Quiz Time—Fantasy Whodunnit

I love a good mystery novel. Even better, I love a good speculative fiction whodunnit.

Time for a quiz, I thought.  Science fiction mystery novels.

So I started writing the quiz.  Isaac Asimov’s Caves of Steel, Vernor Vinge’s Marooned in Real Time.  They were easy.

I need a minimum of five novels for a quiz.  I googled some more. And stopped, realising that I hadn’t read many of the more modern science fiction mysteries.

O…kay.  Science fiction mystery quiz on hold until I’ve read more of the SF mysteries that have been released in the last ten years, not in the last fifty.

But … I have read some fantasy mysteries more recently.  So, let’s do a quiz about that instead.

This is a mix of urban fantasy, Flintlock fantasy, and what I would call traditional fantasy.  They’re not all murder mysteries.  In at least one of the stories, it’s not a traditional murder but the protagonist is searching for someone. (And that’s as many clues as you get.  :-))

These books are from our bookshelves.

Mystery One

Someone is disembowelling children.  Not only that, they’re tattooing the arms (and thighs) of the victims, from wrist to elbow.  Investigating the deaths is a young member of the policing force.  Her two companions in the investigation are the man who killed her friends when she was younger, and a dragon.

Mystery Two

The protagonist is a constable at the Met (London Metropolitan Police).  While standing guard over a murder site one morning (the victim was beheaded), he speaks to a witness.  There’s just a slight problem.  The witness is dead.

Mystery Three

The protagonist makes a living finding dead people, seeing how they died.  She gets called in to find the body of a missing woman who was murdered in what appears to be a murder-suicide.  Except it wasn’t. It turns out both the victims were murdered.  And in fact, the female victim’s sister had also been murdered a few months back.  And then the mother of the two girls is found beaten to death.

Mystery Four

Protagonist is disgraced magician, who draws pictures that tell the truth.  He is forced into taking a lowly-paid job with the town coroner, sketching the newly deceased. His truthful sketch of a young, dead girl shows the child was from a wealthy family, and murdered.

Mystery Five

The protagonist—who lives a double life as both herself and her private detective twin brother—takes a job hunting for a missing aristocrat, who has run off with a mysterious machine that everyone is looking for, including the all- powerful patent office.

How did you go?

Answers next week.

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