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

I'm an inch away from a flute of buck's fizz when a reporter bursts into a buffet table, clutching her bloodied neck. "She got her throat slit!" launches a thirty-year-old disguised as Jessica Rabbit. A young man in a lime-green cycling suit chuckled, “Murder, murder, ahahaha! and clap your hands. Immediately, 86 crime buffs gather to survey our now-deceased companion, who has collapsed, speechless, into a hotel dining room chair. Zoë, a 39-year-old nurse from Woking, grabs her notebook. "Hmm, slit throat," she said. "Is anyone here trying to shut her up?" A few years ago, sales of crime novels and thrillers surpassed those of all other genres of fiction, and our appetite for stylized gore grew during the pandemic years, as crime fiction saw its sales increase by 19% from 2019 to 2020. New escapist subgenres have grown in popularity, including "cozy crime" (polite antics, often set in an imaginary past) and "armchair destination" mysteries set in scene in enticing travel destinations, like Lucy Foley's best-selling The Paris Apartment and The White Lotus, an HBO comedy-mystery series set in fictional dysfunctional resort towns in Hawaii and Sicily.

"There is something familiar about these books that we are looking for in uncertain times," says Phoebe Morgan, who commands crime for publisher HarperCollins. "We c...