Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Mystery Exercise

On the way to my grad school writing class yesterday, I passed by the infamous Mayflower Hotel. It has, of course, been in the news lately due to the whole Eliot Spitzer prostitution thing. Don’t worry, as this is a mystery blog, I will refrain from getting into my thoughts on that whole thing! However, while I was starring up at the windows wondering which window belonged to room 871, it occurred to me that there was probably someone in the room, or at least staying in the room, right then.

How strange it would be to go on a trip, check into this randomly assigned room, unpack your clothes, and then, the next day, your seemingly cookie cutter hotel room is hot news. Would I look around the room to see if I could find anything telling and unusual that the housekeeping crew had missed?

I thought it might be fun for my throngs of readers to explore this creatively. I will change the scenario to a less politically charged and way more fictional (and therefore fun) alternative:

While you are on vacation or a business trip, you read about a business man who was found murdered yesterday. The police have already arrested someone for the murder. Among other evidence, they learned that the victim made several phone calls to the suspect from your hotel room last month.

So, what do you do, how do you react? Do you find something that exonerates the suspect, or that proves he/she did not work alone?

I hope you guys have fun with this, and feel free to post your ideas in the comments!

No comments: