Mystery book mystery

November 25, 2008 7:56 AM

I'm looking for a short mystery stories book I read in a library. One of the stories is where a character comes up a flight of stairs and thinks he sees something (a murder?) in someone's apartment, but it's actually some kind of mirrored reflection of a mirrored reflection of someone through a window across the street. The book/collection was published before 1996 and if I remember correctly, was all short story mysteries of 5 to 20 pages.
posted by cashman to media & arts (8 comments total)

Could it be Two Minute Mysteries by Donald J. Sobol (of Encyclopedia Brown fame)? I found that book in my school library growing up and adored it. An Amazon search for "minute mysteries" turned up similar books in one to five minute intervals, and one book where all the mysteries can be solved with SCIENCE!
posted by abirae at 8:34 AM on November 25, 2008

Nope. Searching inside the book for "mirror" and the story that comes up is not it. I don't think the book was geared toward kids. It wasn't Sobol or anything like that because this was something you just had to conjure in your head. It wasn't where you read a little clue in the story and figure it out.

In the story the guy was in his apartment, and there were two mirrors set up - so if you walked by, you saw the reflection of a reflection which was reflecting into another unit that may have been across the street. The person sees something in this setup, and when the police come the person is nowhere to be found (because they're across the street). It was some other-level type stuff that nobody in their right mind would have conjured up the answer to. The book might have had a diagram, but I'm not sure if I just drew a diagram in the library after saying wtf for 10 minutes while re-reading the explanation.
posted by cashman at 9:51 AM on November 25, 2008

If you don't get an answer here from MeFis, you could try Sarah Bunting's blog, Tomato Nation. Her readers are pretty good at recognizing random snippets of books.
posted by slmorri at 1:25 PM on November 25, 2008

Well I sent something about a month ago (to tomato nation) and I haven't heard back, and obviously no posts from Sarah Bunting. I suppose I'll scour the bookshelves in hopes I'll get lucky.
posted by cashman at 9:28 AM on December 22, 2008

It's there now (Tomato Nation). With any luck, someone will figure out what story/book this is that I read.
posted by cashman at 8:57 AM on May 22

It sounds like they figured it out! Awesome.
posted by slmorri at 8:48 AM on May 25

Oh crap, it was the other book the readers figured out. Dammit. Sorry. I wanted so badly for a happy ending.
posted by slmorri at 8:51 AM on May 25

Oh well. I guess I give up.
posted by cashman at 5:09 PM on August 15