So last night we had a murder mystery dinner party at our house. What an interesting affair.

Spoiler Alert- if you plan to ever play The Masked Massacre by bepartofthemystery.com rather ask me about it person, as opposed to reading the rest of this blog entry.

We were 10 suspects including a ‘nosy parker’ society journalist, a ‘coke addict’ CEO, an ‘eccentric’ fashion designer and ‘crooked’ investment banker. Josh obliged by playing our private detective, Inspector Richard.

Each character (suspect) is given a character booklet a few days before the event to help them get completely into character. The character booklet also tells the characters when to reveal certain information about themselves to the group. It prompts the characters to ask or do certain things at specified time.

Over the duration of the three course meal, three sets of clues are given to the group of suspects with evidence about the murders, such as the coroner’s report or police report of the murder scene.

The rules of the game state that no one is allowed to lie except for the murderer. So if someone asks you a direct question one must answer honestly, unless of course you’re the murderer. Suspects may however embellish the truth. It makes for more challenging for the others and a more fun experience. At the end of the three course meal, all suspects should state who they think the murderer is and only after the final accusations the murderer is revealed by the host or inspector. So the rules say…

The rules also say that the murderer is not allowed to confess before this point, but my Femilyum is special. Fortunately our game had two murderers, so when my mom confessed to being the murderer before it was actually time to confess, we could go on playing.

Considering the context, it’s rather funny – just proves my mom could never be a hard core killer. It seems she felt guilty about killing an imaginary person, so just a little bit of badgering from the ‘nosy parker’ society journalist (aka my friend Ronel) had her confessing before we could even start dessert!

And then, as we were about to reveal the solution in the midst of everyone making final accusations Josh, …sorry I mean Inspector Richard thought he was asked who he thought the second murderer was so he casually blurted the solution out.

But what our game lacked in suspense (3/10 we scored in that department), we made up for in spirit (scored a whopping 11/10 for that!). Everyone put effort into their outfits and looked the part. Despite none of us having partook in such a dinner before but we certainly got into it as the evening progressed.

Tonight when the parentals popped around at my place and we did a bit of an autopsy (cough cough, every pun intended), we already decided toward the end of the year over festive season we must have another such dinner. Since we South African, heck we could even have it over a braai!  Fun times. Family memories 💣🔫🔪💉💵  Can’t wait till we do it again!