How we make a case

A Casebook House case begins as a story and ends as a proof.

1. The story

Every case starts with a place, a year and a question somebody never answered. For The Harbor Master’s Ledger it was a Cornish fishing town in 1953, a festival night, a dead man at the foot of a stone stair and a son who carried the blame for seventy years.

2. The town

Next comes the town itself: its districts, its streets and everyone who lived there. Each person has a name that fits the time and the place, an address, a trade and the small facts that make a life: a hobby, a pet, the month they were born.

3. The evidence

Then the clues. Every clue is written as a real document would say it: a witness at a lamp-lit door, a line in a ledger, a note in a constable’s margin. Where a clue sets a precise rule, the detective states it plainly, so the reader never has to guess what was meant.

4. The proof

Finally, software checks the whole case, over and over, until it passes every test:

• exactly one suspect survives all the evidence;
• every single clue is needed;
• no small handful of clues gives the answer away early;
• no page of the register can be skipped;
• the stages connect: each answer is needed for the next.

If any test fails, the case is rewritten. Only then does it go to print.

5. The reader

And then it is yours. The software can prove a case is fair. Only a reader can tell us whether it was fun. Write to us: hello@casebookhouse.com