Sherlock Holmes Escape Book: Adventure of the Analytical Engine: Solve the Puzzles to Escape the Pages

by Melanie Frances, Charles Phillips

The third title in this ingenious series of Sherlock Holmes Escape Books, The Adventure of the Analytical Engine is an exhilarating combination of escape room, puzzle book and adventure story. Inspired by the urban craze for escape rooms, where players tackle puzzles while trapped in a locked room, it is an escape room in the form of a locked book, filled with codes, ciphers, riddles and red herrings, and a clever Code Wheel set into the cover. Taking on the role of Sherlock Holmes, in this new adventure readers find themselves trapped with Watson and aspiring engineer Henrietta Prince in the grand home of Bertram Alfreds, the last surviving child of Lord Byron. After being lured to the residence by an intriguing mechanical music box, Holmes and Watson must find their way through the mansion, foil a deceitful plot to destroy Henrietta's lifelong work – a replica of Babbage's Analytical Engine – and fathom the involvement of Moriarty, if they are to win their freedom and save the day.

Genres: Mystery, Fiction

136 pages, Paperback

Published September 1, 2022

About the author

Mélanie Francès was born in Paris, France, in 1972. She grew up in France, but lived for four years in New Delhi, India, as a child. As a college student, she discovered her gift for writing and developed an interest in the arts and American literature. She later moved to Montreal, Canada to pursue her graduate studies at Concordia University and obtained an M.A. Degree in English and Creative Writing. In 2001, she published her first chapbook of poetry, The World is in your Head, with Ginninderra Press in Australia. She now lives in Maryland where she is currently working on her first novel about the immigrant experience and the birth of the movies at the beginning of the century in the USA. She is the founder of the website "My Book Hunter".

Reviews

[Stephanie Ridiculous · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another fun romp of puzzles with good variety. I think this one was far easier than the first escape book, but I'm not sure if that was a good or bad thing. Book 1 spits you out in many different ways if you didn't get something right, where this one was much more forgiving. This took way less time, too, which may or may not be a good thing.

All in all, a fun date night activity!

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ένα ενδιαφέρον βιβλίο, με εύκολους αλλά και δύσκολους γρίφους, που ολοκληρωνόταν σε λίγες ώρες (όπως θα έπρεπε κιόλας).
Θα μου άρεσε ιδανικά να έχει εναλλακτικούς δρόμους που θα διασταυρώνονταν τελικά, αλλά και έτσι είμαι ικανοποιημένη!

[Valerie Jackson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This puzzle book was quite fun! I want to do more in this series.

[Johanna · Rating 3 out of 5]

It feels as though there are fewer puzzles and paths in this one than in the previous books in the series. I know some of the previous have had more possible different endings. Too often, I was just following the pages instead of feeling as though I really had choices. I liked the premise, and I'm sure it's difficult to construct a book of this type, but after working through it all in one session, the thing I most prominently remember are the various mentions of Holmes being tired.

[S.Matt Read · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'm guessing this is a decent read for elementary age kids. I love the cover and the book hums along. Wrong answers guide you back to the main story. I'm not a kid, but my kid rating might be three stars.

As a puzzle enthusiast, I just wasn't impressed. Lots of puzzles were dialed in. The big final puzzle at the end (no spoilers!) was by comparison such a leap in effort (it required keeping tabs throughout the book) that it felt misplaced.

The writing was stiff. I've read tons of these books. I've read the Choose Your Own Adventure and Time Machine series, as well as MAZE by Christopher Manson, all of which included either fun characters or detailed, tension-filled writing or both.

Besides the end, was it possible to go "off track"? I don't know. Along the way, I checked out a few other "wrong" paths and was always brought back to the main one. One of the things I loved when I was a kid was how one book could have so many branching stories. Missed opportunity.

[Eleah · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting and unique take on the "choose your own adventure" genre. Using Sherlock Holmes as the concept for the story was perfect; who else would work so wonderfully for what I'm fairly sure is the first of its kind?
The puzzles were just the right amount of difficulty to require me to think but not be stumped. Having to use the code wheel built into the cover of the book was the icing on the cake. I love something tactile in my puzzles.
I honestly hope to see more escape books like this in the future, whether they still feature the great detective or go in a different direction, the concept is just a brilliant one.

[Annette · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was a very terrible idea to start this book on a Sunday evening. I just had to keep on reading, keep on playing, keep on moving forward. One more riddle, one more puzzle, one more secret message. I really enjoyed myself a lot and I loved how diverse the riddles and puzzles were. Some were easy, some were a little hard, some were quick, some took a little more time. However, I already can't wait to pick up the other books in this series. Although, I will have to make sure to do so at a more convenient time.

[Kara · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m giving this three stars because the puzzles were a bit uneven - some incredibly easy and a couple that required a big leap to solve. I also didn’t like how mean Sherlock was to Watson (especially in his thoughts). I didn’t remember Sherlock being so contemptuous of him in the canon but maybe my memory is incorrect. Otherwise, I thought this was fun and I liked the decoding wheel and the illustrations too.

[Taryn · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fun concept and some of the puzzles were good, but they tended to bounce from super easy to “how could you possibly figure that out?” and back, so I would have appreciated a little more consistency in level or have them increase in difficulty as the story unfolded. I would read another one though!

[Emma Jackson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty good puzzle book overall. The story was good and the puzzles were quite inventive. I'd be interested to try more from this series. My only criticisms were that the text is a bit small throughout and a couple of the puzzles were written in a way that made them difficult to solve due to the font chosen.

[Mark Kloha · Rating 2 out of 5]

I like the idea of this type of book. The font though was too small. The numbers for clues were not readable. On clue was to find all the bold letters - the bold letters were not discernible as bold letters.

[Katie Dickerson (DeMaio) · Rating 4 out of 5]

(4.5 stars) Choose-your-own-adventure style mixed with an escape room; puzzles and codes to solve, all while following a plot; the level of difficulty of the puzzles was PERFECT; had so much fun doing this, as always.

[Jenna · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’ve never done an escape book before so this was a fun little activity

[Sammy · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[Kathleen Mulligan · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fun little Goosebumps/Sherlock Holmes crossover, with some puzzles of very uneven difficulty!