In the Hall with the Knife A Clue Mystery, Book One

Low drama, lots of secrets and murder.



Plum, young science genius, Scarlet, Machiavellian plotting to rule the school, Green, scholarship kid, Orchid, hiding a whole other life, Peacock, tennis star, Mustard, used to go to a military school, Mrs. White, dorm mother, Rusty Naylor, maintenance worker, students Silverman and Gould and headmaster Brian Boddy are trapped at a remote boarding school, during a blizzard. The bridge to the mainland is washed out, the school is flooded, electricity is out and Mr. Boddy is found dead in the conservatory, knife sticking out of his chest.

Who killed headmaster Boddy and why?



Honestly, this was so much fun. Clue was my favorite board game growing up and the author obviously holds affection for both the game and the movie from the eighties.

I was worried this book was going to be too ‘teen' for me - that there was going to be a lot of drama and, basically, that it would be like every teen drama that I've avoided. It wasn't, which was such a relief to me.

There were several red-herrings, but the mystery was...well, to be honest, not why I was reading the book. (Which is good, because I was vacillating between two suspects the entire book (even before the murder) and I wasn't wrong.)

I did really love the author's own take on these pop culture icons, but there's a couple small nitpicks that makes me not give this a five stars.

The first is that these characters are never described (except Orchid, who I honestly thought was a rather strange addition the the story anyway). This left me imagining a strange mixture of the younger versions of 1) the movie characters 2) the original board game characters and 3) characters from one of the computer games. That being said shrug.

The other problem I had was the dangling plot thread. A big thing is made of one of the secondary characters possibly being dead - and we never find out what actually happened to them. ??? Not even a line ‘yeah, they're alright. Nothing.

Anyway, over all a fun story, several weak motives to go with a handful of red-herrings and I am super looking forward to the sequel.

(Also, side note, just when I thing YA, especially contemporary YA isn't for me, I read a book like this!)