computers – Jestress's Forgotten Books and Stories

The Boxcar Children

Boxcar Children The Mystery in the Computer Game cover

#78 The Mystery in the Computer Game by Gertrude Chandler Warner, 2000.

Boxcar Children The Mystery in the Computer Game playing

The Alden children love the computer game that they’ve been playing with their cousin, Soo Lee. The game is called Ring Master, and they have to help the characters in the game to solve puzzles in order to find the magical ring. Solving puzzles is a specialty of the Aldens.

Then, they get the chance to be play testers for the sequel to Ring Master. Their grandfather knows the owner of the company that makes the games. The owner of the company invites the children to come to the company for a tour and even gives them a computer to use to play the test version of the new computer game.

Boxcar Children The Mystery in the Computer Game QuestMaster company

Strangely, some of the people at the company seem upset at the Aldens getting the computer. Andy, the one of one of the founding members of the company, insists on coming over to the Aldens’ house and working on the computer, giving it some updates. However, after he leaves, the Aldens realize that some things about the game have suddenly changed. A new character called Naje suddenly pops up, and she seems to be hanging around places in the game that remind them of places that remind them of real places around town.

Boxcar Children The Mystery in the Computer Game car

The Aldens feel like they’re being given a message through the game, especially when they visit some of the places represented in the game and notice Jane, a member of the computer game company, hanging around these places. What is Jane up to, and what is the game trying to tell them?

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.

My Reaction

Boxcar Children The Mystery in the Computer Game posing for a picture

This story deals with corporate spies and the theft of intellectual property, but what makes it really interesting is the sort of treasure hunt-style way the puzzles in the computer game lead them to the culprit. The identity of the mysterious person who is feeding the clues to them is part of the mystery. The fact that the person who is feeding them clues feels like they can’t speak up about their suspicious openly is also a clue to their identity.

Cam Jansen

The Snowy Day Mystery by David A. Adler, 2004.

One snowy day, Cam Jansen and her friends are on the school bus outside of their school. Because of the snow, a lot of parents have decided to drive their kids to school, and with all the extra cars, it’s difficult for the bus driver to pull up and let the kids out. Cam and her friend, Eric, pass the time while they’re waiting with a memory game.

Their game proves useful later, when one of their teachers discovers that someone has stolen three computers from one of the classrooms. There are footprints in the snow outside the classroom window, but the window was locked from the inside after the theft. Whoever took the computers must have actually entered the school and passed them to someone outside. But, computers are big and heavy. How did they get them away without anyone seeing them?

Cam and Eric begin to investigate, and Danny, a classmate with a habit of telling really bad jokes, tags along. Part of the solution to the mystery has to do with all of the extra cars in front of the school that morning. The thieves’ car would have blended in with all of the others, except that they were doing something that none of the other cars were doing, something that Cam realizes that no car would have had a reason to do. Cam saw the thieves leave herself and is later able to describe the car to the police, but the unusual thing about it doesn’t occur to her until she thinks about where the thieves parked their car.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.