How to Host a Murder Mystery Tea @LucyBurdette

LUCY BURDETTE:  for those of you who may not have seen this on social media, the Friends of the Key West Library had the very good fortune to host Ann Cleeves as the guest of honor at our fundraising gala in early February. Once we knew she was coming, I realized that we also had an opportunity to put on a murder mystery tea at the library. Ann is a huge and generous supporter of libraries, and she often gets asked to visit and speak. But she can’t go everywhere, so she came up with the idea of writing some short mysteries for libraries to perform. You can find those here.

We chose the Shetland mini mystery called Bannocks and Blood. I was able to round up four suspects, the Friends agreed to help with the tea, and the wonderful library staff in Key West contributed in every way. We decided to structure it so that the first part of the program would introduce the suspects and highlight their protestations of innocence. Then we took a break for tea, and the attendees voted on the murderer. Finally, the murderer was revealed and hauled away by a Monroe County Sheriff’s Office deputy. Winners were chosen for five copies of Raven Black and three friends of the library ball caps.

This mini mystery was written upon the publication of Cold Earth, Ann Cleeves’ 30th book in 30 years. It started out like so: This evening we’re not in Key West, but in Shetland at Sunday tea. This is a community meeting that brings people together across Shetland once a week to catch up on local news, hear music, and sell homemade items. This Sunday began like any other as the Shetland tea committee met early to set up today’s tea until the body of committee member Minnie Laurenson is found. In the tradition of the golden aged detective novel, only the people at the Sunday tea committee could’ve committed the murder – they were the only ones present in the hall and nobody else had access.

Here was poor Minnie Laurenson, stabbed by her own knitting scissors and arranged by the library staff, with Ann and me investigating.

Here was our playbill, designed by fabulously talented Samantha Blee.

Here's Ann with our wonderful librarians, Michael and Kim.

Here were some of the many delicious tea treats, prepared and delivered by Friends and some local bakeries.

Here are the very suspicious looking suspects, and the author herself!

Here is the murderer getting her comeuppance. 

The event was a huge success, drawing almost 150 audience members, including a number who had never been into our library. We were also able to add members to our Friends of the Library roster, and introduce lots of new readers to our amazing guest. Possibly the hardest part of the planning was finding clothes suitable for Shetland in Key West. The murderer is wearing a hand-knit Fair Isle hat that Ann brought with her from England.

Red Readers: What’s the most fun you’ve had at an author event?