Friday, April 14, 2023

In the Hall with the Knife by Diana Peterfreund

 A CLUE Mystery

Starting in third grade, I was obsessed with the board game Clue. My one friend and I would play for hours at her house. Eventually my parents bought me the game, which I still own! I was excited to read this book which features characters and the mansion from the Clue game.

I was very impressed how Ms. Peterfreund created high school juniors based on the characters in the game. Yes, they are teenagers but their personalities and interests reflect their names. I also enjoyed entering the various rooms from the game as I read. 

A storm strikes Maine where students at a private school are about to leave for break. Most of the students successfully leave the island before the storm unleashes.  Scarlett, Mustard, Green, Peacock, Plum and Orchid are stuck in the old mansion with their headmaster and Mrs. White, the proctor of the manison. The next morning the headmaster is found dead with a knife in his chest, pushed into the conservatory's closet. Did a looter kill the headmaster, or is one of them the killer? Each characters has secrets, which are slowly revealed as the story progresses. Although the novel ends with the killer being discovered and apprehended, most characters have only shared a part of their secrets. Two more books follow this one. I read reviews on the next two and learned that one of the characters is bisexual and another character is homosexual. 

Warning: murder, one character is macabre, most of the characters are quite self-centered and selfish. I only liked three characters, and in a later book one of these characters is killed.

-Borrowed from the library.



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