“An Almost Forgotten Classic”: How The Baffle Book Influenced Modern Mysteries

The Baffle Book may be one of the most influential mystery books ever written. Before Minute Mysteries and Clue, Lassiter Wren and Randle McKay allowed people to solve puzzling mysteries. Its release led to success and the expansion of solve-it-yourself mysteries. The Baffle Book contains diagrams, fingerprints, signatures, maps, and more. It presents itself as a parlor game to play with friends. According to G. K. Chesterton, the aim of a mystery story is not darkness but light. Chesterton also says that the soul of detective fiction is not complexity but simplicity.

• The Baffle Book may be one of the most influential mystery books ever written.
• The Baffle Book seems to contain almost everything that appears in mystery puzzles after it: diagrams, fingerprints, signatures, maps, and more.
• According to G. K. Chesterton, “the aim of a mystery story, as of every other story and every other mystery, is not darkness but light.”

Source: Crime Reads  | 
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