Someone in this room is a killer: diners at murder mystery eating experiences get into more than just food fights.

Someone in this room is a killer

The restaurant's window blinds are half closed, so passersby will have a hard time seeing what is going on inside. Lamps on the tables are dim, and the sharpened butter knives at each place setting are just slightly longer than customary.

Inside, during the cocktail hour, women sip blood-red wine and chat about the weather. Beside them on the table is a brochure: "Did the person next to you kill someone?" it says.

For about $70 an evening at a murder mystery dinner will be someone's last - and your dining experience will include a course in sleuthing.

About half a dozen outfits in Los Angeles hire professional actors to disrupt your elegant repast with "cyanide-laced water," fistfights and the firing of a few rounds, not to mention a couple of dead bodies. Afterward, the job of those who are still alive is to unravel the plot.

Murder mystery companies have been spoiling (or spicing, depending on your ghoulish taste) the dinners of innocent Southland patrons since the early 1980s. Sean Wright, director of The Plot Thickens, claims his was the first Southland company to venture into the unknown in 1982 with murder mystery dinners.

However, clue searches, conducted in England centuries ago, were the first form of murder mystery with audience participation, said Lynn Chaplin Noe, co-owner of Los Angeles-based Capers, another sleuth-supper venture.

The modern murder mystery unfolded more recently when a woman named Joy Swift notice how much business was received at a British hotel where a murder had recently taken place, Noe noted. Swift soon started contriving her own dramas of death at other hotels.

And the mayhem moved West in the early 1980s.

For instance, recently at Val's restaurant in Toluca Lake, the "mistress of murder" from Dial "M" Murder Mysteries in Burbank - yet another lethal culinary experience - tells guests to enjoy their cocktails and warns they are "about to be interrogated, so feel free to lie."

The guests are dying to find out about each other. "Does your husband happen to have a very big will?" is one cocktail hour inquiry.

Dinner is not the only time when death comes knocking. Train rides, boat cruises and weekend getaways can also be fatal.

Capers once took some brave souls for a ride on the Orient Express in Switzerland, at a cost of about $25,000 per head. (This outfit has also given a party for Michael Milken's kid.)

Keith & Margo's Murder Mystery, based in Van Nuys, offers guests a Danish death in Solvang for $215 per person. Or sleuths can take a deathly train ride to San Diego or Santa Barbara for $325 per person, and witness a couple of fatalities.

Back at Val's restaurant, the patrons sit down to dinner and the mistress of murder, wearing fashionable black gloves, cautions them to expect the unexpected. "Someone in this room is a murderer," she says slyly.

Sure enough, while the guests are pondering the croutons in their Caesar salad, a gentleman across the way lets out a moan and collapses on the floor.

Enter Lt. Columbus, determined to solve the crime and crack jokes. He takes center stage, examining water glasses, smelling vials and interrogating suspects.

"Ladies and gentlemen, we do have a murderer here tonight, and I hope it isn't the chef," the mistress of murder tells the guests as the entree is being served.

The guests get acquainted with each other over dinner. One elderly man says he is in real estate. "Good reason to be a murderer," says another. And a sculptor describes his introduction to the trade. "I started with a chain saw on a burl," he notes.

Murder mystery companies have transported corporations as well as individuals to the scene of the crime. Some Southland companies that have indulged in the morbidness of Keith & Margo's Murder Mystery include Walt Disney Co., MCA Inc.'s record division and Southern California Edison. Capers murder mysteries have passed away the time with Mattel Inc. and Pacific Bell.

Keith & Margo conduct murder mysteries for corporations at conventions and meetings, as well as at dinners and on weekends, while Capers specializes in corporate meetings.

How does Noe, co-owner of Capers, decide what to include in a plot? She said she tells her husband, "Listen to this," and he listens and says, "That's sick. Let's use it."

Wright sometimes bribes the employees of restaurants or hotels to enhance the scene's aura. He once gave two waiters $25 each to be rude to the guests.

Murder mystery companies customarily have an array of plots, so repeat diners may be mystified again.

And reporters are forbidden - on pain of death - from disclosing plot details. Still, it can be reported that, back at Val's, clues are being examined, fists are flying and lovers are quarreling. "Have you ever been hurt so badly by a woman that you feel she stabbed you right in the hear?" asks a gentleman with a knife in his chest.

Following the murder, Lt. Columbus interrogates the dinner guests and zeroes in on suspects, all the while pulling poetic clues out of dinner jackets and reading them aloud for all the guests to hear and ponder. At one point he polls the guests on what device the murderer used.

As each event of the evening unfolds - from fistfight to screaming match - Columbus is on the scene, inquisitive and humorous. Guests listen as he discovers new clues and argues with the suspects (the diners).

But not until the end of the evening, when all non-paying guests are dead and gone, are the customers given their biggest chance to use their wits. The hosts set up a tray in the back of the room that displays all of the evening's clues that Lt. Columbus has discovered, and the guests get questionaires that offer them a chance to solve the plot themselves.

Winners often get a prize, and Murder Mystery Weekend gives the guest with the "dumbest" solution a prize too, said Murder Mystery Weekend owner Margo Morrison.

Some murder mystery makers agree they need a fascination with the crime to be in this macabre business. "I'm a very nonviolent person, but when it comes to murder I'm insidious," Noe said.