I am trying to lure my wife into PC gaming.

As a first attempt, given her interests outside of gaming, I would like to try with an point-and-click adventure, possibly with mistery/history plot. I would like to keep the length of this first attempt on the short side, since I may anyway have to change strategy and even if the response would be positive, I would like to make her crave for more after finishing it.

What can you suggest that is fun, short, doesn't require WASD/mouse ability and is as recent as possible?

How about any game from Blackwell series?

Resonance is mysteryish also sciency

Gemini Rue has some mystery goodness but its science fiction not history

Blackwells are awesome and short.

Yup the Blackwell series would fit the OP's description almost perfectly.

I immediately thought the same thing, the Blackwell series might be fun for her.

Just remember though, all you can do is introduce them to her and hope for the best. She may or may not go for gaming. I hope you do have luck though. It would be great to share the fun of it together.

You might also tell her about different types of games and ask her about things she might find fun in a game. For example, maybe she'd really have fun with something like The Sims 3, just as one example. She might enjoy casting spells in a role playing game with a good story is another idea. You might want to line up some bookmarked trailers of various games and have her see some gameplay to see if anything catches her eye.

My daughter really surprised me years ago when I discovered my little girl had quite the bloodlust and was immediately pretty good at Quake III Arena. She also enjoyed playing Kain and killing people and sucking their blood. You would never, ever guess this about her if you were to meet her. lol

You might also want to show her the Gabriel Knight games as another idea if you want to stick with adventures.

Fsck Sacrifice. :p :D

Fuck you....

Best adventure game ever is Broken sword 1.. or Well, not sacrifice but I would say Tim Curry, I mean Gabriel Knight.

LOL! My, my, sensitive are we? ;-)

Sacrifice sounds more awesome than Larry 6 in SVGA. =)

To The Moon (available on GOG, yeay) is certainly short; it takes all of four or five hours to complete it. It's also short on gameplay. Most people seem to like the story for certain reasons whereas other hate it for more or less the same ones (I won't go into detail, save you from spoilers).

Dear Esther (unavailable on GOG, boo) is even shorter, at roughly an hour and a half a playthrough. It's a first-person not-a-point-and-click thing with minimalistic controls and a story - not plot - constructed from semi-randomly chosen excerpts of monologue (hence it's a bit different each time you play it, though some things reoccur consistently). It's ridiculously easy to play, but the story is far from lighthearted and you'll spend a lot of time trying to figure out everything, so it might be challenging in that respect. In any case, I like it a lot. Oh, and the soundtrack.

http://www.l4d.com/sacrifice/

Hopefully it's a trailer for sacrifice not just porn. =)

Take the Blackwell adventures. Excellent adventures with a mystery plot. Well written and with a female main character. Your wife might like that.

The adventure games made by Telltale Games (Sam & Max, Back to the Future) might also be a good choice. They don't have a mystery plot (at least not a serious one), but the games are funny, not very long and quite easy.