The Brilliant Batsby: A Murder Mystery Dinner Party
Tuesday, January 26th, 2016 | Distractions
For New Year’s Eve we threw a murder mystery dinner party. I’ve previously written about the event and the food I served. Today, I want to talk about the murder mystery and make it available for anyone who is interested.
The script was based around The Brilliant Batsby, a parody on the F. Scott Fitzgerald novel The Great Gatsby. Set in the Roaring Twenties, the plot involves a dozen characters at one of Batsby’s famous parties. A time traveller, Baron von Brown, turns up with proof that Batbsy will be murdered in the future. But which of the guests did it?
Ready for commercial sale it certainly is not. A good boxed murder mystery allows you to work with any number of characters (or without any) and have a different murderer every time. In my script most of the characters are required and the murder is predetermined. All of this is in the dialogue and difficult to change.
Indeed this almost caused me to come unstuck. Originally The Baron was going to turn up with a motion picture device showing a video of Batsby’s murder. However, my original Batsby was ill and so I had to switch the characters around and switch the video to a letter. This resulted in some clumsy dialogue that doesn’t make a lot of sense. However, it is a parody, so best just to go with it.
The characters are:
- The Brilliant Batsby, party host
- Bellina Morgan, wealthy heiress and noted beauty
- Inspector Watt, a police detective
- Baron von Brown, a time traveller from the future
- Mona Moonshine, infamous bootlegger
- Murderous Joe, a convicted criminal
- Chef Gusteau, a chef hired to cater the party
- Professor Laura Craft, archeologist and raider of tombs
- Timothy Timson, Professor Craft’s assistant
- Dr Victor Zoidberg, an Austrian psychologist
- Any number of additional characters
There are a series of 11 dialogues. Each one can be read between courses. However, if by some chance you do not have 11 courses, you could batch them. This makes sense as they are not very long, and sometimes left a conversation gap after they had finished.
If you are interested in having a look, I’ve shared the files: download them here.
For New Year’s Eve we threw a murder mystery dinner party. I’ve previously written about the event and the food I served. Today, I want to talk about the murder mystery and make it available for anyone who is interested.
The script was based around The Brilliant Batsby, a parody on the F. Scott Fitzgerald novel The Great Gatsby. Set in the Roaring Twenties, the plot involves a dozen characters at one of Batsby’s famous parties. A time traveller, Baron von Brown, turns up with proof that Batbsy will be murdered in the future. But which of the guests did it?
Ready for commercial sale it certainly is not. A good boxed murder mystery allows you to work with any number of characters (or without any) and have a different murderer every time. In my script most of the characters are required and the murder is predetermined. All of this is in the dialogue and difficult to change.
Indeed this almost caused me to come unstuck. Originally The Baron was going to turn up with a motion picture device showing a video of Batsby’s murder. However, my original Batsby was ill and so I had to switch the characters around and switch the video to a letter. This resulted in some clumsy dialogue that doesn’t make a lot of sense. However, it is a parody, so best just to go with it.
The characters are:
- The Brilliant Batsby, party host
- Bellina Morgan, wealthy heiress and noted beauty
- Inspector Watt, a police detective
- Baron von Brown, a time traveller from the future
- Mona Moonshine, infamous bootlegger
- Murderous Joe, a convicted criminal
- Chef Gusteau, a chef hired to cater the party
- Professor Laura Craft, archeologist and raider of tombs
- Timothy Timson, Professor Craft’s assistant
- Dr Victor Zoidberg, an Austrian psychologist
- Any number of additional characters
There are a series of 11 dialogues. Each one can be read between courses. However, if by some chance you do not have 11 courses, you could batch them. This makes sense as they are not very long, and sometimes left a conversation gap after they had finished.
If you are interested in having a look, I’ve shared the files: download them here.