The level of care devoted to every Blackrune work shone yet again. In presentation, music selection, mystery, concept, the whole package came through as always. This one leaned closer to "mystery novel" than his others, and that's saying something. Then again, by the end of most of his trials I'm pretty much reading the walkthroughs and the dialogue like a book without any participation of my own anyway! Maybe I should work on that...
Especially impressive, and reminiscent of those fantastic Golden Age mysteries, was the incredible attention to detail. Such a meticulous approach, cutting away almost all of the extraneous information to deliver exactly the mystery he envisioned.
If I had to voice a criticism, it would probably be the characters - obviously they aren't the focus, but the cardboard cutouts might hit a little too close to "dull Golden Age suspect" for my liking, and it almost felt like they could have been erased altogether. A deliberate parallel to Ye Olde Writing Style isn't much use if it bores the reader, right? Although that might have been a bit of satirical commentary on the general quality of "Blake Roone's" writing, even if Blackrune would never stoop so low!
As for the larger scope mystery, I don't know if I have much to add that wasn't said above. Top 100 detective thinks he's got a mystery that'll astound his readers, but want to check it with number 1 before he pops it into the AAO editor puts it to print. Unfortunately for him, Philo is the world's number one detective, whose deductions can never be wrong. So all of a sudden, his deductions are right. And Mr. Roone is a murderer! Reality really has nothing on an undeceivable man, I guess.