Whodunit Math Puzzles

by Bill Wise, Lucy Corvino (Illustrator)

Help! A series of outrageous crimes must be solved--and only someone with superior math and logic skills can do it. That means you , right? Count on an exciting time when you join law enforcement's finest--Midville Police Chief Arthur Smart and 12-year-old junior detective Cal Q. Leiter--as they uncover scam artists, catch vandals, nab hit-and-run drivers, and unravel many more mysteries. Just numbers are the key to unlocking the answers!

· How much money did Gertrude Gessler leave in her will to divide among her four nephews?
· What tricks did the carnival vendor use to cheat the Chief's cousin in a game of luck?
· Who vandalized the Mayor's office while she was away--and how can you prove it with arithmetic?

What are the odds you can figure these out? Pretty good--if you read carefully and think hard, the facts all add up.

Genres: Childrens, Mathematics

96 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

Reviews

[Scott Evans · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fun, easy math puzzles with cute little stories.

[Mo · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm a therapist at a nursing home looking for materials to use with my clients. This book contains a bunch of short mysteries that can be solved using math processes. First off, the stories seem pretty juvenile for the intended audience (and consequently far to juvenile for my clients). I feel like most of the kids who are at an appropriate age to figure out the solutions would be insulted by the language and content. Some of them were pretty simple, but others were pretty complex for kids. I decided not to use any of these puzzles for my clients because of the language/content and because the stories are mostly 3+ pages in length and would be hard to 1) pay attention to 2) pull out the pertinent information and 3) know how to manipulate that information into a solution. Too bad really, because I liked the idea of it.