Mystery Nerds

Longtime readers of this blog (a relative thing) will recall that my church does an annual Murder Mystery Night sponsored by YRUU. Last night was “Murder in New Orleans.” It was great fun and the kids were wonderful actors, though the mystery (which they had bought from a game company) was not well written.

Few people over eighteen were into it, but TheCSO and I were, especially me. I questioned suspects, I talked over the clues with my friends, I was even the one who found evidence that a will was faked. (The signatures didn’t match the same people’s signatures on other documents.)

In the end, we didn’t even guess the right person who did it because the whole thing was really cluelessly put together by the game company. (e.g. The fact that one lady misspelled her own name in a signature on another document was not relevant to the case, just a typo on the game company’s part.)

The CSO and I had great fun, and we came up with a more interesting solution to the murder than the one the game company had provided. Also, their solution didn’t actually make any sense if you know anything about the mechanics of garroting someone to death, which, embarrassingly enough, we do.

This all goes way back for me. When I was three years old, my mom would read me two chapters of a Nancy Drew mystery every night. Nancy Drew mysteries always end chapters on a cliffhanger and I literally taught myself to read because I wanted to know what happened to Nancy before the next night. (Though I didn’t admit I could read until I was six or seven because I was afraid my mom would stop reading to me. She knew, though, and would sometimes point to a word and ask me what it said. “Parade!...I mean…I don’t know!” I would respond. For a kid who could read at three and a half, I sure wasn’t very smart…)

I am such a geek for mysteries. I have friend who is a biologist who once actually wrote to the writers of “Star Trek: The Next Generation” offering to vet the scripts for biological fact error free of charge. (Apparently TNG’s early scripts had a lot of problems in that department.) I can so see myself being one of these people. I used to LOVE “Monk” but I quit watching in frustration when the solution to the mystery didn’t actually make sense one too many times.

I know I said this last year, but theCSO and I really have to go to a murder mystery dinner theatre someplace else some time where we can be around mystery nerds of our own kind.

CC