If you liked The Killer Isn't Alice, start with these

Once you've cleared Alice's name there's an awkward gap on the shelf. These are the books that fill it — all real, all currently in print, and all of them asking you to do the work rather than watch someone else do it.

Murdle: Volume 1 — G. T. Karber

The book that started the craze. A hundred self-contained murder logic puzzles, graded from elementary to impossible, each with a little cast of characters and a grid to fill. If you only buy one, buy this one — and there are three volumes plus The School of Mystery and The Case of the Seven Skulls behind it.

Murdoku — Manuel Garand

Sudoku, but every grid is a crime scene with a body in it. Solve the numbers and you've solved the murder. The cleverest twist on sudoku going around.

Suspect Everyone — R. D. Herring

A cop is dead, your partner Detective Hawk is missing, and the evidence says he did it. You have to find his alibi in a list of 13,100 names, then find the real killer. It's split into three separate elimination puzzles that build on each other.

Cross Out Club: A British Manor Murder — Eve Christie

Other books ask who. This one asks who, how and where. Fifty thousand names in an estate ledger, five possible weapons, five possible crime scenes, and a dead aristocrat who announced a change to his will at a midsummer party.

Mahjong Murder — Jared Goudsmit

The returning champion drops dead from a poison-coated tile at the world's largest mahjong tournament, and the attendance sheet runs to more than 40,000 players. Tight, fast and oddly tense.

Strange Pictures — Uketsu

Not an elimination book at all, but the best 'look again' mystery of the lot. Four short Japanese stories where the clue is hiding in a simple pencil drawing. Deceptively calm, quietly unhinging.

Murder, She Solved — R. D. Herring

120 cosy crime puzzles — grids, sudoku, crosswords, wordsearches and codewords — set in a sleepy coastal town with a recurring murder problem. The one to buy if you want variety rather than one long case.