The plot thickens: why murder mystery weekends are on the rise

Gory getaways are all the rage, thanks to glamorous extras, contemporary themes and a taste for escapism. Our writer heads to Berkshire to visit an ‘unhinged heiress’

I’m an inch down a flute of buck’s fizz when a journalist careers into a buffet table, clasping her bloodied neck. “She’s had her throat slit!” peals a thirtysomething dressed as Jessica Rabbit. A young man in a lime-green cycling skinsuit giggles: “Murder, murder, ahahaha!” and claps his hands. Immediately, 86 crime fans gather to survey our now-dead companion, who has collapsed, mouth agape, on a hotel dining chair. Zoë, a 39-year-old nurse from Woking, reaches for her notebook. “Hmm, slashed throat,” she says. “Is someone here trying to silence her?”

There is something distinctively British about deriving comfort from a grisly murder. A few years ago, sales of mysteries and thrillers overtook those of all other genres of fiction, and our appetite for stylised gore increased in the pandemic years, with crime literature seeing a 19% increase in sales from 2019 to 2020. New escapist subgenres have grown in popularity, including “cosy crime” (polite romps, often set in an imagined past) and “armchair destination” mysteries staged in attractive travel destinations, such as Lucy Foley’s bestselling The Paris Apartment and The White Lotus, an HBO comedy-mystery series set in dysfunctional fictional holiday resorts in Hawaii and Sicily.