Usborne Puzzle Adventures: Murder on the Midnight Plane - Part 1
The latest entry in the increasingly irrelevant Pagescan Adventures: Let’s Read sequence, which shouldn’t really have had even one entry here, let alone four. Now featuring death!
Usborne Puzzle Adventures - charm and bane of the children of the 90s. And late 80s, as it turns out. These stories, short, colourful, and cartoonishly-drawn in every sense, are the vehicles for various classic puzzles and logic problems… or possibly the story is the vehicle for the logic problems. It’s hard to say which is the most important in these books; there is a strong story thread, but sometimes it’s clear that they were just padding the page count out to fit in another puzzle, so at the end of the day, both are significant. Solving the puzzles is more or less required to understand the flow of the story, but on the other hand, if you didn’t want to solve puzzles you’d just read a real book. It really is a lot like a video game in that sense. There’s a story and you’ll have to solve obstacles related to that story, but occasionally there’ll be obstacles for the sake of it. Well, it’s like an adventure game, anyway. And isn’t that what we’re all here for? The only real difference here is that you have as much of a role in solving the puzzles as I do, which is none at all, as if you really didn’t care you could just skip to the next page whereas in a video game you’d have to cheat and look on GameFAQs.
But anyway! To conclude this introduction, today we are reading what may well be the last of these stories I dissect for this community - chiefly as I don’t have any more - and which is also the last in the omnibus edition of the first three entries in the Usborne Puzzle Adventures series that I possess. The third ever written - Murder on the Midnight Plane. If you’ve read my previous three entries, you will know that actual explicit murder and indeed real danger and serious injury have so far not featured at all in the series, and indeed would not necessarily continue to do so, as I also looked at #23 on here and that was incredibly goofy. It seems like there was actually a spin-off series with a slightly more serious tone, so maybe Murder on the Midnight Plane precipitated it… or maybe it didn’t? Although I’ve read this book, I actually don’t remember anything about it, not the plot, not the puzzles… actually, I do remember an early one featuring tsetse flies. But that’s it. This is as much a mystery for me as for anyone else, for which reason I’m quite stoked to reread it. So let’s get on and have another look at the omnibus cover, previously seen in my entry for Escape from Blood Castle - in fact, the next three images are all ripped from there, conveniently enough, which is also an excuse not to provide fresh commentary!
See, there’s a corpse right there on the cover. Presumably. Shouldn’t really need a magnifying glass to see it. Heh, you’ve got to love how suspicious he would’ve looked even before he died. The classic trenchcoat and fedora combo, instantly marking him out as a secret agent, private eye, member of an organised crime syndicate… probably a secret agent, that’s my guess. Seems more in-keeping with the UPA style.
Solve all the puzzles and you will solve the mystery? I’m not sure there really was much of a mystery in Escape from Blood Castle - that’s why they’re really called Puzzle Adventures, even though this omnibus says that they’re Mystery Stories (or, in the case of this back cover, “Solve Your Own” - solve your own what? Oh, so there really is a mystery!). The Curse of the Lost Idol had a mystery, fair enough, but while there were some plot devices towards the end of Escape from Blood Castle that could be considered mysterious, but they weren’t really the point of the book… and neither was escaping from Blood Castle, come to that. I deduce from this that Murder on the Midnight Plane will feature no murders and will be set at lunchtime. On a train.
The apparent (though not definite) change in tone for this book, as well as the presence of a real mystery, may be explained by the fact that it has a different author to Escape from Blood Castle. While Jenny Tyler wrote Usborne Puzzle Adventures #1, the actually mysterious #2 The Curse of the Lost Idol and #3 Murder on the Midnight Plane were both scribed by Gaby Waters, who at some point was the series editor for Usborne Puzzle Adventures. Graham Round continues to provide his usual jaunty, scribbly, colourful illustrations, although he mostly settled down a bit after Escape from Blood Castle.
So, let us begin our journey into the unseen.
Fasten your seatbelts, and sleep tight. Actually, no, don’t do either of those things, even though it’s a midnight plane. You won’t solve any mysteries that way!
We begin with our usual introduction to the young dopes we’re expecting to get anything done here, the doubly alliterative Spike Sprockett and Sam Sprockett. I hope we can rely on SS to solve our problems! Wait, no. …Also, wasn’t Spike the name of one of the evil-slash-bothersome Blood relatives in Escape from Blood Castle? Wow, this is an unpropitious start! And that’s before we get to the matter of these being the least identical twins ever. I mean, I know that twins aren’t always identical, and that male-female twins are never identical… but I at least expect there to be some family resemblance! They’ve both got freckles, and that’s it!
I kind of already feel like our heroes are the most suspicious characters we’re going to meet, but to be fair, so far they’re the only characters we’ve met. I should reserve judgement until I see what other freakish cohort of villains and idiots they’re lumped with while travelling unmonitored on a long air flight. An air flight which somehow is going to involve buried treasure.
I’m genuinely a little excited, actually. I really like murder mysteries but don’t remember this and have no idea who the murderer’s going to be, so it’s practically new to me. What exciting and thrilling events will transpire on this amazing adventure?
Oh. An airport terminal. This is our exciting and thrilling adventure. I, uh, can’t wait. Oh, that’s right, I’ll have to, it’s an airport. Even the twins, with the power of plot convenience on their side, are going to have to sit around for an hour before they can get out of this overcrowded corner of Hell.
Still, Capitol City International Airport seems like an interesting place. I wonder what country it’s meant to be in. There’s probably no point in asking, though; the Sprocketts’ homeland exists in the narrative solely for them to have somewhere to depart from. In much the same way we’ll never find out where the Los Mosquitos islands are, although they sound like they’re based on Las Malvinas a.k.a. the Falklands, but don’t say it too loud or you’ll cause an international incident. Still, I see, among the lots and lots of westerners, several people of a more Middle Eastern appearance… and also a guard over at the right who appears to be wielding a bayonet. They don’t go that far even today, at least as far as I know; the 80s must have been a pretty scary time for Capitol City, although at least they didn’t have the TSA groping them, as far as I can see. Although near the centre there are some officials dressed in what appear to be orange wizards’ robes. You don’t need security so much when you have magic.
Actually, the right-hand side of the page appears considerably less civilised… there’s a dog on the loose, there are sharks in the fountain! And in the lower-right corner there are two guys who… er… you know what, let’s just move on and do the puzzle.
As we can see, there are a heck of a lot of possible check-in desks. Worse, several of them are repeated with the only distinction between them being departure time. On a meta level, it seems likely that the solution is one of those, so that the departure time is actually important to working out when to leave rather than just irrelevant background detail, but worst yet is that the only image type my scanner will scan in kills the quality to the point where you at home can barely read them. On a meta level, though, well, it’s not a coincidence that only one of the companies advertised on the walls has an identifiable logo. Gotta be honest, though, terrible though it clearly is, Grottair looks like it has pretty cool planes, like something out of Stop the Pigeon. All aboard, with your pilot, Dick Dastardly… well, that doesn’t seem entirely unlikely in a book like this.
As ever, we have the extremely complex, mysterious, and difficult to decipher clues accompanying each puzzle. I’m writing this line without having looked at the clue yet, but I’m sure it couldn’t possibly let me down, knowing how reliable the quality of these clues always is.
…Okay, I’ve read it, and it is kind of helpful. I don’t know if they needed to mention the twenty-four hour clock, since literally only one of the flights listed is due to leave in the morning, which I guess is why nobody’s checking in yet. Plus another desk with no time listed at all. I think I know which one we can rule out. But which is in?
The only counter-intuitive thing is that the desks are numbered from right-to-left rather than vice-versa. But we all know that the real answer to the question is to point at the page and say “That one!”, so who cares about the numbers?
Banana milkshakes? Well, that compensates slightly for the long wait, but not for sitting around in a departure lounge full of freaks, weirdos, and neighbours who you have a poor enough relationship with not to know that you’re both going on holiday to the same place at the same time.
Oh wait, the flight’s even more delayed? I guess that Murder on the 9 O’Clock Plane didn’t have quite the same ring to it (not that it stopped 4:50 From Paddington). Still, at least Sam can entertain herself by Sherlocking it up and trying to figure out which of her noisy and unpleasant waiting companions will also be travelling companions. Improbably, all are disappointed or sympathetic, and not one of them is vociferously complaining to any member of staff they can get their hands on. Except those two brats, who literally have their hands on that poor woman. Actually, she kind of looks like she can handle them, so I’ll let it slide.
I really like this puzzle! It plays well to Graham Round’s tastes, I think - it requires him to draw a whole page full of crazy stuff with clues everywhere, and again, the text is well-integrated into the puzzle so both art and writing are taking some of the weight. I get the feeling that the clue isn’t going to be too helpful, so I’ll skip straight to that before I start working things out, but once again it’s a puzzle where it’s important to look back at a previous page for an important piece of information. Several, actually, if you can’t even remember which flight our heroes are meant to be on…
Pay attention to what people are saying. NO!!! I can’t believe they would make the answer rely on such obscure hints!
So yeah, it’s helpful to remember that our heroes are taking flight SW 013, originally scheduled to leave at nine and now delayed for three hours and thus set for… MIDN0:00, a fairly bland-sounding time. SW 015, conversely, was 08:45 and at a four-hour delay is now the later plane at 00:45, which must’ve been a major headache for the airline staff. I wonder what the cause of the delay was… maybe we’ll find out? Nah we’ll never find out.
So anyone with an SW 013 ticket is with our heroes. So is anyone who says they’re leaving at midnight or that they’ve been delayed by three hours. Lastly, there’s the shady guy in the green suit who was stalking our heroes on the previous page, and the explorer with his darling pet vulture - this suddenly feels very Escape from Blood Castle - and they don’t use any of these pointers but have tickets for TSETSE, which is our destination - to be fair, the SW 015 plane could also be going to Tsetse, but that’d be kind of redundant. I like the two surfer dudes at the back; theirs is probably the hardest case to work out, for a given definition of “hard,” but it relies on understanding that what was previously the earlier flight is now the later.
As for the bank robber and associate or the blind fellow shamefully left to struggle on the floor after dropping his cane, no clue. I mean that there is literally no clue. But Barney has helpfully informed us that planes which fly to Tsetse are required by law to carry thirteen passengers only, but they can’t serve a dinner course or one of their number will be fated to die afterwards. I kid, of course - I’m sure nothing like that could possibly happen. But anyway, what this means is that once we’ve counted thirteen passengers who are going to Tsetse, everyone else can go die in a fire as we’re never going to see them again.
So that’s the Sprocketts, Barney, punk and wife, Billy the kid, the doctor who doesn’t do brains, Ramsbottom, the explorer, the tourist couple at the top table, and one hippie. Oh yeah, and the bald guy in the natty suit. That looks like thirteen to me.
As I said, and - wait, what? You’re also giving away part of the answer to a later puzzle? That’s not how these are meant to work! This is a no-spoiler readthrough of this nearly thirty-year-old book!
Groan, can we not get on the midnight plane already? It’s getting late, I’m falling asleep here. A filler puzzle if ever there was one, there is basically no reason for this page to exist, save for that guy in the green suit to show up once again to try and lure these children away for base motives. The book itself comments on how easy the puzzle is, and it is! There’s barely even anything going on on the page. Anyway, since this puzzle is so easy, I wonder what the clue will be.
There are literally only two things you need to look for, and you’re as likely to forget either one of them as the other, but either way, it makes for a pretty simple puzzle without nearly enough variables to make the logic confusing. It’s much the same kind of puzzle as the past couple of pages, once you break it right down. Anyway, what are we flying and what must the plane have? The answer is Swatair and two propellors, which narrows it down to three planes on either side (five if you count the plane with one propeller and also the helicopter), but of course there’s only one plane which combines both features.
Wouldn’t it be funny if it was the plane that was taking off? No, probably not, I suppose. Instead, it’s the one with no visible means of support. Does it take off vertically? Where’s the landing gear on that thing? And how’s it supposed to take off with all these other planes and buildings in the way, for that matter? And why does that planespotter on the roof look like he has a sniper rifle set up beside him?
Hey, what gives? There’s no puzzle on this page! What a rip-off! I’m genuinely kind of aggrieved by this, especially right after a filler page with a ridiculously simple puzzle. Oh well. Also, at least half of this scenario looks like something they’d just swoop in and arrest you for if you tried it in an airport these days. Both running into someone and being run into by someone. You can never be too careful! Maybe that’s why people are rarely murdered on midnight planes these days, although I don’t know that it happened all that much outside of detective stories like this and Death in the Clouds. Fortunately there were no consequences to Sam and the mystery man’s accidental collision and the event was just filler and will never be referred to again or be important in any way. In all seriousness I’m slightly surprised that there wasn’t the classic “switching the cases” ploy employed here, but the mystery chappie doesn’t have a case, and for that matter neither does Sam, so that’s the end of it, I guess his motives were perfectly innocent. So very perfect.
I should maybe call him Mystery Chappie #1, though, as there’s another person I don’t recognise on the plane. Maybe there’s even a Mystery Chappie #3, as there’s also the really obvious secret agent in the green overcoat who’s arresting Barney for something, presumably looking excited about aeroplanes, which can only mean that he’s a terrorist. But everyone else appears to be regrettably familiar and remarkably incompetent, and as puzzle book protagonists, we’re clearly going to have to sort them all out before this plane goes anywhere.
Ah, now this is more like it! Just look at all that stuff. If there’s a reason we didn’t get a puzzle on the previous double-page, it’s because there’s so much material for it that they had to spread it over two double-pages.
Well, it’s our job to sort out the seats everyone on this plane has to sit in so that they can shut up and we can get on with the plot and see one of them get offed, and that’s as worthy a reason as any I can think of for going through all of this logic puzzliness. We have names, we have appearances, we have locations, and we have seats numbered in what appears to be a deliberately confusing way (read alternately upwards and downwards and with columns read from right to left). Literally everything is thrown at the wall here to see what sticks, and it all does. I really like a good logic puzzle with lots of boxes to fill in, and this is it.
Well, it’s not entirely as hard as it seems. You can assign the vast majority of names to their corresponding faces by cheating and using the fact that they’re metatextual jokes to see who fits the names. Well, okay, on some level that’s not cheating - the doctor, the inspector, and arguably the sir both look like their titles and should look like their titles, and you can say the same about easily being able to identify the sole married couple on the plane… although in this depressingly retrograde era of the mid-1980s we find that apparently a person’s wife doesn’t even get a forename, she’s defined solely in relation to her husband. Someone please convince me that this was just because giving her a forename would make it too long for the spacing on the passenger list…
I’m tempted to work this out here myself, but I kind of feel unfair if I skip the hint. It’s a part of the book that got written, after all, even if you flagrantly won’t need it most of the time. So I guess I’ll consult it, and then start lining things up.
Ah, to be fair, I had already forgotten that Spike and Sam’s tickets gave their seat numbers. We could always have just slotted them into the last available spaces, but that makes life a lot easier!
Okay, so we have Spike and Sam in 14 and 9. Mr Wave - ah, so he was meant to be a surfer dude! - is the guy with crutches and has two adjoining seats in the back row, so by a process of elimination, that’s 8 and 1. Back row done.
Mr. Reeman - not subtle, but a lot subtler than most invocations of this joke, so bravo - is in seat 13, and I dare say we’ll know for certain which passenger he is when everyone else has been accounted for. We can sort out most of the rows, but not necessarily what numbers they are - the Megger-Buxes are next to each other, so are the doctor (Harry Quickley - his services are much in demand) and the blonde lady (pretty easily narrowed down as Pearl-Anne Plane), and so are Billy Bratt and the explorer, who is the man in explorer’s garb with a pet vulture and therefore Sir Chand-Fyndes, and I hope he has an enjoyable flight in that position.
Dr. Quickley and Pearl-Anne are sitting behind Billy Bratt and therefore the explorer. Inspector Ramsbottom is sitting behind Pearl-Anne, which means that they take three rows between them and thus can’t be on the left-hand side of the plane because one of those three rows is taken by Sam and Spike. Since Sir Chand-Fyndes has an aisle seat, that puts him in 5 and Billy in 4, Dr. Quickley in 3 and Pearl-Anne in 6, and Inspector Ramsbottom in 7. If Ed Banger sits directly in front of Mr. Wave, who’s in either 8 or 1, then Ed Banger must be in 2 and Mr. Wave in 1 and his crutches in 8, and that’s the right-hand side sorted.
The Megger-Buxes don’t have anyone in front of them and thus are in one of the front rows, and the only one spare is 12-11. Barney’s right behind Mr. Max, and since seat 13 is unavailable, Barney must be in 10, Max in 11, and Mrs. in 12. And that’s everyone sorted! We didn’t even need to know what Mr. Reeman looks like. Which is good, because probably nobody does. But let’s check that we’re, by which I mean I’m, right.
Apparently I was actually too specific about Christopher Wave! But that doesn’t matter, as otherwise I was totally right. Well, it’s hard to truly go completely wrong in a puzzle like this, I think, because everything’s dependent upon a couple of factors each, and if you misunderstood one then you’d run into problems with the other. But it can be hard to keep track of. As a kid, I’d probably have drawn it all out on paper. There’s still a temptation to do so now.
Finally. People only read murder mysteries for the corpses, so there’s no point in holding out on us for long.
Let me rewind a bit. Despite this plane flying all night, they aren’t giving anyone a chance to get some shut-eye - no, instead they’re watching a heart-pumping film with a horrendous ending which… appears to involve a steamboat? It looks like a pleasant enough movie to me, but hey, foreshadowing, what can you do about it. Apparently the airline have also been starving the passengers of drinks, so it seems they were as wary about fluids on flights then as they are now. Just about everyone seems to be going for one! That’s an… interesting-looking selection they have there. Rather reminiscent of Escape from Blood Castle’s tea trolley, come to that…
I’m kind of immensely disappointed that the mystery corpse didn’t slump to his death right across Barney’s lap; that would have given me endless amusement. Gotta love how the guy does actually look quite corpse-like with his hollow face and, uh, total lack of an upper half of his skull. Hey I wonder what the cause of death was. Maybe Dr. Rushmore with his suspiciously specific big blue bag will tell us. And his diagnosis: Death! Hmm, there’s something almost catchy about that, but maybe it needs a little work.
And that brings us to this page’s puzzle, which - wait. …What. Oh, are you kidding me? Another page with no puzzle? What ever happened to “Usborne Puzzle Adventures”? Right now this is Usborne Sitting Around Watching An In-Flight Movie And Doing Nothing Useful!
The doctor pulls a rug out of nowhere - his carpet bag, presumably - and lays it respectfully over the dead man. I do hope that Barney still has to sit next to him, that would be great.
We also learn that Spike is so obsessed with food that he can literally remember absolutely everything that everyone else in the entire plane ate. Despite the fact that he’s sitting in the back row and couldn’t possibly have seen these front-on impressions of people who… who don’t even have space enough to eat all this stuff! This is pretty much the most outlandish aeroplane meal, just look at it. On this rickety aeroplane to the most pestiferous place on Earth, they serve up ice-cream and gateaux, watermelon, there are whole crabs and lobsters up there… They seem a bit miserly with the cutlery, as Pearl-Anne’s had to resort to eating with her knitting needles, but perhaps that’s to compensate for the enormous expense on Dr. Quickley’s golden fish-slice. Which he apparently hasn’t even noticed, as he’s too busy treating his fish, listening to its heartbeat and preparing to feed it a spoonful of castor oil.
The thrust of the puzzle here is pretty obvious. The good doctor claims that Mr. Reeman was probably killed by something he ate for dinner, but if he ate something that another person also ate, doesn’t that create a contradiction…?
As per the clue. Okay, so let’s go through this.
The watermelon is easy as Sir Chand-Fyndes has been served one in the very next image. Two images along, Inspector Ramsbottom is eating the same enormous brick of cheese, as if that’s really appropriate for one sitting. Pink ice-cream? Pearl’s got it. The inspector’s got chips as well. The doctor has tomatoes, the Megger-Buxes have celery,and that just leaves toast, which again, the doctor’s having some of, as is Ed Banger. And quite a few other people are doubling up on some of these ingredients as well, it’s just not necessary to notice all of them. This is a puzzle that can mostly be solved by the right-hand page.
Oh, I’m missing the chicken drumstick! The late Mr. Reeman was not all that polite an eater, although I’d take him over Barney cutting into that pizza with the most sadistic grin and strangely grime-stained hands. Uh, chicken drumstick, chicken drumstick… I really thought there wasn’t one for a moment there, but then I noticed it in the silliest place for it to be, considering the in-universe perspective of this puzzle: Spike’s mouth.
So what. Everything the dead man ate was also eaten by someone else? Call for the stomach pumps!
Oh, or not. The plot thickens!
The story actually gets surprisingly dark here. Not very dark, exactly, but quite a bit bolder than the previous instalments in the series that I’ve reviewed (one of which, I remind you, was actually a later instalment). Something actually genuinely sinister is happening, and Spike really can’t cope.
Oh boy, a good old spot-the-difference! And… very much in the same style as that of Escape from Blood Castle, actually, where it’s clear that only one thing’s meant to have really changed, but you can tell that Graham Round has flat-out drawn the entire image again, he hasn’t just copy-pasted. Good on him. He didn’t need to do it correctly. …Or maybe there just wasn’t a good way to copy and paste most of the image back in the mid-1980s… but hey, who cares. Quality over quantity here.
So what has changed? And, for a bonus point, where did it show up before? Uh, I’m not sure, actually, if I’m meant to highlight where it showed up before… but maybe I will anyway. I’ll see if it’s in the answers first.
Actually, a couple of things have changed, but most of them - Inspector Ramsbottom and Christopher Wave’s hands changing position slightly, for example - seem like inconsistencies in the redrawing. There’s Barney throwing up, of course - I see his seat is still taken, heh. But there’s also…
You mean I don’t solve this puzzle with my ears? Well, I guess conceivably you might think you had to solve it with your brain…
The answer, of course, is very near to Inspector Ramsbottom’s altered hand. Pearl-Anne has covered something up - intentionally or not, I don’t know. But it’s something that has no place on a drinks trolley outside of Blood Castle.
Quite so. It’s actually even a really shady-looking bottle, too. And if anything, it looked yet more malevolent back when I originally hinted at its presence…
This is a game changer. Really suspicious-looking guy in a trenchcoat and with a fedora over his eyes dies on a plane after being perfectly fine right after having something to drink: Hey, probably happens all the time. But with a poison bottle hidden in the vicinity? This changes the complexion of the whole case. Not so innocent-looking is this seemingly simple scenario. For now we have reason to suspect that the sudden death that just occurred in Murder on the Midnight Plane was, in fact… SUICIDE I mean MURDER.
Artificial cliffhanger ahoy!
Usborne Puzzle Adventures - charm and bane of the children of the 90s. And late 80s, as it turns out. These stories, short, colourful, and cartoonishly-drawn in every sense, are the vehicles for various classic puzzles and logic problems… or possibly the story is the vehicle for the logic problems. It’s hard to say which is the most important in these books; there is a strong story thread, but sometimes it’s clear that they were just padding the page count out to fit in another puzzle, so at the end of the day, both are significant. Solving the puzzles is more or less required to understand the flow of the story, but on the other hand, if you didn’t want to solve puzzles you’d just read a real book. It really is a lot like a video game in that sense. There’s a story and you’ll have to solve obstacles related to that story, but occasionally there’ll be obstacles for the sake of it. Well, it’s like an adventure game, anyway. And isn’t that what we’re all here for? The only real difference here is that you have as much of a role in solving the puzzles as I do, which is none at all, as if you really didn’t care you could just skip to the next page whereas in a video game you’d have to cheat and look on GameFAQs.
But anyway! To conclude this introduction, today we are reading what may well be the last of these stories I dissect for this community - chiefly as I don’t have any more - and which is also the last in the omnibus edition of the first three entries in the Usborne Puzzle Adventures series that I possess. The third ever written - Murder on the Midnight Plane. If you’ve read my previous three entries, you will know that actual explicit murder and indeed real danger and serious injury have so far not featured at all in the series, and indeed would not necessarily continue to do so, as I also looked at #23 on here and that was incredibly goofy. It seems like there was actually a spin-off series with a slightly more serious tone, so maybe Murder on the Midnight Plane precipitated it… or maybe it didn’t? Although I’ve read this book, I actually don’t remember anything about it, not the plot, not the puzzles… actually, I do remember an early one featuring tsetse flies. But that’s it. This is as much a mystery for me as for anyone else, for which reason I’m quite stoked to reread it. So let’s get on and have another look at the omnibus cover, previously seen in my entry for Escape from Blood Castle - in fact, the next three images are all ripped from there, conveniently enough, which is also an excuse not to provide fresh commentary!
See, there’s a corpse right there on the cover. Presumably. Shouldn’t really need a magnifying glass to see it. Heh, you’ve got to love how suspicious he would’ve looked even before he died. The classic trenchcoat and fedora combo, instantly marking him out as a secret agent, private eye, member of an organised crime syndicate… probably a secret agent, that’s my guess. Seems more in-keeping with the UPA style.
Solve all the puzzles and you will solve the mystery? I’m not sure there really was much of a mystery in Escape from Blood Castle - that’s why they’re really called Puzzle Adventures, even though this omnibus says that they’re Mystery Stories (or, in the case of this back cover, “Solve Your Own” - solve your own what? Oh, so there really is a mystery!). The Curse of the Lost Idol had a mystery, fair enough, but while there were some plot devices towards the end of Escape from Blood Castle that could be considered mysterious, but they weren’t really the point of the book… and neither was escaping from Blood Castle, come to that. I deduce from this that Murder on the Midnight Plane will feature no murders and will be set at lunchtime. On a train.
The apparent (though not definite) change in tone for this book, as well as the presence of a real mystery, may be explained by the fact that it has a different author to Escape from Blood Castle. While Jenny Tyler wrote Usborne Puzzle Adventures #1, the actually mysterious #2 The Curse of the Lost Idol and #3 Murder on the Midnight Plane were both scribed by Gaby Waters, who at some point was the series editor for Usborne Puzzle Adventures. Graham Round continues to provide his usual jaunty, scribbly, colourful illustrations, although he mostly settled down a bit after Escape from Blood Castle.
So, let us begin our journey into the unseen.
Fasten your seatbelts, and sleep tight. Actually, no, don’t do either of those things, even though it’s a midnight plane. You won’t solve any mysteries that way!
We begin with our usual introduction to the young dopes we’re expecting to get anything done here, the doubly alliterative Spike Sprockett and Sam Sprockett. I hope we can rely on SS to solve our problems! Wait, no. …Also, wasn’t Spike the name of one of the evil-slash-bothersome Blood relatives in Escape from Blood Castle? Wow, this is an unpropitious start! And that’s before we get to the matter of these being the least identical twins ever. I mean, I know that twins aren’t always identical, and that male-female twins are never identical… but I at least expect there to be some family resemblance! They’ve both got freckles, and that’s it!
I kind of already feel like our heroes are the most suspicious characters we’re going to meet, but to be fair, so far they’re the only characters we’ve met. I should reserve judgement until I see what other freakish cohort of villains and idiots they’re lumped with while travelling unmonitored on a long air flight. An air flight which somehow is going to involve buried treasure.
I’m genuinely a little excited, actually. I really like murder mysteries but don’t remember this and have no idea who the murderer’s going to be, so it’s practically new to me. What exciting and thrilling events will transpire on this amazing adventure?
Oh. An airport terminal. This is our exciting and thrilling adventure. I, uh, can’t wait. Oh, that’s right, I’ll have to, it’s an airport. Even the twins, with the power of plot convenience on their side, are going to have to sit around for an hour before they can get out of this overcrowded corner of Hell.
Still, Capitol City International Airport seems like an interesting place. I wonder what country it’s meant to be in. There’s probably no point in asking, though; the Sprocketts’ homeland exists in the narrative solely for them to have somewhere to depart from. In much the same way we’ll never find out where the Los Mosquitos islands are, although they sound like they’re based on Las Malvinas a.k.a. the Falklands, but don’t say it too loud or you’ll cause an international incident. Still, I see, among the lots and lots of westerners, several people of a more Middle Eastern appearance… and also a guard over at the right who appears to be wielding a bayonet. They don’t go that far even today, at least as far as I know; the 80s must have been a pretty scary time for Capitol City, although at least they didn’t have the TSA groping them, as far as I can see. Although near the centre there are some officials dressed in what appear to be orange wizards’ robes. You don’t need security so much when you have magic.
Actually, the right-hand side of the page appears considerably less civilised… there’s a dog on the loose, there are sharks in the fountain! And in the lower-right corner there are two guys who… er… you know what, let’s just move on and do the puzzle.
As we can see, there are a heck of a lot of possible check-in desks. Worse, several of them are repeated with the only distinction between them being departure time. On a meta level, it seems likely that the solution is one of those, so that the departure time is actually important to working out when to leave rather than just irrelevant background detail, but worst yet is that the only image type my scanner will scan in kills the quality to the point where you at home can barely read them. On a meta level, though, well, it’s not a coincidence that only one of the companies advertised on the walls has an identifiable logo. Gotta be honest, though, terrible though it clearly is, Grottair looks like it has pretty cool planes, like something out of Stop the Pigeon. All aboard, with your pilot, Dick Dastardly… well, that doesn’t seem entirely unlikely in a book like this.
As ever, we have the extremely complex, mysterious, and difficult to decipher clues accompanying each puzzle. I’m writing this line without having looked at the clue yet, but I’m sure it couldn’t possibly let me down, knowing how reliable the quality of these clues always is.
…Okay, I’ve read it, and it is kind of helpful. I don’t know if they needed to mention the twenty-four hour clock, since literally only one of the flights listed is due to leave in the morning, which I guess is why nobody’s checking in yet. Plus another desk with no time listed at all. I think I know which one we can rule out. But which is in?
The only counter-intuitive thing is that the desks are numbered from right-to-left rather than vice-versa. But we all know that the real answer to the question is to point at the page and say “That one!”, so who cares about the numbers?
Banana milkshakes? Well, that compensates slightly for the long wait, but not for sitting around in a departure lounge full of freaks, weirdos, and neighbours who you have a poor enough relationship with not to know that you’re both going on holiday to the same place at the same time.
Oh wait, the flight’s even more delayed? I guess that Murder on the 9 O’Clock Plane didn’t have quite the same ring to it (not that it stopped 4:50 From Paddington). Still, at least Sam can entertain herself by Sherlocking it up and trying to figure out which of her noisy and unpleasant waiting companions will also be travelling companions. Improbably, all are disappointed or sympathetic, and not one of them is vociferously complaining to any member of staff they can get their hands on. Except those two brats, who literally have their hands on that poor woman. Actually, she kind of looks like she can handle them, so I’ll let it slide.
I really like this puzzle! It plays well to Graham Round’s tastes, I think - it requires him to draw a whole page full of crazy stuff with clues everywhere, and again, the text is well-integrated into the puzzle so both art and writing are taking some of the weight. I get the feeling that the clue isn’t going to be too helpful, so I’ll skip straight to that before I start working things out, but once again it’s a puzzle where it’s important to look back at a previous page for an important piece of information. Several, actually, if you can’t even remember which flight our heroes are meant to be on…
Pay attention to what people are saying. NO!!! I can’t believe they would make the answer rely on such obscure hints!
So yeah, it’s helpful to remember that our heroes are taking flight SW 013, originally scheduled to leave at nine and now delayed for three hours and thus set for… MIDN0:00, a fairly bland-sounding time. SW 015, conversely, was 08:45 and at a four-hour delay is now the later plane at 00:45, which must’ve been a major headache for the airline staff. I wonder what the cause of the delay was… maybe we’ll find out? Nah we’ll never find out.
So anyone with an SW 013 ticket is with our heroes. So is anyone who says they’re leaving at midnight or that they’ve been delayed by three hours. Lastly, there’s the shady guy in the green suit who was stalking our heroes on the previous page, and the explorer with his darling pet vulture - this suddenly feels very Escape from Blood Castle - and they don’t use any of these pointers but have tickets for TSETSE, which is our destination - to be fair, the SW 015 plane could also be going to Tsetse, but that’d be kind of redundant. I like the two surfer dudes at the back; theirs is probably the hardest case to work out, for a given definition of “hard,” but it relies on understanding that what was previously the earlier flight is now the later.
As for the bank robber and associate or the blind fellow shamefully left to struggle on the floor after dropping his cane, no clue. I mean that there is literally no clue. But Barney has helpfully informed us that planes which fly to Tsetse are required by law to carry thirteen passengers only, but they can’t serve a dinner course or one of their number will be fated to die afterwards. I kid, of course - I’m sure nothing like that could possibly happen. But anyway, what this means is that once we’ve counted thirteen passengers who are going to Tsetse, everyone else can go die in a fire as we’re never going to see them again.
So that’s the Sprocketts, Barney, punk and wife, Billy the kid, the doctor who doesn’t do brains, Ramsbottom, the explorer, the tourist couple at the top table, and one hippie. Oh yeah, and the bald guy in the natty suit. That looks like thirteen to me.
As I said, and - wait, what? You’re also giving away part of the answer to a later puzzle? That’s not how these are meant to work! This is a no-spoiler readthrough of this nearly thirty-year-old book!
Groan, can we not get on the midnight plane already? It’s getting late, I’m falling asleep here. A filler puzzle if ever there was one, there is basically no reason for this page to exist, save for that guy in the green suit to show up once again to try and lure these children away for base motives. The book itself comments on how easy the puzzle is, and it is! There’s barely even anything going on on the page. Anyway, since this puzzle is so easy, I wonder what the clue will be.
There are literally only two things you need to look for, and you’re as likely to forget either one of them as the other, but either way, it makes for a pretty simple puzzle without nearly enough variables to make the logic confusing. It’s much the same kind of puzzle as the past couple of pages, once you break it right down. Anyway, what are we flying and what must the plane have? The answer is Swatair and two propellors, which narrows it down to three planes on either side (five if you count the plane with one propeller and also the helicopter), but of course there’s only one plane which combines both features.
Wouldn’t it be funny if it was the plane that was taking off? No, probably not, I suppose. Instead, it’s the one with no visible means of support. Does it take off vertically? Where’s the landing gear on that thing? And how’s it supposed to take off with all these other planes and buildings in the way, for that matter? And why does that planespotter on the roof look like he has a sniper rifle set up beside him?
Hey, what gives? There’s no puzzle on this page! What a rip-off! I’m genuinely kind of aggrieved by this, especially right after a filler page with a ridiculously simple puzzle. Oh well. Also, at least half of this scenario looks like something they’d just swoop in and arrest you for if you tried it in an airport these days. Both running into someone and being run into by someone. You can never be too careful! Maybe that’s why people are rarely murdered on midnight planes these days, although I don’t know that it happened all that much outside of detective stories like this and Death in the Clouds. Fortunately there were no consequences to Sam and the mystery man’s accidental collision and the event was just filler and will never be referred to again or be important in any way. In all seriousness I’m slightly surprised that there wasn’t the classic “switching the cases” ploy employed here, but the mystery chappie doesn’t have a case, and for that matter neither does Sam, so that’s the end of it, I guess his motives were perfectly innocent. So very perfect.
I should maybe call him Mystery Chappie #1, though, as there’s another person I don’t recognise on the plane. Maybe there’s even a Mystery Chappie #3, as there’s also the really obvious secret agent in the green overcoat who’s arresting Barney for something, presumably looking excited about aeroplanes, which can only mean that he’s a terrorist. But everyone else appears to be regrettably familiar and remarkably incompetent, and as puzzle book protagonists, we’re clearly going to have to sort them all out before this plane goes anywhere.
Ah, now this is more like it! Just look at all that stuff. If there’s a reason we didn’t get a puzzle on the previous double-page, it’s because there’s so much material for it that they had to spread it over two double-pages.
Well, it’s our job to sort out the seats everyone on this plane has to sit in so that they can shut up and we can get on with the plot and see one of them get offed, and that’s as worthy a reason as any I can think of for going through all of this logic puzzliness. We have names, we have appearances, we have locations, and we have seats numbered in what appears to be a deliberately confusing way (read alternately upwards and downwards and with columns read from right to left). Literally everything is thrown at the wall here to see what sticks, and it all does. I really like a good logic puzzle with lots of boxes to fill in, and this is it.
Well, it’s not entirely as hard as it seems. You can assign the vast majority of names to their corresponding faces by cheating and using the fact that they’re metatextual jokes to see who fits the names. Well, okay, on some level that’s not cheating - the doctor, the inspector, and arguably the sir both look like their titles and should look like their titles, and you can say the same about easily being able to identify the sole married couple on the plane… although in this depressingly retrograde era of the mid-1980s we find that apparently a person’s wife doesn’t even get a forename, she’s defined solely in relation to her husband. Someone please convince me that this was just because giving her a forename would make it too long for the spacing on the passenger list…
I’m tempted to work this out here myself, but I kind of feel unfair if I skip the hint. It’s a part of the book that got written, after all, even if you flagrantly won’t need it most of the time. So I guess I’ll consult it, and then start lining things up.
Ah, to be fair, I had already forgotten that Spike and Sam’s tickets gave their seat numbers. We could always have just slotted them into the last available spaces, but that makes life a lot easier!
Okay, so we have Spike and Sam in 14 and 9. Mr Wave - ah, so he was meant to be a surfer dude! - is the guy with crutches and has two adjoining seats in the back row, so by a process of elimination, that’s 8 and 1. Back row done.
Mr. Reeman - not subtle, but a lot subtler than most invocations of this joke, so bravo - is in seat 13, and I dare say we’ll know for certain which passenger he is when everyone else has been accounted for. We can sort out most of the rows, but not necessarily what numbers they are - the Megger-Buxes are next to each other, so are the doctor (Harry Quickley - his services are much in demand) and the blonde lady (pretty easily narrowed down as Pearl-Anne Plane), and so are Billy Bratt and the explorer, who is the man in explorer’s garb with a pet vulture and therefore Sir Chand-Fyndes, and I hope he has an enjoyable flight in that position.
Dr. Quickley and Pearl-Anne are sitting behind Billy Bratt and therefore the explorer. Inspector Ramsbottom is sitting behind Pearl-Anne, which means that they take three rows between them and thus can’t be on the left-hand side of the plane because one of those three rows is taken by Sam and Spike. Since Sir Chand-Fyndes has an aisle seat, that puts him in 5 and Billy in 4, Dr. Quickley in 3 and Pearl-Anne in 6, and Inspector Ramsbottom in 7. If Ed Banger sits directly in front of Mr. Wave, who’s in either 8 or 1, then Ed Banger must be in 2 and Mr. Wave in 1 and his crutches in 8, and that’s the right-hand side sorted.
The Megger-Buxes don’t have anyone in front of them and thus are in one of the front rows, and the only one spare is 12-11. Barney’s right behind Mr. Max, and since seat 13 is unavailable, Barney must be in 10, Max in 11, and Mrs. in 12. And that’s everyone sorted! We didn’t even need to know what Mr. Reeman looks like. Which is good, because probably nobody does. But let’s check that we’re, by which I mean I’m, right.
Apparently I was actually too specific about Christopher Wave! But that doesn’t matter, as otherwise I was totally right. Well, it’s hard to truly go completely wrong in a puzzle like this, I think, because everything’s dependent upon a couple of factors each, and if you misunderstood one then you’d run into problems with the other. But it can be hard to keep track of. As a kid, I’d probably have drawn it all out on paper. There’s still a temptation to do so now.
Finally. People only read murder mysteries for the corpses, so there’s no point in holding out on us for long.
Let me rewind a bit. Despite this plane flying all night, they aren’t giving anyone a chance to get some shut-eye - no, instead they’re watching a heart-pumping film with a horrendous ending which… appears to involve a steamboat? It looks like a pleasant enough movie to me, but hey, foreshadowing, what can you do about it. Apparently the airline have also been starving the passengers of drinks, so it seems they were as wary about fluids on flights then as they are now. Just about everyone seems to be going for one! That’s an… interesting-looking selection they have there. Rather reminiscent of Escape from Blood Castle’s tea trolley, come to that…
I’m kind of immensely disappointed that the mystery corpse didn’t slump to his death right across Barney’s lap; that would have given me endless amusement. Gotta love how the guy does actually look quite corpse-like with his hollow face and, uh, total lack of an upper half of his skull. Hey I wonder what the cause of death was. Maybe Dr. Rushmore with his suspiciously specific big blue bag will tell us. And his diagnosis: Death! Hmm, there’s something almost catchy about that, but maybe it needs a little work.
And that brings us to this page’s puzzle, which - wait. …What. Oh, are you kidding me? Another page with no puzzle? What ever happened to “Usborne Puzzle Adventures”? Right now this is Usborne Sitting Around Watching An In-Flight Movie And Doing Nothing Useful!
The doctor pulls a rug out of nowhere - his carpet bag, presumably - and lays it respectfully over the dead man. I do hope that Barney still has to sit next to him, that would be great.
We also learn that Spike is so obsessed with food that he can literally remember absolutely everything that everyone else in the entire plane ate. Despite the fact that he’s sitting in the back row and couldn’t possibly have seen these front-on impressions of people who… who don’t even have space enough to eat all this stuff! This is pretty much the most outlandish aeroplane meal, just look at it. On this rickety aeroplane to the most pestiferous place on Earth, they serve up ice-cream and gateaux, watermelon, there are whole crabs and lobsters up there… They seem a bit miserly with the cutlery, as Pearl-Anne’s had to resort to eating with her knitting needles, but perhaps that’s to compensate for the enormous expense on Dr. Quickley’s golden fish-slice. Which he apparently hasn’t even noticed, as he’s too busy treating his fish, listening to its heartbeat and preparing to feed it a spoonful of castor oil.
The thrust of the puzzle here is pretty obvious. The good doctor claims that Mr. Reeman was probably killed by something he ate for dinner, but if he ate something that another person also ate, doesn’t that create a contradiction…?
As per the clue. Okay, so let’s go through this.
The watermelon is easy as Sir Chand-Fyndes has been served one in the very next image. Two images along, Inspector Ramsbottom is eating the same enormous brick of cheese, as if that’s really appropriate for one sitting. Pink ice-cream? Pearl’s got it. The inspector’s got chips as well. The doctor has tomatoes, the Megger-Buxes have celery,and that just leaves toast, which again, the doctor’s having some of, as is Ed Banger. And quite a few other people are doubling up on some of these ingredients as well, it’s just not necessary to notice all of them. This is a puzzle that can mostly be solved by the right-hand page.
Oh, I’m missing the chicken drumstick! The late Mr. Reeman was not all that polite an eater, although I’d take him over Barney cutting into that pizza with the most sadistic grin and strangely grime-stained hands. Uh, chicken drumstick, chicken drumstick… I really thought there wasn’t one for a moment there, but then I noticed it in the silliest place for it to be, considering the in-universe perspective of this puzzle: Spike’s mouth.
So what. Everything the dead man ate was also eaten by someone else? Call for the stomach pumps!
Oh, or not. The plot thickens!
The story actually gets surprisingly dark here. Not very dark, exactly, but quite a bit bolder than the previous instalments in the series that I’ve reviewed (one of which, I remind you, was actually a later instalment). Something actually genuinely sinister is happening, and Spike really can’t cope.
Oh boy, a good old spot-the-difference! And… very much in the same style as that of Escape from Blood Castle, actually, where it’s clear that only one thing’s meant to have really changed, but you can tell that Graham Round has flat-out drawn the entire image again, he hasn’t just copy-pasted. Good on him. He didn’t need to do it correctly. …Or maybe there just wasn’t a good way to copy and paste most of the image back in the mid-1980s… but hey, who cares. Quality over quantity here.
So what has changed? And, for a bonus point, where did it show up before? Uh, I’m not sure, actually, if I’m meant to highlight where it showed up before… but maybe I will anyway. I’ll see if it’s in the answers first.
Actually, a couple of things have changed, but most of them - Inspector Ramsbottom and Christopher Wave’s hands changing position slightly, for example - seem like inconsistencies in the redrawing. There’s Barney throwing up, of course - I see his seat is still taken, heh. But there’s also…
You mean I don’t solve this puzzle with my ears? Well, I guess conceivably you might think you had to solve it with your brain…
The answer, of course, is very near to Inspector Ramsbottom’s altered hand. Pearl-Anne has covered something up - intentionally or not, I don’t know. But it’s something that has no place on a drinks trolley outside of Blood Castle.
Quite so. It’s actually even a really shady-looking bottle, too. And if anything, it looked yet more malevolent back when I originally hinted at its presence…
This is a game changer. Really suspicious-looking guy in a trenchcoat and with a fedora over his eyes dies on a plane after being perfectly fine right after having something to drink: Hey, probably happens all the time. But with a poison bottle hidden in the vicinity? This changes the complexion of the whole case. Not so innocent-looking is this seemingly simple scenario. For now we have reason to suspect that the sudden death that just occurred in Murder on the Midnight Plane was, in fact… SUICIDE I mean MURDER.
Artificial cliffhanger ahoy!