very high standard (although the fourth book appears to have some kind of printing error which meant some of the illustrations got cut off). Apart from elevating the nature of the puzzles quite a bit, the reader receives a custard pie in the face for choosing one of the especially stupid options, and this is where the illustrator had particular fun, with the series featuring ever more elaborate pieings as it goes on, with later volumes featuring the player's illustrated avatar getting covered in a pie twice their size, getting hit by half a dozen pies simultaneously or having a gigantic trebuchet fling the pie at them. (The illustrator, Terry McKenna, also appears to still be active.) The book's 'outcome' is ultimately determined by a points system that works largely on trust, with points being given out per puzzle depending on how many incorrect references the reader went to before getting the right solution, whether or not they needed a hint, and getting pied automatically meaning no points awarded for that puzzle at all.

It is surprisingly tricky to pick out examples of the puzzles that work well in isolation, because a lot of them are connected to the text and require you to remember things from several sections ago. Still, I've picked out two I'm quite keen on from The Mystery Squad and Mr Midnight; one where you have to spot the clue left by the fairground vandal:

And one where you have to spot the alleged arsonist, then a few sections later have to look at it again to spot the clue which reveals why he's actually innocent:

The books these days go for wildly varying prices online, with some going for mere pennies and the final three fetching up to £15. I can't say any gamebook fan would be advised to seek out the entire series except for really avid collectors, but I suspect they deserve slightly more attention than they have received from the gamebook community over the years; they're short, granted, but are pitched perfectly for the intended age range and have production values as good as you are going to get out of a series such as this.