Quick read. More of a bathroom book. Not too many solutions, but he's probably right about the Lock Ness monster. ( )

This book is interesting and fun to read. The explanations he gives for some of the mysteries are reasonable and make sense. I borrowed this from my library but it is available on Amazon. I will be checking out his other books also. ( )

This is not perhaps the most reliable book I have read but it is engaging and amusingly written, with a wealth of easily-digestible information and humorous asides that make it ideal reading matter for a waiting room, and a good way to introduce teenagers to some of the more dated popular mysteries.

The cover title is inaccurate because the book does not explain the world's secrets - although generally a reasonable hypothesis is given - and we still don't know what happened to Kaspar Hauser or the truth behind the Dover Monster; but several myths [eg Bigfoot, Crop Circles, the Cottingsley fairies, Agatha Christie, the Aurora space ship] are completely explored and exploded.

The most disappointing chapter by far is that dealing with the Loch Ness Monster which contains such a glaring omission of fact as to cast doubt on the reliability of the rest of the book: Jack puts forward several hypotheses to explain away the best known photograph of the monster, the so-called 'Surgeon's photograph', including unlikely scenarios involving partially submerged circus elephants. The truth, as admitted by the author of the image many years later, is that the picture was a forgery, consisting of a piece of rubber piping, a toy submarine and a pond at the bottom of the garden.

This and other quibbles aside, Ten Minute Mysteries is a compulsively readable book, entertianing and informative, and with rather nice illustrations to boot. I had not heard of Mr Jack before - depite all the time he seems to spend in South Africa - but I shall be looking out for his books in future. ( )

sounds more interesting than it is. I learned a few things but also found some of the research to be less than stellar. ( )