From: Haguile | #010
4)He Who Whispers by John Dickson Carr
This one, unlike the other three, is pretty hard to solve. It has a very creepy supernatural atmosphere and offers impossible crime after impossible crime, eventually asking the main character(and the reader) whether the culprit is supernatural or not. It's basically what Umineko tried to be, but much better. This is a novel I'd recommend for beginners because even if they "lose" they'll have an amazing experience and they'll be motivated to try harder next time to solve the puzzle.
Heh. Was gonna hijack the title to ask you what the one book you recommended where it presents the possibility the culprit was supernatural. And now I don't have to.
It's not just that novel, John Dickson Carr did that a lot. But that novel is a great example of that, so I definitely recommend that! Read it! It will be...uh good research for the Dangan game!
Here's a short excerpt from the novel:
"Then it's fairly obvious, isn't it? You told us a while ago that one of the battlements round the parapet, on the side facing the river, had crumbling pieces of rock broken off as though someone's fingers had clawed at them in climbing up. The murderer must have come from the river-side."
"Consider," said Professor Rigaud in a persuasive voice, "the difficulties of such a theory."
"What difficulties?"
The other checked them off on his forefinger, tapping again.
"No boat approached the tower, or it would have been seen. The stone of that tower, forty feet high, was as smooth as wet fish. The lowest window(as measured by the police) was fully twenty-five feet above the surface of the water. How does yout murderer scale the wall, kill Mr. Brooke, and get down again?"
There was a long silence.
"But, hang it all, the thing was done!" protested Miles. "You're not going to tell me this crime was committed by a..."
"By a what?"