The girl scouts host a murder mystery fundraising weekend for high end donors in Mystery Night Murder by Leslie Langtry. With a scenario based upon Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, Merry Wrath, Dr. Soo Jin Body, and four of the girl scouts host eight guests in a mansion on an island in the middle of a lake in Iowa. The guests are each given their roles for the game and then convene in the dining room for a rather unappetizing fish lunch. Then Enos, who became rich when he created an app to remind people to brush their teeth, falls face forward into the fish, dead of cyanide poisoning. Since Dr. Body is the local medical examiner, she easily determines the cause of death.
It becomes apparent that someone has decided to hijack their game and is killing off the guests for real. The murderer follows the example of Agatha Christie in creating a poem of “Eight Little Girl Scouts,” with the number decreasing as a new one is killed off in each stanza. With the entrance of a storm that cuts off all communication from the mainland, the group is truly stranded, and this is about to prove to be the most harrowing weekend of Merry’s life and the most exciting weekend in the girl scouts’ lives.
As with all the Merry Wrath books, Mystery Night Murder was a fun, exciting book. The take-off of And Then There Were None was written creatively, adding a touch of humor to what I consider to be Christie’s most eerie book. I really loved the addition of the girl scouts to the story. Each has her own characteristic traits, and for the first time the girls do not come across as just a group of little girls but rather as individuals. The bloodthirsty Betty especially made me laugh. For example, Betty devises a plan to “improve” Enos’s toothbrushing app by sending a shock to people instead of just making a noise. The girls exercise creativity and help actively to solve the mystery instead of just being support characters as in the previous books.
Another detail that I truly appreciated about Mystery Night Murder is the way it serves as a puzzle as well as an adventure. The home where the book is set is designed exactly like the house on the game board of Clue, with secret passages. That adds an element of intrigue as Merry and Soo Jin work hard to figure out the killer’s identity before the next person dies. The two women and the four girls bond over this experience and join together as a team to solve the mystery. This book was very well written, and I give it five stars!
