A Simple Matter of Murder! is the first Dreadful Crimes case: a foreman lies stabbed in a Whitechapel warehouse and a boy is found holding the bloody knife. Henry Raymond and young Artie introduce themselves and challenge you to solve it, and the obvious answer turns out to be wrong.
Part 1 of 10 in The Dreadful Crimes
The factory owner, Mr Freems, found the dead man with the boy Dooley standing over him with blood on his hands. Dooley's brother Buck says a worker beat him and Dooley stepped in. Dooley remembers grabbing his work knife to protect himself and then being knocked out. The knife has a D scratched into its handle, and a bandana covers the victim's face.
If you accuse the obvious suspect first, Raymond tells you that answer only fits the surface facts and sends you back. The second round brings in a letter about a workman beating the child labourers, coal-dusted footprints, cigarette ends and the detail that only brewery workers wear bandanas. Witnesses include Taylor in the coal yard, Morris in the brewery and Coulton in the loading area.
Dooley, Buck, Mr Freems, Coulton, Morris and Taylor.
The victim was John Wilkins, who ran in to help when he heard screams. Tom Coulton, who resented Wilkins and wanted his job, stabbed him with the unconscious boy's knife and covered his face with his own bandana.
A letter from Clara O'Dea's society warns the owner that one of his workmen has been beating the child labourers. Freems says the dead man was the sort to break up such beatings rather than join in, and Taylor points out that his workmate was not wearing a bandana when they last spoke.
The Fiend of Fleet Street
The Fiend of Fleet Street is the fourth Dreadful Crimes case: Detective Murphy vanished while looking into a string of disappearances around Fleet Street. You follow his last movements through a bakery, a butcher's, a barber's, a flower shop and a leather shop.
Death Stalks the Colonel
Death Stalks the Colonel is the third Dreadful Crimes case: Louis Prescott, a former army colonel who runs a munitions factory in Southwark, has been shot through the heart at noon. Several shots were fired at that moment, and you have to work out which bullet killed him.
Locked in... to Die!
Locked in... to Die! is the sixth Dreadful Crimes case: the music critic Byron Cashan is found dead in a room locked from the inside, in a lodging house in the Strand. You check each tenant's room and the basement to work out how the killer reached him.
Murder at the Palace!
Murder at the Palace! is the final Dreadful Crimes case: Frederick Abberline calls you to Buckingham Palace, where a guard lies dead in Queen Victoria's study on the day of a knighting ceremony. The case pulls in clues from every earlier crime and ends with a rooftop standoff.