Initially Garrett planned simple job - to steal another precious gem from yet another Victorian-like mansion which belongs to lord Duncan Malveine. But before breaking in, something went wrong, and Duncan was violently killed. This unfortunate circumstance, as well as the mysterious Malveine's acquaintance, who seeks retribution for the murder of his friend, force Garrett to play the role of a detective, in addition to his usual thief's "duties".

"The Violent End of Duncan Malveine" tells two main stories which are seemingly not connected. The first of them is detective mystery when and where we are to investigate circumstances of Malveine's death. Who killed, how, what are the clues - all of those. There lies gimmick in the mission: randomization of many aspects of this particular story (personality of murderer, method of assassination, motives, etc.), which adds to the interest in replaying. This coin has two sides though: the detective quest while random, is fairly simple, and not difficult: firstly you need to find out what exactly happened to poor lord, and then find clues - usually in the room of the killer.

Another story is devoted to Duncan's ancestor and is much darker that detective quest. It tells about some old curse which lies on Malveine's family. This subplot is optional: but to retrieve some ancient artifact and reveal dark mystery, you should complete some kind of card-hunt and find all the cards which will open the way to complete one of bonus objectives. There lies one of the drawbacks of mission in my opinion - too long and excessive search of cards is annoying while being optional. Another issue is with the size of the mission and quantity of objects - and therefore some areas look underdeveloped and unexpectedly spartan.

There are plenty of things to do in this big multidimensional sandbox (but each dimension, each layer here is divided from others, with some particular ways to it - and I doubt whether mission can be named "vertical" - maybe aside from Duncan's vault quest). There is almost no keyhunt (at least, in its usual sense): almost all the doors are open, and the main objectives are easy to understand. It also was the mission in which I tried to find all the secrets in order to understand all the mystery. It is classical "mansion" mission which provides open gameplay while being technically impressive.