There are secrets you uncover about your loved one’s family after they begin to let you into their inner circles. My partner’s family has a particularly unusual one: murder.

Joy Swift is cool for a number of reasons. Firstly because she managed to nab the domain murder.co.uk but also because she invented murder mystery weekends. She was given an MBE for it.

Joy and her team of actors run these weekends most weekends at hotels around the country. You arrive on Friday, and get welcomed in, you get a lovely meal, maybe play a game. You eye each person suspiciously, wondering if they’re an actor whilst you eat. But then the evening gets interrupted when someone gets stabbed, poisoned, pushed, or tricked into their doom. Everyone, excited, gets up and rushes to the scene of the crime. (Then you can return to your pudding.)

The police turn up and request that you stick around the hotel for the weekend (or, if you like, don’t stick around but be back for afternoon tea). On Saturday, a number of evidence boards appear in a nearby room that the police are working out of where they’ll slowly put up pieces that are interesting to the case.

You spend your time collating and asking questions about each piece - it all has a meaning. The actors are around quite a lot of the time, and you can ask them all sorts of terribly inappropriate questions. (“So, how long have you been microwaving dolls? I need to see if that date lines up with this other thing.”)

It’s not just the actors around to help though. It’s wonderfully community focused. Everyone is trying to crack the mystery. By Sunday morning, people tend to guard their theories a bit more closely, but on Friday and Saturday everyone is willing to give tips. “Have you seen that misspelling on the letter to the bank?” The misspelling means nothing, but is incredibly exciting to discover! There aren’t many places on earth where sixty strangers can be in a room together and each eagerly be helping each other. In fact, I know of some people who attend these weekends alone, knowing that they will be able to join a group if they want to.

Once all the evidence is up on the board, and all the arguments at dinners have been had, and probably at least three people have been murdered, the police officers are a key tool. They’ll nudge you in the right direction. There are a few of us who are desperate to crack it each weekend and can still be found in the evidence room at 1am, bribing officers and other actors with glasses of wine to stick around “for just a few more questions”. At that point in the evening, the nudges become a bit more distinct if you’re quite far away from a solution.

By the Sunday, I’m usually pretty exhausted. But it’s the exhaustion of a good weekend of sleuthing which is very rewarding.

Anyway, who knows how long Joy will keep running these events. I highly recommend going along to one. They’re always 5/5 star weekends.