Oh, not this old game again! It’s worse than Hey, Pull My Finger Off!
Invitation to a Murder (2023) is somewhat like an Agatha Christie-authored mystery, as six people receive invitations to the house of one of the richest men in the world in the 1920s. They meet on a train to the location du jour, but the focus is on Miranda Green, a florist whose eye for detail is almost unreal. But even she can’t see the connecting feature on these six.
Before long we have our first corpse, and then a second – and my Arts Editor is shaking her head, proclaiming this to be an assemblage of worn-out tropes. But then, a member of the staff dies.
And then we find out … well, that would be telling.
In the end, it has some interesting twists, and Miss Green is not a fading flower, nor a woman with the agenda that an unmarried woman of the age might have had. No nonsense and virtually seeing around corners, she’s rather fun.
But it does feel a bit labored, and the red herrings are really better when they’re not just thrown into a garbage can once deployed.
But it was some fun while it lasted. Good effort. Vivid characters next time. If there is one.
