Books Like Murdle: 5 Murder Mystery Puzzle Books to Give This Christmas
Someone on your list tore through a murder mystery puzzle book this year. You watched them do it at the kitchen table with a pencil and a cup of coffee, crossing off suspects, muttering about alibis. Now it is almost Christmas, and you are searching for books like Murdle, because the obvious gift is another one of the same thing, and you have no idea which one to pick.
Here is the problem with that search. "Deduction puzzle book" covers at least four different experiences. Some are logic grids. Some are floor plans. Some are giant elimination lists. Some are case files thick with transcripts and toxicology reports. A solver who loves one can bounce right off another, which is how a thoughtful gift ends up face down on a side table in February.
So this guide sorts five CMH Publishing deduction titles by what kind of solving they actually ask for. Every one is a real book or printable you can buy today, from our KA Stello and Lillian Jacobs imprints. For each, you get who it suits and who should skip it.
How to pick books like Murdle for someone else
Three questions get you most of the way there.
- Short cases or one long one? Some solvers want a puzzle they can finish before bed. Others want to disappear into a single case for two hours.
- Grid or prose? Logic-grid people like a structure to fill in. Narrative people want suspects who talk, and they want to catch someone in a lie.
- Print or paper? A paperback wraps. A PDF arrives in a minute and can be printed or marked up on a tablet, which matters a great deal if you are reading this on December 22.
If you are shopping for someone who has never solved one of these at all, our walkthrough on how to actually solve a murder mystery logic puzzle is a good thing to send along with the gift. It saves the frustrating first twenty minutes.
Crime Puzzle Files – Frozen Evidence: the one closest to a classic logic grid
This KA Stello title holds 25 fair-play cases set in winter places: ski lodges, ice hotels, Christmas markets, sleeper trains, polar stations. Each case file gives you the victim, the suspects and their motives, the evidence, a timeline, witness statements, and an actual logic grid to work. Difficulty climbs from easy starters to harder closing investigations, and the back of the book has full solution walkthroughs, not just answers.
Fair-play is the part worth repeating to whoever you are buying for. Every clue needed to solve the case is printed on the page. Nothing is withheld for a twist.
Best for the solver who likes marking a grid and following contradictions, and anyone who would enjoy a snowed-in setting in December. It is the most natural gift on this list for the week between Christmas and New Year.
Skip it if they find grids tedious and would rather just read testimony and make a call.
Murder at the Haunted Mansion: the one you solve with your eyes
Fifty whodunit cases from KA Stello, each built on an illustrated mansion floor plan. You read the suspects' statements, study the objects left around the scene, and work out exactly where every person was standing. Only one suspect was alone with the victim, and that person did it.
Each case runs two pages: illustrated crime scene, cast of suspects, individual clues, space to record your accusation. There is a worked example up front explaining the method, and complete illustrated answers in the back.
Spatial deduction is a genuinely different muscle from grid work, and people who are good at it tend to be very good at it. Fifty cases is also real volume. This is not a gift someone finishes on Boxing Day.
Best for visual thinkers, and for the solver who wants a lot of short self-contained cases rather than a few long ones.
Skip it if they prefer their mysteries in sentences. The floor plan is the puzzle here, not decoration.
See Murder at the Haunted Mansion
The Casebook of Detective Isadora Case: the one for the reader first, solver second
Twenty-five unsolved cases from KA Stello, written as confidential files. Deadly artisan festivals, suspicious vineyard inheritances, locked-room deaths, theater crimes, museum murders, wedding mysteries, eerie hotels. Each file carries suspect statements, clues, exhibits, bonus puzzles, and Detective's Notebook pages for recording your theories before you break the sealed solutions at the back.
Isadora Case arrives at the scene, studies the evidence, and gathers the testimony. The final deduction is left to you.
Of everything on this list, this is the one that feels most like reading a mystery novel that keeps stopping to ask what you think. If the person you are buying for shelves cozy mysteries and also likes puzzles, this is the overlap.
Best for mystery readers, cozy crime fans, and anyone who wants atmosphere along with the logic.
Skip it if they want pure mechanics and find narrative setup to be padding between the clues.
See The Casebook of Detective Isadora Case
The One Name Murder Mystery: the slow burn, in large print
This Lillian Jacobs title is the odd one out, and that is exactly why it works as a gift. There is one criminal, eighteen clues, and a suspect list of more than 11,000 names. You use the clues to eliminate the innocent, crossing off page after page until a single name is left standing.
It is printed in large print, which makes it the pick on this list for a parent or grandparent, or anyone who has quietly given up on small puzzle type. It is also deliberately not a quick read. The satisfaction is in the narrowing, the way the field shrinks and shrinks and then clicks.
Best for patient solvers, long winter evenings, travel, and gifting to older adults who want a real challenge in type they can comfortably read.
Skip it if they want variety. This is one case, and it is a commitment. Someone who likes finishing a puzzle in fifteen minutes will not enjoy it.
See The One Name Murder Mystery
Dead Letter Detective Case: the one that becomes an evening
A printable murder mystery game for adults from KA Stello, and the right answer when the gift needs to be an activity rather than a book. Six people attend a private executive retreat to finalize the sale of Vale House. By midnight the founder, Helena Vale, is dead. Everyone there was hiding something.
The download is a 54-page PDF holding the investigator briefing, a hotel floor plan, five suspect dossiers, interview transcripts, a coded handwritten letter, scene evidence, medical examiner and toxicology findings, key-card and phone records, staff reports, timeline and evidence-chain worksheets, an accusation form, graduated hints, and the full solution. It is built for one to four adults, rated medium to hard, and runs roughly 90 to 120 minutes.
There are no costumes and no assigned characters. Nobody has to host or act. You are investigators working a file, which is a relief for the many people who like mysteries but would rather not perform one.
Because it is an instant PDF, it is also the gift that still works when you have run out of shipping days. Print it, or load it into an annotation app and solve it on a tablet with a stylus.
Best for a two-person evening in, a small family game night after dinner, or a last-minute gift that needs to arrive today.
Skip it if they want something to unwrap, or they have no printer and no tablet they like marking up.
See the Dead Letter Detective Case
If you want to pair it with something
Two easy additions. For a lighter second gift in the same envelope, How to Catch a Killer from Lillian Jacobs is a printable elimination case rated easy, which makes it a gentler on-ramp for someone newer to deduction puzzles.
And if the person you are shopping for reads as much as they solve, a cozy mystery alongside the puzzle book is a good pairing. Our Emily K. Clark imprint covers that end of the shelf, including The True Killer of Lord Blackmere.
The short version
Grids and winter atmosphere, give Frozen Evidence. Visual thinker who wants fifty cases, give Murder at the Haunted Mansion. Reader who wants to be told a story and then asked a question, give The Casebook of Detective Isadora Case. Large print and a long haul, give The One Name Murder Mystery. An evening rather than an object, give the Dead Letter Detective Case.
All of them come down to the same pleasure, the one that got them hooked on their last puzzle book: reading carefully, eliminating patiently, and landing on the one answer that fits everything. You can see the full set in our murder mystery and deduction puzzles at CMH Publishing.