Sherlock Holmes Escape Book: Adventure of the British Museum

by Charles Phillips, Melanie Frances

This is the second title in a series of Sherlock Holmes Escape a unique, new form of puzzle books, in which the reader must solve the puzzles to escape the pages. Inspired by the urban craze for escape rooms, where players tackle challenges while trapped in a locked room, this is an escape room in the form of a locked filled with codes, ciphers, riddles and red herrings, plus an ingenious Hieroglyphic Code Wheel set into the cover. Taking on the role of Sherlock Holmes, in this new adventure readers find themselves trapped with Watson in the Enlightenment Gallery of the British Museum after a curator collapses in the Egyptian Collection. With King George V due to arrive at the nearby tube station, and rumors of an anarchist plot, Holmes and Watson must find their way through the museum, and fathom the involvement of both Mycroft and Colonel Sebastian Moran, if they are to win their freedom and save the day.

Genres: Mystery, Fiction, Puzzles

136 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2021

About the author

There is more than one author by this name on Goodreads

Charles Phillips (b. 1962) is an established writer of popular history, a contributor to Cassell's Dictionary of Modern Britain as well as to the Chronicle of Britain and several illustrated stories.

He has a keen interest in the mythology and history of the great Maya and Aztec civilizations and was a key writer on Time Life's Myth and Mankind series.
Phillips is a graduate of Oxford University, and holds an MA from the University of Westminster.

See also:
Charles Phillips, 1787-1859
Charles Phillips, Goodreads author, Historical Fiction
Charles Phillips, b.1948, American history

Reviews

[Mike Futcher · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Adventure of the British Museum was an impulse buy during a trip to London a couple of months ago – appropriately enough, from the gift shop of the British Museum. I don't regret the purchase, but I probably would never have bothered if not for that whim. The book's a fun little diversion and, in truth, that's all it needs to be.

The puzzles are easy enough at first, which helps build your confidence, but the repeated 'turn-the-wheel-to-match-the-hieroglyph-to-the-letter' instructions were facsimiles of puzzles rather than puzzles; they're impossible to get wrong, and the deciphering gets laborious. Happily, the puzzles get a bit tougher towards the end of the story, though there was one (the sheet music) that just seemed completely non-intuitive, and I had to resort to the 'Hints' page at the end just to even get close to an idea of what I needed to do. There was also a straight-up 'find x' equation that unexpectedly had me trying to remember what I was taught in GCSE Maths class half a lifetime ago.

But where I really faltered was with the story: I just had a hard time buying any of it and couldn't get invested. The Sherlock Holmes trappings are superficial but agreeable enough: codes, clues, hidden passages, disguises and so on, though neither Holmes nor Watson really had anything of the taste or colour of Arthur Conan Doyle's originals. The prose is also crude ("you sit long-sufferingly", for example) and painfully functional, whereas Doyle was ornate and yet very readable.

The storytelling left a lot to be desired: anarchists are planning to assassinate the King, but randomly decide to let Sherlock Holmes know of this and feed him a series of arbitrary clues in the British Museum to give him a chance to foil them. The villain just tells Holmes in a note that she wants to give him "a chance to stop the plot" for no reason whatsoever, and it was really hard for me to stay on board with what was going on. I don't expect Conan Doyle levels of plotting in what's essentially a façade for a puzzle book, but there should be something. The puzzles are the book's raison d'être, and they are just fine. The concept's just far too confected for my tastes.

[Brian · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this book while perusing the local bookshop. It is like a "choose your own adventure novel" but instead of choosing a path, you solve puzzles and your answers send you in different directions. The puzzles start off easy enough and gain complexity by the end. There were two puzzles where I cheated and used hints... even needing finally to look up the solutions. I spent several hours (i.e. staying up WAY too late) to finish the adventure.
It has many great nods to the Sherlock stories, British history, and even some subtle hints which I would have missed, if the book hadn't later pointed them out afterwards.
If you are a puzzle solver, I recommend the book quite highly. The idea of tying the puzzles together in this manner was very entertaining and I would purchase more by the author in a heartbeat.

[Katy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Perhaps I lack the patience, but the story and puzzles (and the excessive page turning) seemed unnecessarily complex, and took away from the fun. Even the wheel gets tedious to use. I like the concept of a choose your own adventure with puzzles though.

[Lefteris Knt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Καλύτερο από το πρώτο βιβλίο της σειράς! Με πιο έξυπνους γρίφους και ωραία ιστορία!

[Steven Barrett · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this Escape Room book you play the role of Sherlock Holmes, who becomes trapped in The British Museum. Your goal is to escape the British Museum whilst also trying to stop an assassination attempt on the King's life.

Similar to a “choose your own adventure” book, you decide your path however your decisions are based on the solutions to the puzzles presented to you throughout the adventure rather than personal choice. There is a good mixture of puzzles from riddles, mathematical and even picture based puzzles. There are hints at the back of the book as well as the solutions to help you when you get stuck. Most entries will include a “from” page to let you know you have got the correct solution and are on the correct path however the plot does diverge at critical points and based on my playthroughs there are 3 different endings.

This book does a very good job of immersing you into the British Museum setting. The individual rooms are very well described and many of the puzzles incorporate the themes of the rooms in which they are set. There is also a map feature which is utilized quite well.

The USP of this book series is the decoding wheel on the front which you use in multiple puzzles to translate the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs found around the museum into numbers, letters or even colours.

The biggest weakness of the book is the story, which is quite good however like most puzzle books, the story’s main purpose is to serve as a vehicle for the puzzles.

I would recommend this book to any puzzle fan, people who like the Professor Layton series will enjoy this book.

[Reneaue · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a clever Escape room book, or more accurately an interactive/choose your own path book. It is a Sherlock Holmes mystery that leads you through a guided tour of the British Museum to solves clues in the form of puzzles. The puzzles are pretty simple, in that even a middle grade student would be able to solve. As you get further, the puzzles do step up the level of difficulty, but nothing that would tax the average puzzle aficionado.

Having picked this book up just after visiting the British Museum in London (from the Sherlock Holmes museum on Baker street no less), I found that the details nicely echoed the setup and artifacts found at the Museum. I must have missed the King's Reading Room, but I did spend a substantial amount of time in the Egyptian exhibit halls. Many of the illustrations were of pieces currently on display in these exhibits.

The overall length of the book is ~136 pages. but working through the book may take several hours. The puzzles do get a bit monotonous, so you will probably won't finish it in a single sitting. I enjoyed the book overall, but found it to be targeted for a young adult audience. If you enjoy Sherlock Holmes and doing simple puzzles, this book should be on your shelf.

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Good luck - keep your wits about you! The game is afoot."

Rating: 3 ½ ⭐

- Alright, this one honestly kept me intrigued for the entirety of the book, picked it up and didn't put it back down until I finished it (about 4-5 hours, for me atleast). It was interesting, well-written and for me this was a first of these kind of books. I loved it!

- We started with some easy puzzles, but nearing the end, boy those were CONFUSING, but I spent some time on them and did some, but in no way would I have been able to do the music notes puzzle. Besides that, the rest was solveable, not easy though. I loved to forget about life and all while reading this book. The story itself is also interesting, so people should definitely check this book out!

- The reason it's not that highly rated is because I felt I wanted more outcomes? That more than one choice could completely make you go in a different direction. That would be my biggest critique. And it's just not as high overall 'cause it didn't speak to me as much. (Yes, it was good, I really enjoyed it, but I'll probably forget about it in the next two days or so).

[Charlene - Coffee and a Book · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was fun, although it does take quite a while to get through. There are a couple dozen or more puzzles you need to solve in order to get to an end, so I spent 3 or 4 days working on it because my brain got fatigued after a while, though they were not back-to-back days but spread out over about 3-4 weeks. I was able to solve most of the puzzles or at least figure out what I was supposed to do even if I didn't come up with the right answer right away, but some completely stumped me and even the hints didn't help. The hardest part was knowing what to take notes of, not knowing what you might need to know later, especially if you take longer breaks like I did. A lot of fun overall though I doubt I'll try to find another path in the future.

[Lindsey Hilker · Rating 5 out of 5]

Heard about these books on TikTok and I had to try it out. While the plot isn’t what these books are about, I loved how it was kind of like a choose your own adventure book and I had to solve riddles/mysteries in order to continue through the book. I found it was definitely a one-sitting kind of book and I definitely had to use the clues/answers in the back of the book a couple of times, but I thoroughly enjoyed myself. I highly recommend if you’re looking for a fun afternoon activity or for something different.

[Chantielle Hanson · Rating 2 out of 5]

As an escape room or puzzle book goes this one was good, I've never done one of them before.... The things I like about escape rooms is doing them with other people, and since I was reading this alone, I didn't care for it as much. Also, I often read to relax and trying to solve all the puzzles wasn't very relaxing, but it was a good brain workout.

[Spyros Stavroulakis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Δεν είχε ξαναπέσει στα χέρια μου κάτι παρόμοιο, πλάκα είχε. Η ιστορία ήταν ενδιαφέρουσα, οι περισσότεροι γρίφοι ήταν ψιλοαπλοί, αλλά σε μερικούς πραγματικά δυσκολεύτηκα.

[Neha Nagda · Rating 4 out of 5]

My first escape book . It was quite heavy with puzzles but I wish there was more references to the museum itself

[Johanna · Rating 2 out of 5]

Weirdly disappointing. I enjoyed the setting a lot more than the previous volume, at the London Waterworks, but the path and puzzles here were uneven. Through the first half to two-thirds of the book, it doesn't matter what choices you make, because you're redirected to the same page no matter which decision you make. The puzzles noticeably jump in difficultly at the end instead of gradually ramping up. Watson seems smarter than you (as Sherlock) half the time.

I did enjoy the number of times Mycroft saves the day and laughs at Sherlock. Not nice, but funny.