Mrs. White in the kitchen with the candlestick

The game Cluedo - or Clue in America - was created in 1944 by Anthony Pratt, a solicitor's clerk in Birmingham, England. The first version of the game was published in 1949 by the Waddington company, based in Leeds. Hasbro eventually bought out Waddington, and now publishes Clue all over the world. Miss Scarlet, Mrs. Peacock, Colonel Mustard and Professor Plum have become household names.

Earlier this year, friend Jeannie Holmes, author of the Alexandra Sabian paranormal mysteries, very innocently asked me to do a guest blog for her on 7 Criminal Minds, since she was on deadline and couldn't do her own scheduled post.

"You'll really like the prompt," she said.

Blithely, I agreed. It was just around the time when Mortar and Murder was released, so the timing seemed fortuitous.

Until she sent me the prompt.

“The Clue characters are locked in a winter lodge. Mr. Boddy is found dead in a snowdrift with no visible signs of trauma. Who did it and how do you prove it using just the things in the lodge?”

Well, I wrote the blog, called The Boddy in the Snowbank. It worked out all right. And two nights ago, after a game of Clue with my kids, I decided to give it a cover and upload it to Smashwords.

Since then it's had - as of this writing - almost 70 downloads and a 5-star rating from everyone who's reviewed it.

Not bad for a silly little short story Jeannie roped me into writing!

If you'd like to check it out, feel free to click on the link and download a copy. It's free, since I couldn't in good conscience charge anything for a 1,600 word story. Enjoy!