Dear Sleuth

Thank you so much for booking to join us on one of my Original Murder Weekends. I hope you will have an immensely enjoyable weekend in this, our 27th year! I must admit that each year that goes by is a bigger challenge, thinking of new themes for the weekends and this is my 99th plot, unbelievably by the winter plot I will have ‘made a century’ – but instead of being daunted, I am even more inspired and hope that I have come up with a very interesting and fun theme.

As a Murder Weekend guest, you should pretend you have been signed up to work on the exciting new film “The Thin Blue Line”, by Watch This Productions, an up and coming Film Company.

I thought it would be fun for us to all be involved in the creation of what will be a very controversial film, one which ‘proves’ that the current Royal family are not the natural heirs to the throne and that it has been in the wrong hands for 100 years. The weekend is a team-building exercise so that the production team, actors, writers and producers can all get to know each other and work as one on what is expected to be a Bafta-winning, if not Oscar-winning new movie. Set in the 1920’s it is going to be a lavish and expensive production – will it be so believable that it will rock the Monarchy – only time will tell!!

You, the Murder Weekend guest should pretend that you are part of “The Thin Blue Line” team. You could be an actor (if you look like any of the royals, you could pretend you are going to play Victoria, Edward or George). You could be a grip, make-up artist or scriptwriter. Perhaps a Royal Correspondent like Nicholas Witchell or James Whittaker, employed to give lots of advice on the current Royals. You can choose any life story you’d like to create but just have fun with it – don’t worry you won’t be tested on how much you know.

The reason for our fictitious theme is to explain why a group of total strangers would meet at a hotel and, once the murders start, it quickly fades into the background as you turn sleuth to deduce the reasons and motives for a series of untimely deaths. We hope you will enjoy playing along with the main characters.

On Murder Weekends we usually have a colour theme on the first night, and of course it couldn’t be anything else but blue. So I thought it would be nice if we could all wear something blue. It may be a sparkly blue dress, bow tie, baseball cap, socks or even blue bra that’s cheekily showing above your dress line! Perhaps you could just accessorize with lots of blue jewellery. You can wear whatever you feel comfortable in and remember there will be a prize for the best blue.

Throughout the weekend, there will be themed games and quizzes – but please don’t panic, none of them are complicated; they are all just light-hearted fun to get you chatting to your fellow guests and to alleviate the stress on your brains from trying to make sense of the dastardly deeds. Nothing is compulsory on Murder Weekends, so if you’d rather sit out a game and go to the Incident Room to study the evidence then that’s absolutely fine.

On Saturday night we always hold a themed party– for which you can do as much or as little as you choose. For this plot I thought a fun theme would be “My Favourite Film”! I‘m sure you could come up with some great ideas for an interesting fancy dress. For example you could wear a green T shirt and trousers and stick a sign on your chest saying 1,760 yards – THE GREEN MILE; you could dress as a boxer, and have a black eye – ROCKY; you could come in really scruffy pauper’s clothes and present a bowl asking for more – OLIVER; oh heavens there are thousands of fabulous films to choose from, I’m sure you won’t have any difficulty.

Over the years we’ve found that the simplest ideas are often the best and many of our guests say that half the fun is creating their costume before the Weekend to get them in the mood (so please don’t feel you have to go out and hire something special). If you’re stuck for an idea then please get in touch with us at the Murder Weekend office and we’ll try and give you inspiration.

The main reason for the theme is so we can all role-play and get involved, which adds to the realism of the characters and consequently the plot - so please pretend you are guests at “The Thin Blue Line” weekend. Don’t mention the words ‘Murder Weekend’ or ‘murder’. We’ll only look at you as though you are completely daft and deny all knowledge of any such thing.

We know you’ll have a lot of fun, no matter how you decide to play the game, but for those of you who are keen sleuths and want to solve the crime, I have enclosed some tips to help you. Also it might be an idea to bring along a small notepad and pen to jot down conversations you overhear or evidence you think is important would also be useful.

We very much look forward to seeing you on Friday at the Welcome Reception at 8.00 pm, before dinner at 8.30 pm. We aim to keep you occupied throughout the weekend with the many twists and turns, but Saturday morning is free if you wish to go sightseeing or shopping.

We hope you have a marvellous time and manage to crack the crime, which will be solved when the Detective makes an arrest at 12 noon on Sunday, when sadly the “The Thin Blue Line” weekend officially ends, but hopefully you’ll go away having had a great time.

Joy x


* PLEASE NOTE: Could you let us know your full name and the names of any other guests in your party, as we need them for seating plans and to ensure that you are all sitting together.