The Mystery of Gorse Manor. Puzzle Mysteries Collection

Eight-year-old Greta Sullivan has an unusual fascination with the macabre. While travelling by train to Gorse Manor, the country home of her aristocratic grandparents, she finds herself pondering a curious question: what colour is a dead person’s face?

On the same train is Inspector Shakespeare — no relation to the playwright — recently transferred from London after stepping on the wrong toes in high places. A huge man covered in scars and muscles, he looks more suited to underground boxing rings than polite society. Yet beneath the intimidating exterior lies a brilliant investigator with exceptional powers of observation. Their paths cross almost immediately.

That very night, a daring robbery takes place at Gorse Manor: someone has stolen the precious jewels of Lady Matilda, Greta’s fragile and eccentric grandmother, who spends her days surrounded by doctors, servants, and nervous anxieties. There is a witness — Greta herself.

During the night she saw a pale, ghostly figure with milky skin and frog-like eyes fleeing from the Manor and disappearing into the darkness. No one believes her. Inspector Shakespeare quickly takes control of the investigation, despite the hostility of the local police who resent interference from a city detective. As he begins questioning the inhabitants of the Manor, one fact becomes increasingly clear: everyone is hiding something.

Among the suspects is Alex McKennon, the Manor’s gardener — a nervous, secretive man who soon becomes the prime suspect. But before the truth can emerge, McKennon is found murdered on the banks of the river that flows beside the estate. The simple theft of jewels suddenly becomes a far more dangerous mystery.

And matters grow worse when Greta disappears, having secretly continued her own investigation into the mysterious spectre. Now Inspector Shakespeare must solve not one, but several intertwined puzzles: the stolen jewels, the murdered gardener, the missing girl. But the greatest mystery remains the spectre itself — a ghost from another time whose presence seems to tie together every secret within the Manor.

Because in this house of shadows, nothing — and no one — is what it seems.

The Mystery of Gorse Manor is part of the Puzzle Mysteries series, a highly engaging middle-grade collection (age 10+), created by a remarkable group of acclaimed Italian authors from the Book on a Tree collective. Each stand-alone novel is a brilliantly constructed interactive puzzle that reinvents the classic whodunit with fresh, contemporary twists. With no supernatural shortcuts, every mystery is solved through logic, deduction, and sharp observation. Readers are treated as real detectives, invited to gather clues, untangle deceptions, and solve the case alongside unconventional young protagonists. From gothic Alpine boarding schools and isolated islands to luxury trains and high-pressure contemporary concerts, each book offers a distinctive setting and a fresh angle on the genre. In this series, every clue matters — and every reader becomes the detective.