Sherlock Holmes Escape Books

The Adventure of the London Waterworks & The Adventure of the Two Flying Scotsmen

This isn’t really a Beholder project, because the publishers Ammonite made them... but, as Ormond Sacker, I was commissioned to help create some of the books in this series for them.

These are choose-your-own-path adventure-style puzzle escape books, in which your answers to the puzzles determine your route through (and, eventually, out of) the book. The evocative full-page illustrations are by Tobias Willa and Chien-wei Yu, all the supporting graphics are by Ammonite’s designer Robin Shields. We even snuck an extra Sherlockian short story by Viv Croot in the Waterworks one if you are observant enough to find it. The books feature a volvelle (in effect, a code-wheel) on their covers.

Unlike Planetarium, progression through the story does depend on your solutions to the puzzles — but hints and the complete¹ solutions are provided at the back of the books if you get stuck.

The Waterworks adventure was published in the UK in July 2019, and the Two Flying Scotsmen in November 2024. If you want it you can wander into your favourite (ideally independent) bookshop and ask for them. Alternatively, buy online:

As part of the research for Waterworks I spent time with some of the excellent people and engines that are to be found in London’s great little Museum of Water & Steam at Kew Bridge, because I used their site — formerly the Grand Junction Water Works pumping station — as the setting of the main events in the book. For the Two Flying Scotsmen I benefited from the helpfulness of the librarians at the National Railway Museum in York, and (less obviously) the volunteer archivist at Easton Lodge.

¹ Well, almost complete. There’s one puzzle whose workings I wouldn’t let them fully reveal.