Murder by Death

Otto Penzler of Mysterious Books is selling off his collection of mysteries that feature books, book printing, libraries, bookshops... anything bibliophilic.  This is one of those sales it would have been better for me not to know about, but I did know, and after trying to stay away, I ended up with a few:

The coolest one by far, and the only one that I really splurged on, is the File on Fenton and Farr:

It's a book, but it isn't.  As the cover states:

This file contains the complete dossier of a crime, with every clue and item of evidence preserved in its original, physical form, exactly as it might have been received at Police Headquarters.  The crime was a murder.  The police solved it.  Can you?

According to Penzler, it's one of the few complete copies left and I'd read about these Crimefiles in Martin Edwards's The Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books and was hooked - I love the idea of trying to solve the crime myself.  Even MT is intrigued and we're talking about reading it in turn, but keeping it to ourselves, and compare our 'whodunnits' at the end and see which one of us solved the mystery (if we do).  

It really is just a bound dossier too - some pics: