2022 Beachcomber Mystery Reading Challenge – Updated 4/9

As many of you know, I’m fond of reading challenges. I try to do at least one every year. This year, I was planning on taking it easy and just reading whatever the heck I wanted, but then I stumbled across Rick Mills’ reading challenges, specifically the Beachcomber Mystery Reading Challenge, which focuses on collecting murder scenes, detectives, victims, and weapons to fill your “beach bag” as you read mystery novels.

I like the “bingo” set-up of last year’s challenge, so I’m playing with that for 2022. If you go by Mills’ current, 2022, challenge, it’s the same categories, but you just have to find crime scenes, detectives, victims, and weapons that match each letter of the alphabet (somewhere in the name/word is the alphabet letter you’re looking for. Ex: You can use hand(G)un for the letter G for your weapons bag).

If you’re interested in learning more about the challenge, click here!

It sounds like such a fun challenge, and I was already planning on reading a lot more mystery this year, so this is a perfect challenge for me. This page is where I will keep track of my progress as I “collect” the various items needed to fill my bags. Feel free to use my images if you decide to do this challenge, or check on Mills’ page for links to his templates (which include bingo sheets for each bag or more generic formats).

---

Here are the beach bag items I need to collect:

Crime Scene Bag

Rules for Mills’ 2022 Challenge: Find a letter that occurs anywhere in the word. You are not limited to the author’s exact words. For example, if you need a “G”, and someone uses a “pistol”, feel free to replace that with “handGun”.

I’m going to be doing the bingo from last year’s but I’ll play with the letters, too just so it counts 😉.

A – | B – | C – | D – | E – | F – FOREST ✅ | G – | H – | I – | J – | K – | L – LAWN | M – MINIVAN ✅ | N – | O – OFFICE ✅ | P – | Q – | R – | S – | T – | U – | V – | W – | X – | Y – | Z –

Detective Names Bag

Rules: Find a letter that occurs anywhere in the detective’s name.

• Titles do not count. For example, “Inspector Closeau” would count for A, but not for T.
• You can use anyone who has the detective role in the story, it need not be an ‘official’ detective.
• You may find more than one detective per book, but use each one only once, however…
• You can reuse a detective by reading additional books – for example, if you read two Nero Wolfe books, you can use Nero Wolfe for both F and O.

Victim Names Bag

Rules:  Find a letter which occurs anywhere in the victim’s name. Victims must be dead. You may find more than one per book, but use each one only once.

Weapons Bag

Rules for Mills’ 2022 Challenge: Find a letter that occurs anywhere in the word. You are not limited to the author’s exact words. For example, if you need a “G”, and someone uses a “pistol”, feel free to replace that with “handGun”.

I’m going to be doing the bingo from last years’ but I’ll play with the letters, too, just so it counts 😉.

A – | B – | C – Cardiac Arrest ✅ | D – | E – | F – | G – Gun with silencer | H – Hyperbaric chamber explosion ✅ | I – | J – | K – | L – | M – Minivan ✅ | N – | O – | P – Pichim ✅ | Q – | R – | S – | T – Poisoned Tea ✅ | U – | V – | W – | X – | Y – | Z –

Add Me On

| StoryGraph | Bookstagram | Twitter |