What is The King’s Puzzle?
The King’s Puzzle is a six-part serial novel originally published on Wattpad. On that platform, it battled for the number one position in the Mystery Fiction genre for months. It peaked at number two and stayed there for weeks. Its genre is Young Adult Fiction.
Later, the first four books (of six) were published as eBooks on Amazon. Now, The King’s Puzzle returns exclusively and in its entirety here on Substack.
What’s the setup and who are the main characters?
Smythewood Estates in Medonte Township, Ontario, is the setting for The King’s Puzzle. Sixteen-year-old Angus Wolfe wants to know why in 1939 a ten-year-old boy named Duncan, his grandfather, failed to keep a rendezvous with The King at Carley station. The mystery involves the “King’s Puzzle”, a treasure hunt which Duncan created especially for His Majesty King George VI to solve while touring Canada in 1939. A handwritten note, which the King left for Duncan with a Colonel Smythe, would be a promising lead, if Angus could locate it.
In attempting to solve the Puzzle, Angus and his girlfriend Amanda endanger their lives. Who wants the Puzzle to remain unsolved? A Buckingham Palace publicist and his prodigal daughter? The Smythe family, which guards the truth about an unsolved 1939 disappearance of a family member? Blackmailers who surround the Smythe family?
Amanda’s affections for Angus are put to the test when he falls under the spell of the alluring 38-year-old Sharol Smythe, whose husband is the grandson of Colonel Smythe. What started as a family mystery enlarges to at least four mysteries, including a case that the police closed decades earlier.
Introducing The King’s Puzzle
The video trailer (above) offers a teaser on the scope of The King's Puzzle.
Historical throwback
It is 9:00 p.m. at Carley, Ontario, on May 22, 1939. Thousands of people perch on a slope beside the Canadian Pacific line, waiting. Flames of bonfires lick the heavens and illuminate the tracks. This farming village is destined to be the most important place in the British Empire for eight minutes.
In the railway station, a telegraph key announces the approach of a train—that carrying His Majesty King George VI and Queen Elizabeth. A whistle echoes through the hills. Bystanders cheer. Youngsters wave Union Jacks. A headlight glistens along the rails. War veterans snap to attention. A steam locomotive, adorned with shields and crowns, rounds the bend. As the train slows to a stop in the firelight, scarlet-coated Mounties emerge from vestibule doors. Their Majesties emerge onto the observation platform of the rear car. Cheers and cries of God Save the King! ring out.
Surveying the crowd, The King calls out for Duncan Wolfe. The ten-year-old boy had created a puzzle for His Majesty to solve while touring Canada and promised to meet him. But a terrified Duncan is bolting away from the train, ignoring the cries of his parents and friends. And, for the remainder of his life, he will keep running from whatever provoked his flight.
Some seven decades later, sixteen-year-old Angus Wolfe is poking around Carley. The railway station is gone. A forest covers the hillside along the tracks. Among charred remnants of the bonfires, Angus seeks an explanation for his grandfather’s behaviour on that long-ago night of May 22, 1939.
Someone else, a blonde politician who turns heads at every public appearance, wants the mystery of the King’s Puzzle solved. She’ll even pay Angus to do so. Why?
It turns out Duncan Wolfe was entwined with Canada’s most famous missing persons case.
Why subscribe?
While the first several chapters of The King’s Puzzle, plus some artifacts, are published free of charge, the bulk of the books (beyond that point) will be for paid subscribers only. Paid subscribers have full access to all published chapters (and anything else), plus the artifacts and publication archives.
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The King’s Puzzle is being published chapter-by-chapter, book-by-book, here on Substack. Chapters are being published at the rate of two or three per week.
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