In the Hall with the Knife - Diana Peterfreund
I came across this book when I saw a student reading it in class, and was curious enough to get it out after them.
As the title may give away, this book is inspired by the game Cluedo (or Clue in America). It is even subtitled 'A Clue Mystery', although it is a fairly loose adaptation, with the characters now almost all being high-school students, and their names and characters being reworked to fit that setting better. So, instead of 'Professor Plum' we now have Phineas 'Finn' Plum, who is a science geek but very much not a professor. And instead of Colonel Mustard we have Sam 'Mustard' Maestor, a relative new-comer to the school with a military school background. Mrs White, however, remains pretty much identical to her character in the game.
The setting is much closer to the game, with the house in question - Tudor House - being an old accommodation building in the school grounds, with each of the requisite rooms being included. There are also passing references throughout the story to the various other potential murder weapons, as characters come across them in their exploration of the manor.
An interesting choice narratively is the decision to make a number of the characters point of view characters, with chapters of their own. Each of these characters is also a suspect to a greater or lesser extent, and in order to maintain the chance that they are the murderer themselves, certain things they know are only alluded to rather than clearly revealed. It does, however, make it seem unlikely that someone presented as a protagonist could in fact be the killer. Not impossible, of course, but less likely.
The story also failed to "grab" me for quite a portion of the narrative. The title seemed a bit off (as the murder victim was found in the conservatory other than the hall) and I was distracted wondering whether the title was simply wrong or whether it was a spoiler of some sort. I was also watching the characters go about their lives, and even investigate the murder, while not really feeling all that connected to them.
This changed at a certain point, when the author suddenly began strongly hinting that a few characters were more dangerous than others. Suddenly, and within a very short space of time, I found myself fearful for a few characters as other characters entered the rooms where they were, and as that happened I realised I finally was invested in the story.
Overall, an interesting experiment at adapting a board game into a narrative. Maybe not my favourite murder-mystery ever, but certainly one that works for the target teen market.
Completed 9 July 2024.
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