The pages of Cain’s Jaw have been intentionally printed out of order. You will have to solve the police investigation by rearranging them. This book was released for the first time in French on February 7, 2023.
Cain’s Jaw is not a book like the others: it is an enigma. Certainly, it is a thriller, with a murder and many clues to compile over a police investigation. But the added twist is that the pages were printed out of order. No, this is not an error of the Pocket Book. The book was designed like this when it was first published in 1934.
The title, Cain’s Jaw, is taken from the biblical story of Cain, who is, in the Book of Genesis, the very first murderer of mankind. A certain Torquemada is behind it. This nickname hides the British author Edward Powys Mathers — translator, poet, crossword specialist. At the time, Torquemada challenged readers to put the pages back in the correct order, listing the six victims and their killers. The key, then, a reward of 15 pounds.
Almost 90 years after the original publication of this funny literary object, Le Livre de Poche publishes the unpublished French translation. And they too bring into play a reward, reserved for the first three readers who solve the enigma before February 7, 2024:
- First price : €1,000 and 100 books to be chosen from the publishing house’s catalogue;
- Second and Third Prize : 100 books each in the Pocket Book catalog.
The book therefore contains bulletins to be filled in, where you can write down your contact details, your answers to the riddle, but where you must also, be careful, detail your entire survey methodology to reach the solution. Before arriving at this happy outcome… it would not be an easy task.
“Obstacles, dead ends and treasure hunts”
The book itself spans 100 pages, each taking up just under half a page. It’s not a big deal ? In appearance only. Because all of these pages being out of order, it’s very simple, the number of combinations extends into millions of possible configurations. Only one is good. Only one. Nothing is simple, and since 1934 in the UK only three people have been able to solve it.
Each page is actually half a page, because there is a “notes” section so that you can write down your ideas (the back of the page being white, you can also write your ideas there). Likewise, each page is cuttable. Don’t panic if you don’t like damaging books: this one is made for that! It’s even better, actually, to try to reorder them as you iterate.
For Hervé Le Tellier, who signs the preface to the book, the approach could be “ the literary child of Agatha Christie and James Joyce, even of TS Eliot “. And it will be about you rubbing shoulders with the pitfalls, dead ends and treasure hunts scattered throughout these pages “.
In any case, we can imagine that the challenge is quite immense and that you will need patience and self-sacrifice. The publication of Cain’s Jaw is cheeky, halfway between a board game and detective literature.
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