We chat with author Bianca Marais about A Most Puzzling Murder, which is interspersed with riddles and puzzles that both Destiny and the reader must solve and is a one-of-a-kind mystery that will leave you guessing and gasping until the very last page!
Hi Bianca! How much of a nerd do you have to be to try write the ultimate nerdy novel?
A mega one, apparently! I was that kid who used to hide away under an umbrella with a towel draped over my head on family vacations just so I could get some peace and quiet to read. Not much has changed; I’m still that adult. I begin every morning with a cup of decaf in my ‘Hex the Patriarchy’ mug as I work through my list of puzzles: Spelling Bee, Wordle, Connections, The Mini, Letter Boxed and Octordle. And then I follow those up with a few Murdles and Einstein’s Riddles.
We have a really great escape room team (which has yet to be named), an awesome trivia team (called ‘You Can’t Make Sh*t Up, Stephen’ because my husband’s name is Stephen and he really likes to make sh*t up), and a games’ night group that can get pretty wild because everyone is super competitive.
What inspired you to write A Most Puzzling Murder?
I love challenging myself! So far, I’ve written historical fiction, book club fiction, dystopian fiction, fantasy and a thriller (this was the only novel that never got published, so apparently I suck at thrillers. Good to know!). As a writer, I’m what they call a pantser because I fly by the seat of my pants instead of plotting the whole book out. If I know what’s going to happen in a story, I have zero desire to sit down and write it.
I was curious to see if I could pants a closed room murder mystery if I set out not knowing who was going to die, who killed them, or why they did it. And it turns out that I could! All I had to do was create a kickass female protagonist, Destiny Whip, and give her a super interesting job as an enigmatologist, and then give her something she desperately wanted. After that, I set her free and just tried to keep up.
So pantsing a murder mystery wasn’t enough of a challenge? You how to throw in a whole host of puzzles and Choose Your Own Conundrum chapters as well?
Yes, exactly! I didn’t want the reader to be a passive participant in the story, peering over Destiny’s shoulder as she solved the mystery by herself. I wanted the reader to dive in with her and have the opportunity to solve all the clues, puzzles and riddles alongside her. I always assume my readers are smart, that they want to fully engage with the text and be challenged as much as my characters are.
My fellow nerd husband helped me come up with sixteen puzzles that the reader gets to solve throughout the book, all of which require different skillsets. If they get stuck, they can either email my main character for a clue (how cool is that!), or they can turn to the back of the book for the answers.
The Choose Your Own Conundrum chapters contain philosophical thought experiments to engage my readers’ critical thinking skills while they’re collecting clues that will aid them in their quest to beat Destiny to figuring everything out.
What’s the biggest challenge of the book for those who want to flex their synapses?
There’s an overarching puzzle throughout the novel that requires the reader to collect bits and pieces of it along the way before figuring out how to bring them all together to solve a larger mystery that relates to how the murderer did it.
So far, no one has reached out to say they solved it even though all the clues are all there if you’re paying enough attention.
I imagine that the people who solve it will end up with battered copies of the book that have been thoroughly marked up, scribbled in, flipped though, and lived in. And that makes me incredibly happy.
