I used to love Choose Your Own Adventure books as a child – who else remembers them? – so when I saw this new adult version of the same concept, I couldn’t wait to read it. Murder in Tinseltown is set in Los Angeles in the 1950s and the reader takes on the role of a detective investigating the murder of an actress. At various points in the story you’ll have the opportunity to choose your own actions and decide what happens next, either by turning to different numbered pages or, in the Kindle edition I read, simply clicking on a link.
You start your adventure at LAPD headquarters on the weekend of the Golden Star Awards when some of Hollywood’s biggest stars have descended on the city. It’s a busy day in the squad room, but when a disturbing call comes through from the Royal Premiere Hotel – “Trouble…hurt…not my fault…help…it’s them…I’m sorry…” – you head straight to the hotel to investigate. You arrive just in time to learn that one of the waiters has discovered Blanche Aikerman, probably the world’s most famous actress, stabbed to death in her room. After witnessing the dead body for yourself, you accompany the hotel manager to the suite of Peter von Hiltz, Blanche’s director, to give him the news. However, he doesn’t answer the door. What will you do next?
This is where the interactive part of the novel begins. Will you ask the manager to let you into von Hiltz’s room? Will you return to the crime scene to look for more clues? Or would you prefer to interview the waiter who found the body? Each option takes you to a different location in the book and the story continues from there until you reach another turning point and are presented with a new set of choices. It could and should have been a lot of fun working through the book and trying to solve the mystery – unfortunately, there were some problems with the structure which made the whole experience less satisfying than I’d hoped.
Maybe there was one route I could have followed through the novel where the story would have flowed perfectly, but surely somebody should have checked that all of the other possible routes also made sense. Early on, I saw a character die right in front of my eyes at an airport – then I returned to the hotel, where that same character was still walking around alive and well as if nothing had happened. Similarly, I found the murder weapon and then someone else found it again later in the book. Looking at other reviews, it seems that most of us noticed those same two things so I’m not sure how they weren’t picked up on by the author or an editor. Also, there are several outcomes where you die, but instead of the book ending as you would expect, you just come straight back to life and are directed to the ‘correct’ option so the story can continue.
From a nostalgia perspective, it was nice to have the opportunity to read a book like this, but I’m disappointed that it didn’t work as well as it could have done.
Thanks to HarperNorth for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.
She Reads Novels 
I’ve never heard of choose your own adventure books, they sound very inivative but probably not for me, a more plodding reader! Sorry this was a bit of a disappointment but nostalgia’s always a bit of fun I think!
It’s a great concept, when done properly, but definitely not for everyone!
Maybe a mystery isn’t the best kind of book for a choose your own adventure, but I did love reading choose your own adventure books when I was a kid. They’re so fun. I’ve read a few as an adult that have been fun, too. Once was seeing if you could survive a zombie apocalypse and another was a Pride and Prejudice version where Lizzie and Darcy don’t always end up together depending on your choices. I loved that one. 😀
I’ll have to look for some more adult choose your own adventure books to see if they’re better than this one. The Pride and Prejudice one sounds fun!
It’s called Lost in Austen by Emma Campbell Webster. It was definitely a fun book to read. 😀
I had loads of choose your own adventure books 😄. 40 years ago …
Yes, so did I! Can’t remember which ones, though.
Awwww. man, I was so excited by the prospect of this (as you were, too, obviously) but then to find that the alignment was off with one of the possible routes? Hopefully, as it seems you’ve read a review copy, they were able to mend this for print copies.
It was disappointing! I loved the concept but the discrepancies in the different routes meant the plot didn’t make sense and was impossible to follow. I would be interested to compare it with a print copy to see if they managed to fix it, but I have my doubts as I think it would need a lot of rewriting.
Oh dear. I would think that they would have worked it out better than that, but depending upon how many different ways you could go, there might be too many combinations. I wouldn’t think it would be very possible to do this right without AI or something like that. You said there was one path you could go that would flow perfectly. Does that mean you tried a bunch of them?
I was just speculating that there might be one path that would work correctly. I didn’t try all of them, but I did try a few and just got even more confused! I think it’s a clever concept, but it needed a lot more editing.
No kidding. I could imagine that given only several choices at several spots, there might be a huge number of paths.
I’m surprised that Choose Your Own Adventure made it across the Atlantic! I worked on them when I was at Bantam Books and they were definitely popular!
They were very popular here. The library always had lots of them!