For the last few months, Anna and I have been attending a reader's club sponsored by our local library. It's a Mystery club, called Death and Desserts, and I'm an avid mystery reader, so I wanted to get involved to pick up on some new authors to read, etc. Plus, it's fun to talk about books you're passionate about with other folks who are passionate about their favorite authors. The club is laid out a little differently from some of the other clubs of its kind that I've heard about. Instead of everyone reading the same book and discussing that book in the meeting, we have a theme for each month with a selected author/reading list. Everyone reads a book from the theme, then discusses it with the group. There's a good mix of people in the club, but Anna and I are the youngest ones there, or at least it seems that way.

Tonight, the group did something a little different - we had a Mystery Party! You know, one of those activities where everyone comes in character and through a clever revealing of clues, you decide "whodunnit" before the evening is over. This was the first time Anna and I have been through one of these (we've tried to host them in the past, but never really got anywhere), and we were really excited to participate.

We started off the evening discovering the murder, (that's the "victim" to the left) then all collected in the "conference room" to be grilled by one of the attendees. It started off a little slowly, as no one had done one of these before and weren't really sure how to proceed. But after a bit, the "clues" started flowing, and people really began to play their parts. Some folks really came dressed in character and really played it up, which made the evening even more entertaining.

There was paper and pencil for all to take notes, and I tried to be fastidious about my own note taking, as Anna captured in this photo. We went through three rounds of clues and accusations, and all kinds of interesting information was revealed about each of the participants. Most information was presented as incriminating to the character, but some was deliciously off-base. And since we had to mix genders with some of the characters (there are few men in the group and the particular scenario we portrayed had a number of male characters) there were some "affairs" that were a little more interesting than were originally intended. Including the surprise announcement that someone was the daughter of the victim, and she came to the party to meet her father, who was being played by another woman!

But the best part is, at the end, yours truly was the killer! I had my reasons (and they were pretty good ones, or so the story goes). I won't mention what the scenario was or which character I played (should anyone else actually be using this particular setup from this particular vendor). But that doesn't change the fact that I killed the victim and should be hauled off to jail! I didn't know until the end that I had done the dastardly deed, but 3 people in the room guessed it was me, so I guess they win. I actually kinda thought I had done it, but I wasn't about to vote for myself. Or maybe I should have to force everyone to look the other way? Hmmm...

Anyway, we all had a good time, and Anna and I are definitely up for another one of these at some point. It was too much fun not to do again!