Five Minute Mysteries Reader by Kenneth J. Weber

by Ken Weber

Thirty-seven cases of murder and mayhem you can solve in under five minutes!

Genres: Mystery, Fiction, Short Stories, Mystery Thriller, Puzzles, Young Adult

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1989

Reviews

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

Boy if you don't get these old ass solutions out of my face. Half of these are completely random or contain random facts that the reader most likely has no clue about. chill.

[Fred Forbes · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thought this would be fun - just a bit of mind game for a break from Soduku. Well, first I discover it is a "YA or young adult series" so many character names are chosen more to amuse than elucidate. Then I find that many of the clues are based on British history (Canadian author) and some of the ones are a bit dated since the original book was 1978, this version issued in 1989. Others require a bit of arcane knowledge such as which side of a river would incur mineral deposits or how to translate a telegram based on 3 plays by Shakespeare. Many of the clues are not enough to solve and prove a case but often only enough to raise a suspicion. Guess I am watching too many British TV mysteries where they are led away in cuffs at the end. At any rate a solid effort but I won't be trotting out to get the others in the series; this one should hold me.

[Miss Sunshine girl · Rating 2 out of 5]

Iszonyatosan nehéz volt. A 37 rejtélyből csak kettőt találtam ki. Olyan ismereteket feltételez, amik egy átlag embernek nem feltétlen vannak meg, talán, ha USA hazafi, tudhatja némelyiket.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

Had some good ones but most of the mysteries were wayyyy too specific and hard. Like you had to know all about a certain niche subject to get it. So I was lost on most of the solutions 😂
Great read if you like very challenging mysteries though!

[Olivia · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was disappointed. The writing style bored me, so many of these solutions require really obscure knowledge, and a few had lewd jokes in them. Very tasteless. I ended up reading the solutions to the mysteries first to decide if it was worth my time to read the mystery. Not a book I would recommend.

[Cathy · Rating 1 out of 5]

I tackled this book during the 2-hour window of Trick or Treating last night. I finished it almost exactly as the last wave of kids came to my door. It was fine, but I was really bothered that so many of the stories required prior knowledge to solve. For example, you needed to know that the left bank of a river is the left bank when going downstream, and that someone raised in an orchard would never eat an apple off the ground. I like mysteries that I can solve without having to do research outside of the book.

[Chris Peckover · Rating 1 out of 5]

The prose is so boringly written that I found it hard to concentrate on the mysteries. Further, a vast majority of these mysteries are "cheap shots," pivoting off some arcane specialty knowledge that the average reader would never happen upon in life. A good mystery gives you everything you need to know. Very few of these stories do.

[Philip S · Rating 2 out of 5]

Several of these mysteries are not solvable unless you have specialized knowledge.

[Delvin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought this book was ok and not all that good. The reason I say this is because I thought this book was going to be interesting and boring to me. I know some people might think it's not boring but to me it was boring. To some chapters, the short story was good and bad. also, you needed to think to find the answers to the questions that showed at the end of the story. Some of the stories make you feel like you are reading for an exam and I don't like that. To the people that like hard, difficult mysteries in books, this is the perfect book for you.

[Doug Levandowski · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was...fine. Some of the mysteries are dreadful, based on one piece of esoteric knowledge that's clearly sign-posted in the short story. There were at least two where my wife and I (we read them together and tried solving them) said, to make something up, "Well, I don't know why, but it's obviously something to do with the fact that it says the lion was painted with brushstrokes starting at the flank."

But, some were clever! All in all, not upset. We got the next one to see if it improves. We had fun.

[Allie · Rating 1 out of 5]

like other reviewers stated, this book lacked a lot. many of the mysteries require specific knowledge to solve, which made them difficult and frustrating. I'll pass on reading the rest of the books in this series.

[Maddie Habeck · Rating 2 out of 5]

Like the other reviews said, you have to know certain specific random facts to get some of the answers. Like one you have to know the difference between Greek and Roman mythological figures... wild. Another one requires inferring about mosquitoes when they weren’t mentioned. Not great, y’all.

[Cherie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tricky. But realistic. I got a couple of them but the fine details slowed down my reading and I was reading for pleasure not an exam. Reminded me of being in law school studying criminal law.

[Judy · Rating 3 out of 5]

The short stories were enjoyable to read, but they weren't the type of mysteries that had enough clues to really figure out what happened, but still I enjoyed them.

[Michael Lortz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not bad. I'll give the author credit for coming up with so many interesting scenarios. That said, some are way too specific. It gets a 3 for effort.

[Aly Hetchler · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love these books!

[Adam Thomas · Rating 2 out of 5]

A fun idea, but I doubt most of them will take you the whole five minutes to solve! (except the ones that the reader has no way of solving...)

[Abby Sullivan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Meh

[Cynthia]

I didn’t enjoy this very much. Not my style I guess. I passed the book on to someone else who I thought would enjoy it more.

[Mike Shultz · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love little mystery stories like these. I guess that's why I get so annoyed when some of them are so bad. Out of the "37" (and yes, those quotes are intentional) mysteries in this book, about a dozen of them were good. When I say good, I don't mean that I solved it or that it was really hard or really easy. I mean that the text presented the necessary information, but I had to put some thought to it and figure out the answer. What else is there? You ask. What would make them bad?

Let me count the ways.

First, I couldn't count 3 of the 37 as good because they weren't in the book. Yes, a book that says there are 37 mysteries on the cover contains 34. Granted, this one (and only this one) is the publisher's fault; the book skips from page 96 to 105, cutting off right in the middle of a mystery. Annoying. Hence the "37" mysteries.

Spoilers follow, but these are the kind of spoilers you'll probably want to read.

Then there's the plainly and crassly insipid. One mystery revolves around a woman who claims to have smelled acetylene during a crime, yada yada yada. But--get this (sarcasm alert) slip-up on her part! While the detective is questioning her, he is eating a peanut butter and banana sandwich! And! She asks him WHAT KIND IT IS! Dun, dun, dah! Plainly, as any good detective would pick up on, ANY WOMAN WHO CAN SMELL ACETYLENE WOULD'VE BEEN ABLE TO SMELL PEANUT BUTTER AND BANANA and wouldn't have needed to ask what kind of sandwich it was! Ha! Criminal caught! Yessir, I'm not joking here! That was the answer printed in the back of the book. Never mind that maybe she was just being polite and asking what he was having for lunch. Never mind that this is a ridiculous extrapolation. Never mind that lots of factors might prevent someone from smelling something in a given situation. Am I bitter because I couldn't solve it myself? Wracked with bitter self-loathing over this revelation that my IQ is far lower than I had hoped and believed?

Ah, no.

Then there's the mystery in which the beekeeper was proved to be a liar. You see, the detective comes because someone heard a gunshot. The beekeeper claims that he was cleaning his shotgun and it went off by accident because a bee flew in his face. Never mind the fact that it would be titanically stupid to clean a gun while its loaded. Never mind that it makes no sense that swatting at a bee would somehow hook his finger into the trigger guard and pull the trigger. No, that's not why the detective knew he was lying. The detective knew because it was NIGHT TIME, and BEES DON'T FLY AT NIGHT, as every beekeeper should know. (And would therefore be titanically stupid to make up such a lie.) That's not the problem in this one. The problem is that I read the answer, then reread the story. Night time? No mention of it being night in the story. Never says it's dark. Not even any mention of the detective using a flashlight as he searched the property. No mention of house lights on. No mention of him asking the beekeeper why the heck he would clean his gun outside in the dark. You see, the story just makes one passing reference to the detective's car's headlights at the beginning of the story. In other words, the "mystery" was not in a set of facts that one had to figure out. The mystery was in HIDING KEY INFORMATION FROM THE READER by the manner in which the text was (unnaturally) written. That's no fun, friends. That's stupid. (And in a later mystery, the author comes right out and admits to it, saying that you can "deduce from the text" that a plane was flying upriver when it would've been obvious to the point-of-view character and should've been incorporated into the text. On that one, I figured it out anyway, but I still didn't like it.

Then there's the one that revolves around the "fact" (yes, I'm using quotes correctly again) that the salt water in the Dead Sea is SIX TIMES DENSER THAN NORMAL WATER. Huh? You mean, almost as dense as iron? Ah, yes, THAT would explain why the scientist on the boat was lying about being a scientist. He should've KNOWN that he would break his neck from diving into the iron-like waters of the dead sea. (I think the author confused "six times more salt than sea water" with "six times denser than water", but that's just a guess. You know, the difference between 1.24 and 6.0 -- that tricksy science stuff! It's too hard to get your facts straight on stuff like that! But it sure is a good idea to build an entire mystery around it.

There's more, but if I haven't made my point by now, I'm not going to.

The sad thing is, I enjoyed the book for those 12 good ones. But I sure wish I could find a book of these things in which at least half of them were good!

** And now, after posting this, I glanced over some other readers' reviews. I feel bad for the people who said that some of them were just so hard... apparently not realizing that it wasn't their fault!

[Aria Raymaakers · Rating 3 out of 5]

I became interested in Ken Weber's "5 Minute Mysteries" after reading Donald J. Sobol's "2 Minute Mysteries". As much as I enjoyed reading Weber's series of brilliantly crafted murder mysteries, I found the solutions to be rather far-fetched. I began to doubt the realisticness of the solutions and quickly lost interest in the book. As much as I admire the writing style of Weber, if you are looking for a book purely to play detective, I would look elsewhere.

[Eric Wallace · Rating 3 out of 5]

Picked this up in a consignment store while my Sweetie was trying on potential outfits. I immediately remembered how I loved these kind of books as a kid, and read every one I could get my hands on. And soon I remembered the difficulty of trying to pause at the end of the story to figure it out *before* turning to the solutions in the back, and the alternating frustrations of "How could you expect someone to know that?" and "Dang, I should've caught that easily!"

Each story is well-written in a compact way to introduce you to the relevant characters and situations with ease. Weber does a great job with the "show, don't tell" model of story-telling, and each new character is unique and likable, or at least: not uninteresting. (A note to the American reader: the author is Canadian, so don't be surprised by a few "unusual" words or spellings.)

The challenge of the mysteries is quite varied, ranging from ones that are immediately obvious, to some real head-scratchers that require the reader to have some domain-specific knowledge (including, for example, livestock behavior and mythology). I don't know if this variety is a weakness or a strength. I suppose it would be altogether disappointing if every story was far too challenging to grasp, or no mystery at all--so perhaps the varied challenges keeps the reader entertained.

And, in the end, that's exactly what the book did: it kept me entertained, one story after another, until I reached the end.

[Wendy · Rating 1 out of 5]

From the back cover: "Every five minutes, another crime is committed. Can you trap a murderer, catch a thief, expose a blackmailer, spot a deception?" The answer is no, you cannot. Why? Because most of these stories require specialized knowledge most people don't have. If you are privy to proper flag flying etiquette or understand that living near a swamp means warm weather brings swarms of mosquitoes, you might be able to solve a few of these. However, you will still be left wondering how figuring out the deceptive characters connects with the storyline. They don't. Motives are never explained. My favorite is about a woman who goes to a farm in order to insure a racehorse. She finds the owner lounging around in the back orchard where he is eating apples off the ground. He explains that he grew up in orchards. Spoiler: He is deceptive because anyone who has grown up in an orchard knows you don't eat apples that have fallen to the ground. They are diseased. Okay...so what?? Pass this one up.

[Summer · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's always nice to read a fresh book of whodunit mysteries and logic puzzles. Some of these were old ones with a fresh coat of paint, though! I've already heard the ones about the seventeen cars, the weighing of the fake ball, the truck under the bridge, and the set of one who always tells the truth and one who always lies. A couple more were logic puzzles dressed up with annoyingly vague phrasing, and some depended on knowledge of greyhound racing, cold weather, cow biology, or tediously detailed Shakespeare quotes.

One didn't have a satisfactory solution - there's no way I would let someone break a crystal on my necklace with a hammer! There's no such thing as a necklace strung on one continuous wire that couldn't possibly be taken apart - the wire had to have the ends attached to each other somehow when all the beads were strung!

But hey, there were 37 to choose from, and I liked the little vignettes with different characters - excellent characterization and good scenery. Overall, I had fun.

[C.O. Bonham · Rating 3 out of 5]

So Frustrating. Read each story twice. Give up. Look at the answers. And then find out that it was the most obvious solution. Sometimes.

Some of the mysteries do take a bit of math, others you need to know a snippet of trivia and other will make you feel as dumb as dirt.

But still have to say that this is some really good writting. The author actually takes the time to flesh out his charaters and describe his settings. He leaves you feeling like you have read the begining of really good mystery novel after only three pages. to bad he doesn't continue any one plot or even have reoccuring characters. I would seriously like to read a full leangth detective novel from this author.

[Leew49 · Rating 2 out of 5]

Each mystery in this book is just a few pages long, designed to be a brain teaser along the lines of Isaac Asimov's Black Widowers or the Encyclopedia Brown stories for children. There is some humor, and the settings and even characters are pretty well done given the length of the pieces. The problem that I encountered was that so many of the solutions required some rather esoteric knowledge on the part of the reader. It was sometimes frustrating to read a story--even a five-minute story--only to discover that the mystery could not be solved without an in-depth knowledge of the history of Saracenic chess boards or the sleeping habits of ruminants.

[Genny · Rating 3 out of 5]

Most of these stories were pretty good, a few i didnt like, around 3 or 4 to be honest. I think that was just personal preference though. Otherwise these were still pretty interesting and fun to try. It might be easy for pro mystery sleuths but i liked it enough. It's only getting three stars though because i skipped two stories that just did not catch my attention at all even when reading them, or trying too. If it's too tedious for even me to read then :/

[Hayley · Rating 5 out of 5]

These books are fun. They are like short story puzzles. You read a couple pages on some sort of mystery and then you are given a question to answer about it. Sometimes you are expected to know things that I'm pretty sure are not common knowledge, but they are great books for the "armchair detective" (yes I know it is really dorky to use that phrase).

[SeriouslyJerome · Rating 3 out of 5]

Brain teasers for the murder mystery set. Only a handful are actually doable unless you have a particular expertise on a certain subject - like, how well do you know your apples, & how they grow? But even without specific knowledge, the reader can pick out the information offered by the author to know it has something to do with the solution.

[Ren · Rating 3 out of 5]

I used to love doing these in school so this was a fun book. I didn't get them all since some of the things you had to know to solve the mysteries were in areas I know little about, but it was still an interesting read and made me use my brain a little.