Inspired by the urban craze for escape rooms, where players tackle challenges while trapped in a locked room, this is an escape room in the form of a locked book: filled with codes, ciphers, riddles and red herrings, plus an ingenious Hieroglyphic Code Wheel set into the cover. Taking on the role of Sherlock Holmes, in this new adventure readers find themselves trapped with Watson in the Enlightenment Gallery of the British Museum after a curator collapses in the Egyptian Collection. With King Edward VII due to arrive at the nearby tube station, and rumours of an anarchist plot, Holmes and Watson must find their way through the museum, and fathom the involvement of both Mycroft and Colonel Sebastian Moran, if they are to win their freedom and save the day.

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If you feel as if your brain is shrivelling under the restraints of COVID regulations, this could be the solution toward keeping those little grey cells active. This is the second title in a series of Sherlock Holmes Escape Books, in which the reader must solve the puzzles to escape the pages. (The first, The Adventure of the Waterworks, was reviewed in the Winter 2019 Journal.) There are codes, ciphers, riddles and red herrings, plus a Hieroglyphic Code Wheel set into the cover to assist you in your quest. It is 1901 and, trapped in the British Museum, the player takes the role of Sherlock Holmes. Assisted by Dr Watson, you must solve a perplexing mystery — and stop a potential threat to the crown. Many of the objects described can still be seen in the British Museum, and the map provided is based on a genuine floor plan of the Museum from this period.