I’m still trying to catch up on old posts I haven’t shared with readers here. But this one is wonderful. One of the most charming and fascinating books for kids during the 1980s was Masquerade, by Kit Williams. At first glance, it was just another children’s picture book. On a deeper level, however, it was a map to a jewel-encrusted treasure buried somewhere in England. All you had to do was study the gorgeous illustrations for clues that would lead you to the spot where the author—a consummate illustrator, sculptor, clockmaker, and wizard—had hidden a golden amulet in the shape of the book’s protagonist, Jack Hare.
I was in high school when the book pubbed. It was a book intended for kids far younger than me at the time, but it really wasn’t. All over the world, adults were also buying copies and obsessing over how to find the treasure—not always in a good way. Heck, the CIA bought copies to train their recruits on code-breaking!
In the story I share at SleuthSayers, I tell how people went nuts digging up every plot of soil in England, looking for the treasure. Sometimes even destroying beautiful, well-tended gardens on private property and municipal soccer fields in the process.
I attempt to explain the solution to the puzzle, as best as I can, in a post entitled:
The Mystery at the Heart of Masquerade.
The author, Williams, pubbed two Masquerade books. The first was a lovely hardcover. The second was a small paperback that reprinted the original illustrations and then revealed the complicated steps one would have to follow to solve the riddle and locate the treasure.
One man finally did, but it’s possible he had help. It was a messy story, not fitting to the beauty of the book and the elegance of the intrinsic puzzle.
Both books are out of print, but you can still find reasonably priced copies online. I found the hardcover here, selling for under $20. The paperback costs around $10 these days, and you can easily find many of the other puzzle books Williams wrote and published when the first book was still quite hot and unsolved.
If you can’t find them on Amazon, I would check out other retailers that sell used and rare books, such as Biblio.com, Alibris.com, and Bookfinder.com. Just understand that if you’re buying the book for a child, you will really want the larger hardcover. The paperback will fail to impress a clever kid, who will be drawn to the story and the pictures.
Happy hunting!
Photo above by me.