Woman's Murder Club: Death in Scarlet
Ages: Teen

Two beautiful Chinese women are murdered - location - San Francisco's Chinatown. That is the mystery you have to solve, playing three main characters - Lindsay, the principle investigator, Claire Washburn, a medical examiner and Jill Bernhard, a lawyer from the DA's office. Each of the nine episodes delve further into the story, getting darker and more foreboding, keeping the player on the hook for just one more episode.

This elaborate seek and find game involves puzzles to solve, using some of the objects you have found plus numerous tests for Claire to run in the forensic lab and crypto analysis for Jill to decode. All of the puzzles are clever, some are a bit hard and some repeat too much, which is probably why you can opt out of solving them yourself. Screens are full of details and ambience. Comic-book interludes are a nice touch, and are indicative of the effort expended in making the game more that just a seek-and-find. The game was co-created and designed by Jane Jensen and James Patterson. We all remember Jane as the creative energy behind the Gabriel Knight series.

But the biggest pluses are the story, which gets more and more complex and the Chinatown settings. The 18 different locations take you into offices, apartments, an orphanage, a theater, all with exotic Chinese influence. The story is by James Patterson, a murder mystery writer who uses San Francisco as his locale. The game's bonus is a novella by the author using the same characters as are in the game. Play/read both. Hybrid disk plays on both PC and Mac.

For those who wish to avail themselves of a walkthrough, you will find a step by step, full color one on www.iplay.com.

Fun Factor: Hard to put down.
Female Factor: All female - even the victims.
Player Friendly: Easy saves. Opt-out option for puzzles a nice option.

Reviewed by: Editor - 09/08