Sleuthing

CRIME AND PUZZLEMENT: 24 Solve-Them-Yourself Picture Mysteries by Lawrence Treat '24 David R. Godine, 1981. 66 pp. $4.95

Author of over 20 book-length whodunits and 300 mystery stories, a founder of Mystery Writers of America, originator of the "police procedural" genre of meticulously plotted tales centered around the precinct house, Lawrence Treat is plying his customary trade in Crime and Puzzlement, but in an ingenious new format.

For each of his 24 mysteries, Treat supplies a line drawing replete with clues to the crime (and an occasional red herring, just to keep the amateur sleuth honest), a narrative to set the scene, and a series of questions as a guide. One sketch includes a newspaper proclaiming Yale's defeat at the hands of Dartmouth.

For the bumbler, or the weak-willed, he also supplies the correct solutions to each mystery - though only, with commend able discretion, at the back of the book.

Crime and Puzzlement has already gone into a fourth printing, with over 75,000 copies published, and a sequel is on th way. There's no puzzlement at all to that: Matching wits with Lawrence Treat is fun. Try your hand at the sample overleaf, and you'll agree.