Literature / Clue

The book series adaptation of Clue, each of its eighteen books consists of mini-mysteries in which Mr. Reginald Boddy and his six color-coded guests, who've been invited over for the weekend, participate in some activity or another which forms the basis of a puzzle for the reader to solve. The books always start with an "Allow Me To Introduce Myself..." chapter, in which readers learn about Boddy and his six guests (and usually how he survived the last book), and tend to set up for the first mini-mystery chapter, while the final story always involves Mr. Boddy's murder and usually (but not always) a theft of some kind. It was released from 1992 to 1997.

A second book series, Clue Junior, consisted of thirteen books released from 1994 to 1998, and featured child versions of the classic characters — Mortimer Mustard, Georgie Green, Peter Plum, Wendy White, Polly Peacock and Samantha Scarlet. The lineup was reduced starting in book 8, retaining Mustard, Plum and Scarlet while dropping White and Peacock and changing Georgie Green into Greta Green. Regardless of the lineup, the characters are always members of the Clue Club, a group of fourth-graders who love reading, watching and discussing mysteries, and playing mystery games (such as "Clue Jr.", their favorite), or just hanging out together. Unlike the original series (which typically replied on the "[suspect] in the [room] with the [weapon]" style of solutions), the cases involve logic puzzles along the line of the Encyclopedia Brown series.

Clue Mysteries and its sequel More Clue Mysteries were released in 2003 and 2004 (with names — John Boddy, Josephine Scarlet, Patricia Peacock, Michael Mustard, Blanche White, John Green and Peter Plum — and characterizations based in the 2002 version of the game and the "Clue Mysteries" spinoff game), each starting out with similar introductions: John Boddy is due to inherit his late uncle's estate, which includes allowances to six people; Boddy intends on cutting off (or at least possibly reducing in Mrs. White's case) these allowances when his inheritance comes through. Each book contains fifteen standalone mysteries that pick up where the introduction ends, and all ask the same question in the end: Who killed Mr. Boddy?

The original series books are:

• 1. Who Killed Mr. Boddy?^Chapters1. Who Killed Pitty-Pat?; 2. Who Stole Miss Scarlet's Diamonds?; 3. Happy Birthday, Mr. Green; 4. The Ghost of Mrs. Boddy; 5. Hide and Seek; 6. Where There's Smoke, There's Fire!; 7. The Secret Changes Hands; 8. The Sleepwalking Killer; 9. Miss Feather's Gossip Column; 10. Who Was Fiddling Around?; 11. The Night the Maid Became a Zombie; 12. April Fools; 13. Who Killed Mr. Boddy?
• 2. The Secret Secret Passage^Chapters1. The Secret Secret Passage; 2. The Challenge; 3. The Joke Contest; 4. Mrs. White's Horrible Plan; 5. Boddy Language; 6. Plum's Plasma; 7. A Show of Talent; 8. Trick or Treat; 9. The Wrong Briefcase; 10. Mr. Boddy's Pyramid
• 3. The Case of the Invisible Cat^Chapters1. A Mixed Bag; 2. Cut Down to Size; 3. Dressed to Kill; 4. Charades; 5. Bad Taste; 6. A Very Important Poison; 7. Sound the Alarm!; 8. The Case of the Invisible Cat; 9. Cloning Around; 10. The Late Mr. Boddy
• 4. Mystery at the Masked Ball^Chapters1. Mr. Boddy Kills a Guest; 2. Pick a Pocket, Any Pocket; 3. A Tug-of-War; 4. The Deadly Toothbrush; 5. The Hobby Club; 6. Seating Arrangements; 7. The Mystery at the Masked Ball; 8. Farewell, Mrs. Peacock; 9. A Mysterious Meeting; 10. Mr. Boddy Passes On
• 5. Midnight Phone Calls^Chapters1. Party Crashers; 2. Midnight Phone Calls; 3. Wear are the Weapons?; 4. Blackout!; 5. The Walls Have Eyes; 6. The Guest Who Stole Christmas; 7. A Room With a View; 8. The Guest Who Couldn't Shoot Straight; 9. A Purple Belt in Karate; 10. Mr. Boddy's Funeral
• 6. Booby-Trapped!^Chapters1. That Gun Rings a Bell; 2. A Dynamite Dinner; 3. The Scarlet Key; 4. Password, Please; 5. Tall Tales; 6. Caught Blue-Handed; 7. The Robot Butler; 8. One of You Is the Murderer; 9. Mr. Boddy's Surefire System; 10. Booby-Trapped!
• 7. The Picture-Perfect Crime^Chapters1. Be My Ghost; 2. The Picture-Perfect Crime; 3. You Gotta Have Art; 4. Mr. Green's Jeans; 5. Mrs. Peacock Bites the Bullet; 6. The Plot Thickens; 7. A Textbook Murder; 8. Sound the Alarm!; 9. Mr. Boddy's Wild Ride; 10. The Life of the Party is Dead
• 8. The Clue in the Shadows^Chapters1. The Bug Stops Here; 2. Read It and Weep; 3. The Guys in Disguise; 4. Your Chocolate or Your Life; 5. Something Fishy; 6. Who Bent the Bentley?; 7. The Slumber-less Party; 8. Foul Ball; 9. Time Is Running Out; 10. The Clue in the Shadows
• 9. Mystery in the Moonlight^Chapters1. On the Scent; 2. Alphabet Soup; 3. Seeing Double; 4. Stormy Weather; 5. Go Fly a Kite; 6. The Case of the Blue-Ribbon Cookies; 7. There Went the Bride; 8. My Funny Valentine; 9. Mystery in the Moonlight; 10. Saying Goodbye Can Be Murder
• 10. The Screaming Skeleton^note Listed as "The Case of the Screaming Skeleton" in some order forms^Chapters1. Murder in the Cockpit; 2. Baby Booty; 3. Dance Until You Drop; 4. The Halloween Costume Caper; 5. The Snowball Effect; 6. The Case is All Sewed Up; 7. Pie In Your Eye; 8. Pea Is For Pretender; 9. The Thanksgiving Murder; 10. The Screaming Skeleton
• 11. Death by Candlelight^Chapters1. The White Elephant Murder; 2. Boddy's Byte; 3. Creature Features; 4. The Fake Fruit Frolic; 5. I'm So Board; 6. Saved by the Radio; 7. The Midnight Snack Death; 8. Hats Off!; 9. In the Swim; 10. Death by Candlelight
• 12. The Haunted Gargoyle^Chapters1. Thief on Wheels; 2. Shell Shock; 3. Tennis, Anyone?; 4. Knock Around the Clock; 5. The Rosy Scarecrow; 6. Bad Hare Day; 7. Dark Side of the Moon; 8. Doggone it!; 9. Sands of Time; 10. The Haunted Gargoyle
• 13. Revenge of the Mummy^Chapters1. The Lion Ring; 2. Full of Hot Air; 3. Urge to Earn an Urn; 4. Please Don't Sneeze; 5. For Goodness' Snakes!; 6. The Inky Trail; 7. The Scavenger Hunt; 8. Screaming for Ice Cream; 9. Caught Bare-Handed; 10. Revenge of the Mummy
• 14. The Dangerous Diamond^Chapters1. You're So Jaded; 2. Fiddling Around; 3. Bowling For Dollars; 4. The Money Tree; 5. Window Pain; 6. By George; 7. To Top it Off; 8. Holy Toledo; 9. Musical Chairs; 10. The Dangerous Diamond
• 15. The Vanishing Vampire^Chapters1. Something To Talk About; 2. A Dog's Tale; 3. A Nutty Day; 4. Ham It Up; 5. Door Prize; 6. Food Fight; 7. A Bird in the Hand; 8. Autograph Hounds; 9. Trading Cards; 10. The Vanishing Vampire
• 16. Danger After Dark^Chapters1. Nervous Habits; 2. The Million-Dollar Dolly; 3. Riding Around; 4. Who's Who?; 5. Sundae School; 6. Money May I?; 7. Burning the Candle at Both Ends; 8. A Little Horse; 9. A Sour Note; 10. Danger After Dark
• 17. The Clue in the Crystal Ball^Chapters1. Friday the Thirteenth; 2. Say Cheese!; 3. A Flying Saucer Story; 4. Getting Out of Line; 5. Truth Serum; 6. Taste Test; 7. Alphabet Clues; 8. The Secret Stairway; 9. A Hairy Adventure; 10. The Clue in the Crystal Ball
• 18. Footprints in the Fog^Chapters1. I'm So Loan-ly; 2. Animal Crack-ups; 3. Breakfast Blunders; 4. The Magic Mirror; 5. Say What?; 6. Donut Madness; 7. Party Poopers; 8. Footprints in the Fog; 9. Prank Phone Calls; 10. Making Scents

The Clue Jr. books consist of:

• 01: The Case of the Secret Message^ChaptersThe Case of... 1. the Mysterious Letter; 2. the Mystery Autograph; 3. the Disappearing Cat; 4. the Missing Cake; 5. Movie Madness; 6. the Foul Ball; 7. the Dinosaur Disaster; 8. the Secret Message
• 02: The Case of the Stolen Jewel^ChaptersThe Case of... 1. the Big-Top Burglary; 2. the Headless Snowman; 3. the Rotten Rally; 4. the Thanksgiving Turkey; 5. the Mind Reader; 6. the Lost Package; 7. the Missing Baseball Cards; 8. the Stolen Jewel
• 03: The Case of the Chocolate Fingerprints^ChaptersThe Case of... 1. the Forgotten Day; 2. the Chocolate Fingerprints; 3. Lost Time; 4. the Parrot's Escape; 5. the Lost and Found Secret; 6. the Stolen Scene; 7. the Missing Link; 8. The Case that Snowballed
• 04: The Case of the Missing Movie^ChaptersThe Case of... 1. the Dry Rain; 2. the Winning Combination; 3. the Ghost Mystery; 4. the Missing Movie; 5. the Stolen Starter; 6. Foul Play at the Fair; 7. the Mad Dog; 8. the Stolen Base
• 05: The Case of the Zoo Clue^ChaptersThe Case of... 1. the Zoo Clue; 2. the Mystery Video Game; 3. the Fishy Horoscope; 4. the Famous Artist; 5. the Small Fortune Cookie; 6. the Missing Monkey; 7. the Musical Racket; 8. the Poster Painter
• 06: The Case of the Runaway Turtle^ChaptersThe Case of... 1. the Soccer Sweatshirt; 2. the Unforgettable Flag; 3. the Shady Sunglasses; 4. the Disappearing Footprints; 5. the Blackberry Pie; 6. the Vanishing Prize; 7. the Lucky Hockey Wheels; 8. the Runaway Turtle
• 07: The Case of the Mystery Ghost^ChaptersThe Case of... 1. the Smelly Situation; 2. the Mystery Ghost; 3. the Winning Ticket; 4. the Candy Cane Culprit; 5. the False Claim; 6. the Dead Batteries; 7. the Stolen Mirror; 8. the Broken Golf Club
• 08: The Case of the Clubhouse Thief^ChaptersThe Case of... 1. the Made-up Test; 2. the Cave Painting; 3. the Missing Mittens; 4. the Birthday Bang; 5. the Clubhouse Thief; 6. the Wild-Goose Chase; 7. the Chaning Money; 8. the Lost Time
• 09: The Case of the Karate Chop^ChaptersThe Case of... 1. the Different Fish; 2. the Karate Chop; 3. the Losing Race; 4. the Billboard's Revenge; 5. the False Alarm; 6. the Bad Name; 7. the Extra Clue; 8. the Wrong Floor
• 10: The Case of the Secret Password^ChaptersThe Case of... 1. the Blue Handprint; 2. the Creepy Crawlies; 3. the Cool Clues; 4. the Green Clues; 5. the Poster Project; 6. the Secret Password; 7. the Empty Birdhouse; 8. the Missing Charm
• 11: The Case of the Barking Dog^ChaptersThe Case of... 1. the Tree House Visitor; 2. the Disappearing Brownies; 3. the Birthday Party Clue; 4. the Chess Caper; 5. the Dusty Clue; 6. the Mailbox Mystery; 7. the Broken Roller Skates; 8. the Barking Dog
• 12: The Case of the Winning Skateboard^ChaptersThe Case of... 1. the Glow-in-the-Dark Message; 2. the Mud Puddle Mystery; 3. the Mysterious E-Mail; 4. the Backwards Birthday; 5. the Locker Mess; 6. the Doorbell Dodger; 7. the Magazine Mix-up; 8. the Winning Skateboard
• 13: The Case of the Soccer Camp Mystery^ChaptersThe Case of... 1. the Mixed-up Students; 2. the Missing Ice; 3. the One-of-a-kind Kite; 4. the Messed-up Cleanup; 5. the Stolen Cookies; 6. the Planted Evidence; 7. the Sleepover Slumber; 8. the Soccer Camp Mystery

The Mysteries books consist of:

• Clue: Mysteries^Chapters1: "Carte Blanche"; 2: "Mustard's Pickle"; 3: "Scarlet in the Abstract"; 4: "To Be Continued"; 5: "A Feather in Every Cab"; 6: "A Whiter Shade of Blue"; 7: "Puce Verses Nether Wallop"; 8: "Sparkle and Plenty"; 9: "Mrs. Peacock's Pen"; 10: "The Chartreuse Trust"; 11: "Clocked"; 12: "Rock of Ages"; 13: "The Wheels of Coffee Grind Slow"; 14: "The Water Suite"; 15: "One Tin Solider"
• More Clue Mysteries^Chapters1: "The Road to Good Intentions"; 2: "The Scone of Stone"; 3: "Volume Three"; 4: "Pooled"; 5: "All the Tea in China"; 6: "Old Money"; 7: "A Designated Casualty"; 8: "Birds of a Feather"; 9: "As Time Goes By"; 10: "Recipe for Disaster"; 11: "Heads Up"; 12: "Dog Gone It"; 13: "Swashbuckle"; 14: "A Gift Horse"; 15: "The Game's Afoot"

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The original series provides examples of the following:

• Absent-Minded Professor: Professor Plum. His forgetfulness is brought up on many, many occasions, including:
  • In the introduction to book #1, Boddy says that "He once forgot he was talking to me in the middle of a sentence."
  • In book #6, chapter 6 ("Caught Blue-Handed"), Plum goes to a store to buy paint, but can't remember his own name when the clerk asks. One of the other guests, who comes in afterward, easily figures out who the store's first customer of the day was just from hearing this.
  • In book #6, chapter 8 ("One of You is the Murderer"), Plum himself states that he suffers memory loss if he gets less than twenty-five hours of sleep a day.
  • In the introduction to book #9, Boddy says that if you ask him his name, he'll probably forget the question.
  • In the introduction to book #13, Boddy claims that Plum had explained his memory issues with the fact that, after so many years of gifting knowledge to his students, he had precious little left for himself.
• Accidental Truth: In book #16, chapter 10 ("Danger After Dark"), Mrs. White starts a rumor that Colonel Mustard couldn't duel his way out of a paper bag with scissors. Unbeknownst to her, Colonel Mustard did enter a contest to do exactly that and failed miserably.
• Affably Evil: All six of the guests are murderous, larcenous, deceitful criminals whose general reaction to any slight is to seek deadly revenge; they're also constantly scheming against each other and trying to bilk Mr. Boddy out of his riches. But they're all so funny and personable that readers can't help but like them. It helps that most of the time they're too bumbling and inept to actually pull off any evil deeds.
• The Alibi: A major plot point in book #4, chapter 9 ("A Mysterious Meeting"). Two guests meet, and the first has a motive to attack a third guest, while the second guest has a motive to attack a fourth guest. The two agree that while the first guest is away, the second will attack the third, giving the first an alibi. Then, while the second is away, the first will attack the fourth, giving the second guest an alibi. The crimes go unsolved until Mrs. White figures out the identity of one of the two plotters and goes to confront them; the resulting attack on her allows she and Boddy to solve the crimes.
• All for Nothing: A couple of the thefts work out this way, with the thieves either falling for a decoy or unwittingly stealing their own property, or being caught red-handed with the stolen goods. Examples include:
  • In book #1, chapter 2 ("Who Stole Miss Scarlet's Diamonds?"), Mrs. White successfully steals Miss Scarlet's diamond necklace. However, in order to avoid suspicion, she can never sell or even wear them, and must continue as Mr. Boddy's bitter maid.
  • In book #2, chapter 9 ("The Wrong Briefcase"), Professor Plum accidentally takes a briefcase with a million dollars in it from another bank customer, and the other guests promptly try to steal it. However, the solution reveals that it was only play money from a board game.
  • In book #4, chapter 5 ("The Hobby Club"), Mrs. Peacock shows the other guests her rare and priceless penny, and later hides a decoy (a regular penny taken from Colonel Mustard) in a spot in the Ball Room before going to the middle of the room to practice standing on her head. Mustard, one of the four guests who sneaks in to try and steal the priceless penny, is the one to find the hiding place and walk away with the decoy, unknowingly reclaiming his own property rather than taking Peacock's valuable one.
  • In book #5, chapter 5 ("The Walls Have Eyes"), Professor Plum breaks into Mr. Boddy's safe to steal some silver coins. Unfortunately, he forgot they were his own silver coins, stored there for safekeeping. Also as a result, nobody can blackmail anyone over the theft like they planned.
  • In book #5, chapter 6 ("The Guest Who Stole Christmas"), Boddy tells everyone he spent a million dollars for the holiday. The guests assume he meant the presents and try to steal them, with one succeeding. Then it turns out he actually spent that money on the Christmas tree ornaments; the gifts are all tiny party favors and worth only pennies.
  • In book #6, chapter 3 ("The Scarlet Key"), Mr. Boddy's bought a million-dollar Vinnie Van Go-Go sculpture that he puts on display on the left side of the Hall. Later, Mrs. Peacock sneaks into the mansion to steal what she thinks is the sculpture. She doesn't know that earlier Professor Plum had said that a Vinnie Van Go-Go sculpture belongs on the right side of the room, and that Mr. Boddy had moved it there. She ended up stealing Mr. Boddy's coat stand, the item he'd moved to the left side of the room to make space for the sculpture.
  • In book #6, chapter 4 ("Password, Please"), Boddy has gained access to online banking, including transferring money from one account to another. One of the guests figures out his password and commands the system to transfer all of Boddy's money into the thief's own account, but there's a catch in the system — "The maximum allowable transfer is one dollar per day".
  • In book #7, chapter 1 ("Be My Ghost"), Professor Plum ends up the guest who meets the ghost of Mr. Boddy's ancestor. The ghost tells him exactly where the hidden treasure is, and adds in a bunch of juicy family secrets. Unfortunately, Plum's fear makes him even more forgetful than usual. When the other guests find him in the morning, he's forgotten everything the ghost said and just mumbles about how he saw it.
  • In book #13, chapter 2 ("Full of Hot Air"), the guests take part in a hot-air balloon race. The winner is going too fast when they cross the finish line, and has to use the prize money to pay for the rescue squad that pulls them out of the sky.
  • In book #14, chapter 6 ("By George"), the guests find out about a rare and valuable stamp that Boddy owns and try to steal it. The final thief is the only one to discover that Boddy had switched stamps while talking to the guests earlier, and the first thief (and everyone after them) had stolen a decoy.
  • In book #17, chapter 4 ("Getting Out of Line"), Boddy's acquired a valuable but high-strung show cat and will only allow one person in to see it at a time. Their arguing over who goes first causes him to send them all to their rooms without supper, and then return the cat to its previous owner so none of them ever get to see it.
• Alliterative Name: The three male guests (Gerald Green, Martin Mustard and Paul Plum) and one of the women (Wilhelmina White) have these in this continuity, per reveals in book #1 (Green is referred to as "Gerald" more than once, and the rest are given in chapter 9, "Miss Feather's Gossip Column"), as do some minor one-shot characters like Boddy's nephew Bartholomew Benjamin Best-Boddy (featured in book #8, chapter 8 — "Foul Ball") and cousin Bitsy Boddy, featured in book #15, chapter 10 ("The Vanishing Vampire"), in which he dressed up as the titular character to prank the guests. Averted with Reginald Boddy and Charlotte Scarlet, and possibly Mrs. Peacock, whose first name is never given.
• Amusement Park: Boddy has opened a new one, "Corney Island", in book #16, chapter 3 ("Riding Around") and invites the guests to come and have fun. They proceed to spend the day going on rides and binging on junk food while doing so.
• Amusement Park of Doom: Subverted in book #7, chapter 9 ("Mr. Boddy's Wild Ride"). Mr. Boddy has installed what seems to be one of these in his Ball Room, but the dangers, which appear to kill five of the six suspects, are in fact all Hollywood special effects, and nobody is actually harmed (in fact, the five who "died" willingly go through the ride a second time afterward and love it). Except for Mrs. Peacock, who was the last one left in the car (besides Mr. Boddy) the first time around and was so distressed by the incident that she spent the rest of the weekend in bed.
• April Fools' Plot: Book #1, chapter 12 ("April Fools") is set on April Fool's Day, in which Mr. Boddy and the guests all play pranks on each other. Most of which involve pretending someone's dead.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: In book #6, chapter 3 ("The Scarlet Key"), Mr. Boddy is about ready to leave for a conference on Zillionaire Island, when he gets a call from the chairman informing him the conference has been delayed for a week because "a tornado, a hurricane, a monsoon, a blizzard, a tidal wave, and an earthquake have all struck the island at once. Also, I have a sore throat."
• Ash Face: The final thief in book #10, chapter 9 ("The Thanksgiving Murder") has one from building a fire in the fireplace earlier, which identifies them.
• Attending Your Own Funeral: Book #5, chapter 10 ("Mr. Boddy's Funeral") has the guests all assembled after having been invited to their host's funeral, and Mrs. Peacock is wondering why the reverend is late when Boddy himself walks in, leading to confusion until it is revealed one of the guests arranged for the funeral with the intention of murdering Mr. Boddy in front of everyone. Fortunately, he survives.
• Auction: A number of Boddy's treasures have come from auctions over the years, though only one takes place in the actual chapter where it's referenced.
  • In book #7, chapter 3 ("You Gotta Have Art"), the guests take part in a charity auction, bidding on antique versions of the classic weapons — a Candlestick made by Paul Revere, a Revolver made by Sam Colt, a Knife owned by famed murderess Lucrezia Borgia, and others of the like. Unfortunately, their checks all bounce, forcing Boddy to repossess the items and auction them off to himself.
  • In book #8, chapter 5 ("Something Fishy"), Boddy purchased a rare Quazi-Motoh miniature grouper, a tiny fish named Clarence (so rare there are only five known members of his species), at auction for a million dollars.
• Backwards-Firing Gun: Book #5, chapter 8 ("The Guest Who Couldn't Shoot Straight") has the guests all armed with revolvers to hunt an escaped rhinoceros. Of the revolvers, two only shoot to the left, two only shoot to the right, and two work normally. At the end, one of the first four revolvers is pointed directly at the rhino, but apparently hits one of the other guests instead. (As usual, it turns out the "victim" isn't really dead — the bullet hit his own revolver's handle, and he fainted from fear.)
• The Bad Guy Wins: In a couple of cases, the criminal guest actually succeeds at whatever they were planning and suffers no consequences.
• Bedsheet Ghost: Book #7, chapter 1 ("Be My Ghost") features an ancient ghost rising to terrorize the house, but while Mr. Boddy flees to a hotel for the night, the guests stay on hearing there's a treasure he's protecting. Later, to scare each other, they all disguise themselves as ghosts. When they find themselves all together and all wearing their bedsheets, they're left to feel very silly — until they notice there are seven ghosts standing around, and one of them doesn't have feet...
• Berserk Button:
  • Mrs. Peacock gets infuriated over anything she finds even the slightest bit rude, and her responses can be pretty extreme — for instance, it's mentioned in the introduction to book #5 that if someone burps in her presence, she calls the police.
  • One of the series' basic rules is that Mr. Boddy is never a suspect in any crime. When he's accused of theft in book #5, chapter 6 ("The Guest Who Stole Christmas"), he's so choked with rage that he turns the colors of each of the guests, one after another and can't say anything for several long moments.
• Big, Bulky Bomb: One is planted in Boddy Mansion in book #6, chapter 2 ("A Dynamite Dinner") — it's six feet tall and two feet wide, and is intended to blow up the entire mansion (the solution even lampshades the size, stating that "It's not likely that the bomb is in a room the guests have already run through. After all, a six-foot-tall and two-foot-wide bomb is kind of hard to miss!"). Luckily, they stop it before it goes off.
• Big Eater:
  • Miss Scarlet sometimes shows this, to the others' surprise; in book #10, chapter 7 ("Pie In Your Eye"), she's mentioned to have eaten a full twelve slices of pie in the previous year's pie-eating contest and won as a result.
  • Mr. Boddy sometimes shows signs of it too, as Mrs. White once mentions (in book #14, chapter 8 — "Holy Toledo") "the night he polished off three bowls of chunky double-fudge chocolate ice cream".
  • In book #14, chapter 7 ("To Top It Off"), the six guests eat four large pizzas with eight pieces each — a total of 32 pieces, with the mystery being who ate the most. It's Mrs. White, who ate a full eight slices — an entire pizza's worth.
• Big Fancy House: Boddy Manor, as in all versions. It's a twelve-gabled, three story mansion (the first floor has the nine rooms and the two secret passages from the game, the second floor has all the bedrooms, and the third floor is the attic; there's also a basement, where the furnace is located) on a very large estate at 292 Easy Street, Little Falls. Book #2, chapter 1 ("The Secret Secret Passage") establishes that the mansion was built by Boddy's great-grandfather.
• Big Friendly Dog: Plum brings one — a Great Dane — with him to the mansion in book #5, chapter 7 ("A Room With a View"). It's wild enough to tear up Boddy's rose bed, but also thwarts the thief's plan when it digs up the diamond necklace they stole. The solution notes that Miss Scarlet will get her necklace back as soon as Plum can catch the dog.
• Blackmail: A recurring crime in the series, including:
  • Book #5, chapter 5 ("The Walls Have Eyes"), in which a number of guests try to blackmail others over thefts or spying. It doesn't work out because the original thief was the forgetful Professor Plum, who forgot what was in the safe he'd been cracking and was trying to steal his own property.
  • Book #6, chapter 1 ("That Gun Rings a Bell"), in which Mrs. Peacock took photos of some of the guests robbing Mr. Boddy and intended to give them to him unless the thieves paid her, and is nearly murdered for it. The supposed killer satisfies themselves by taking her photos and negatives and destroying them while she's fainted after thinking she's been shot.
  • Book #6, chapter 8 ("One of You is the Murderer"), in which a chain of bathrobe thefts leads to one guest also stealing a diary and trying to blackmail its owner over the secrets contained within, leading to the diary's writer attempting to kill the thief and accidentally getting Miss Scarlet instead.
  • Book #6, chapter 10 ("Booby-Trapped!"), in which Colonel Mustard videotapes a few of his fellows plotting Boddy's murder and makes them pay him to keep quiet.
  • Book #7, chapter 10 ("The Life of the Party is Dead") has a bored Mr. Boddy convince the other guests to play a game where they write down and reveal Dark Secrets by threatening to reveal a really dark secret about anyone who refuses to play. It results in an attempted Blackmail Backfire; thankfully, everything works out in the end.
• Blackmail Backfire: Book #7, chapter 10 ("The Life of the Party is Dead") has Boddy involving the guests in a game of "Truth or Disaster", in which he intends to reveal a Dark Secret for any player who doesn't willingly reveal one. It nearly gets him killed by one player, who'd rather die (or have him die) than reveal their secret. Luckily, Boddy's head wound just leaves him with no memory of the game or the secrets, and he instead spends the rest of the night telling a whole new series of bad jokes.
• Blatant Lies: More than once, the guests all make promises they obviously don't intend to keep. This is also a weakness of the Mrs. Peacock clones in book #3, chapter 9 ("Cloning Around"), who have two weaknesses — they're all crazed killers, and they always lie. The solution is to ask them any simple factual question, like "What's two plus two?"; no matter how obvious it is, because they can't not lie, the clones will have to make up some blatantly fake answer and expose themselves.
• Blow Gun:
  • Accidentally in book #2, chapter 7 ("A Show of Talent"), in which Mrs. White tries to play the Lead Pipe like a flute, only for a quarter that was stuck in it to get blown out and knock out one of the other guests.
  • In book #3, chapter 6 ("A Very Important Poison"), one guest uses Professor Plum's new poison to try and kill some other guests, dipping a set of darts into the jar and then blowing them out at their targets through the Lead Pipe. They hit Mr. Boddy instead. Thankfully, it turns out Plum had forgotten the truth — it wasn't poison, like he told the guests, but a sleeping potion. Consequently, Plum — who'd taken a sip earlier when he was trying to remember what it was — and Mr. Boddy awaken a few hours later.
• Boisterous Weakling: Most of the guests have their moments. In book #2, chapter 2 ("The Challenge"), when Colonel Mustard challenges Green to a duel, Green simply smiles and says "you dare to challenge me?" only to lose a lot of his nerve once the weapons are out and they're actually pacing.
• Booby Trap: Naturally featured in book #6, chapter 10 ("Booby-Trapped!"), in which all six guests rig up traps in the Study to kill Boddy over his threatening to go to the cops with the tapes from his security cameras, which caught them all stealing from him. Five of them go off during the story (the exception being a Candlestick loaded with TNT), with four of them being reset for another use afterward.
• Bookcase Passage: Book #2, chapter 1 ("The Secret Secret Passage") features one in the Study, triggered by removing or putting in a book. It's also linked to three other passages behind the fireplace, the red chair and the grandfather clock, which also leads to the Kitchen. These are brought up again in book #9, chapter 1 ("On the Scent") as well.
• Bowling for Ratings: Book #14, chapter 3 ("Bowling For Dollars") revolves around Boddy installing a bowling alley in his Hall and inviting the guests to play.
• Brain in a Jar: In the introduction to book #8, Boddy claims Plum has the brain of a genius... which he keeps in a jar in his laboratory.
• Bulletproof Vest:
  • In the introduction to book #11, Boddy says that he's long since learned to wear bullet-proof long johns whenever these particular guests are visiting.
  • In book #15, chapter 5 ("Door Prize"), Mr. Boddy provides his guests with hats and smocks that turn out to be slashproof, crashproof and bulletproof. He gives them quilts with the same traits in book #16, chapter 9 ("A Sour Note"). The guests aren't aware of it until afterward in either case.
• Buried Alive: In book #2, chapter 10 ("Mr. Boddy's Pyramid"), Boddy's built a pyramid on his property to use as his tomb. While trying to escape it, he gets shut in by two of the guests, who clearly have this in mind; thankfully, there's another exit they didn't know about.
• Bullying a Dragon: Book #2, chapter 2 ("The Challenge"), revolves around Mr. Green rubbing his winning Mr. Boddy's tiddlywinks championship in Colonel Mustard's face. Boddy, Miss Scarlet and Professor Plum all try to keep Mustard calm, but when Green finally goes too far Mustard challenges him to a duel. It's one of the only times we actually see Mustard duel in the series, and he turns out to be very good at it.
• Camera Obscurer: In book #7, chapter 2 ("The Picture-Perfect Crime"), Boddy takes a series of group pictures of his guests standing or sitting on front of the mantel. The first one has this in it, when Mr. Green only points out afterward that the feather in Mrs. Peacock's hat was blocking his face.
• Cannot Tell a Joke: Colonel Mustard has a brief problem with this in book #2, chapter 3 ("The Joke Contest") when he tells one that fails to get any laughs. He blames Professor Plum, the first person he asked, who answered with "I forgot" and thus threw off the timing.
• Cannot Tell a Lie: Inverted in book #3, chapter 9 ("Cloning Around"). Professor Plum's latest invention creates five clones of Mrs. Peacock. The clones have two distinguishing features: they immediately try to kill anyone and everyone they meet, and they're incapable of telling the truth. The mystery in the chapter is a game of Spot the Imposter by determining a question that will prove the real Mrs. Peacock's identity. Mrs. White figures out that any simple, factual question (the example given is "What's two plus two?") will work—only the true Mrs. Peacock will be able to answer correctly, while the clones will make up completely incorrect answers as a result of their inability to be honest.
• Car Meets House: Book #5, chapter 1 ("Party Crashers") mentions that Mr. Green accidentally drove a golf cart through the wall of the Billiard Room, recently enough that the workmen had just finished repairs the day before. The same chapter has the Boddy jet crash into the Conservatory (luckily, everyone bailed out in plenty of time).
• Car Radio Dispute: In book #8, chapter 6 ("Who Bent the Bentley?"), after the third driver takes over, they get in an argument with Colonel Mustard over the radio (the driver prefers Easy Listening, he wants something else), taking their eyes off the road and ending up crashing into a tree as a result.
• Chalk Outline: Mr. Boddy's supposedly dead form is outlined in the last chapter of the very first book (and it's shown in the cover illustration too). The victim in book #6, chapter 5 ("Tall Tales"), is also outlined, along with the Wrench found near them. In both cases, neither victim is actually dead — Boddy was just unconscious, and book #6's victim turned out to have been deep in thought and mistaken for dead. (In the latter case, examining a detail of the outline allows two of the guests, who weren't at the mansion at the time, to figure out who the victim was.)
• Character Catchphrase: Three of the guests tend to use the same phrases in nearly every appearance. Namely...
  • Colonel Mustard: I challenge you to a duel!
  • Mrs. Peacock: How rude!
  • Professor Plum: I forgot.
• Character Tics: All the guests develop temporary ones in book #16, chapter 1 ("Nervous Habits"), such as tugging their ears, whistling or tapping one foot.
• Cheaters Never Prosper:
  • In book #9, chapter 8 ("My Funny Valentine"), the guests are all instructed to exchange Valentines' cards. Naturally, they all cheat to try and get more than their fellows. As a consequence, Boddy winds up confiscating all the cards and keeping them for himself.
  • In book #11, chapter 5 ("I'm So Board"), neither team wins the prize because they were all cheating.
  • In book #13, chapter 7 ("The Scavenger Hunt"), in which the player who finds the most weapons wins, the guest who wins the game is denied the prize because they stole two of the three they had from the people who originally found them, and the other five all get to share the prize (a cruise to the Caribbean Islands on Boddy's private yacht) instead.
  • Book #14, chapter 3 ("Bowling For Dollars") has the guests go bowling in the Hall. They're deducted points every time they cheat or display bad sportsmanship.
  • In book #15, chapter 3 ("A Nutty Day"), the guests all play for peanuts (with Boddy drawing numbers and giving the players each that amount, depending on whose turn it is. Mrs. White, who was banned from playing for being grouchy earlier, still swiped a bunch from the other guests while the lights were out; as punishment for cheating, she's forced to clean out the elephant cage in Boddy's private zoo.
• Chicken Joke: In book #7, chapter 10 ("The Life of the Party is Dead"), Mr. Boddy has been telling several jokes, including one of these. His guests are not amused.
  Boddy: "Why did the chicken cross the playground?" ... "To get to the other slide!"
• Clock Discrepancy: A plot point in book #12, chapter 4 ("Knock Around the Clock"), in which it's the night when all clocks are changed from standard to Daylight Savings'. One of the guests, unaware of this, was asked where they were at a certain time when Boddy checked all their rooms, and gave the answer that would have been right had it still been standard time. In doing so, they gave themselves away.
• Clone Army: Professor Plum accidentally creates a small one in book #3, chapter 9 ("Cloning Around"), when he hits Mrs. Peacock with a ray from his cloning machine and creates five evil(er) duplicates of her.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Everybody in their own way, but especially Colonel Mustard and Professor Plum.
• Collector of the Strange: Some of Boddy's items may be valuable, but they're also decidedly odd, such as the antique rabbit's foot (with a solid-gold chain) from book #12, chapter 6 ("Bad Hare Day"), the piece of jade carved into the shape of a sparrow in book #14, chapter 1 ("You're So Jaded"), a solid gold peanut that's given away as a prize in book #15, chapter 3 ("A Nutty Day"), a jade ice cream cone also given away as a prize in book #16, chapter 5 ("Sundae School"), a necklace with every letter of the alphabet made from diamond, rubies and emeralds in book #17, chapter 7 ("Alphabet Clues"), and a silent music box used in old silent movies in book #18, chapter 7 ("Party Poopers").
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Per the games, everyone wears their favorite color and tends to receive items in those same colors. Played with on a few occasions though, where they show interest in other colors — for instance, in book #5, chapter 6 ("The Guest Who Stole Christmas"), there are color-coded packages under the tree, and Professor Plum says he can guess which one is for him... but instead of the obvious purple present, he eyes the green one. Another case involves the guests each buying a can of paint, but only one buys their own color (in this case, it's kicked off when Plum came into the store first and got green paint; Green is the next to arrive, and since there's none of his preferred color left, he takes yellow instead). Completely subverted with Mr. Boddy, who doesn't have a set color preference.
• Comically Missing the Point: In book #13, chapter 5 ("For Goodness' Snakes!"), one of the guests sees an overgrown snake sliding over Professor Plum's shoes and tells him to "Watch out!" Plum's confused but truthful response: "But I have my watch out already." (It was a wind-up watch, and he was readjusting the hands.)
• Concealing Canvas: Mr. Boddy's safe in the Study is hidden behind a duck painting. He also has a second safe behind a painting in the Ball Room; a third safe in the Conservatory may or may not qualify.
• Cool and Unusual Punishment: Mr. Boddy is incredibly patient and forgiving, but even he can do this:
  • In book #16, chapter 8 ("A Little Horse"), when the guests argue and whine for a horse race, Mr. Boddy gets so fed up that he agrees and even offers a prize. The prize is Boddy's forcing the guests to muck out the stalls.
  • In book #13, chapter 9 ("Caught Bare-Handed"), when Miss Scarlet accidentally breaks Mr. Boddy's priceless chandelier while trying to steal it, she's forced to take over washing dishes from Mrs. White to pay Boddy back.
  • In book #9, chapter 3 ("Seeing Double"), when Professor Plum accidentally melts Mr. Boddy's wax statue to steal the jewels embedded in it, Mr. Boddy forces him to help the wax-maker craft a new one.
  • In book #9, chapter 7 ("There Went the Bride"), when Miss Scarlet fakes being married to trick the other guests into buying her expensive wedding gifts, she's forced to serve the other guests and clean up after them at the ensuing party. This is particularly fitting given how snobbishly she treated Mrs. White earlier in the story.
  • In book #12, chapter 4 ("Knock Around the Clock"), when Mrs. Peacock tries to steal Mr. Boddy's valuable diamond-encrusted clock, she's forced to dust the rest of Mr. Boddy's clock collection until the ticking nearly drives her crazy.
  • In book #13, chapter 6 ("The Inky Trail"), Professor Plum tries to use one of Mr. Boddy's pens to forge his signature on a large bond. He doesn't realize that the pen bursts when anyone besides Boddy tries to use it. The broken pen splashes ink everywhere, including all over Mr. Boddy's valuable Persian carpet. Mr. Boddy sticks Plum with the carpet's very expensive cleaning bill.
• Cordon Bleugh Chef:
  • Mrs. White's meal in book #11, chapter 7 ("The Midnight Snack Death"), in which every dish contains an animal body part and which the guests can barely stomach, leading to their all raiding the fridge later.
  • The guests are encouraged to be this in book #16, chapter 5 ("Sundae School") when they're each given a single scoop of vanilla ice cream and told to put the most unusual combination of toppings on it, with the winner receiving a prize (and Boddy threatens to make everyone eat their own creations unless the prize gets returned when he finds out it's been stolen during the competition, which the last thief does). The winner is not identified, but the combinations included salad fixings, condiments, burrito fillings and, to the other guests' disgust and astonishment, the "Cream of Washroom Sundae" — sour cream, powdered soap and hand towels, courtesy of Professor Plum.
  • In book #3, chapter 5 ("Bad Taste"), the guests try to give Mrs. White the day off by preparing a surprise meal for her, but the food they prepare (including Mrs. Peacock's peacock stew, Professor Plum's stewed plums, and Mr. Green's salad) is inedible; the mystery in that chapter involves determining which suspect's dish is so bad that it's lethal.
• Counting Sheep: In book #1, chapter 2 ("Who Stole Miss Scarlet's Diamonds?"), while one of the guests is on their way to commit the titular crime, they narrowly avoid being caught by Mr. Green, who is suffering from insomnia and stalking through the halls of the mansion, angrily counting sheep as he does so.
• Covered in Gunge:
  • Book #15, chapter 2 ("A Dog's Tale") has the guests trying to steal Boddy's new pet, Jeff the Wonder Puppy, a famous animal actor. One of them winds up slathering him in mustard to try and disguise his distinctive markings, but hears Boddy coming and has to run away empty-handed.
  • In book #18, chapter 6 ("Donut Madness"), when the guests get in an argument, one of them squashes a couple of custard donuts, spraying the contents onto Colonel Mustard's face. It backfires because Mustard, who loves custard donuts (which he says is because "custard" rhymes with "mustard"), is thrilled and promptly grabs and eats the squashed donuts.
• Cranial Eruption:
  • Mentioned in book #16, chapter 3 ("Riding Around"), in which Mrs. Peacock suggests the guests play croquet. Green rejects the idea because the last time they did, "Everyone tried to knock each other in the head with the mallets. We all had more lumps than a bowl of sugar cubes."
  • In book #18, chapter 3 ("Breakfast Blunders"), Mr. Green suffers this when a jar of pickled tomatoes gets knocked off a shelf and lands on his head. Mr. Boddy gives him a second lump when he finds Mr. Green tried to steal his valuable clock but dropped and broke it as he was carrying it away.
• Crazy-Prepared:
  • In book #2, chapter 10 ("Mr. Boddy's Pyramid"), Boddy is revealed to be carrying an emergency supply of snake venom antidote. It not only saves him after he falls in his own Snake Pit and gets bitten, the introduction to book #3 reveals it knocked him cold in time to save him from being shot.
  • In the introduction to book #11, he explains his survival as having been wearing bullet-proof long johns (which he's learned to do whenever these particular guests are visiting).
• Creature of Habit: Boddy, according to Professor Plum in book #6, chapter 10 ("Booby-Trapped!"), who has a cup of cocoa in the Study every night before bed with a specific routine going on.
• Crossdresser:
  • In book #1, chapter 10 ("Who Was Fiddling Around?"), Mr. Boddy's Stradivarius is stolen by an old woman whom he doesn't remember inviting to the mansion. When the other guests finally catch up to her and confront her over the theft, she takes offense to being called "an old crone" and rips off her mask, revealing herself to be a man in disguise. The thief turns out to be Colonel Mustard.
  • In book #3, chapter 3 ("Dressed To Kill"), Mr. Boddy gives Mrs. White the night off and surprises the guests by serving them while wearing her maid uniform.
  • In book #16, chapter 4 ("Who's Who?"), Professor Plum invents a perfume that supposedly grants one perfect memory, but it actually makes everyone's memory (except for Mr. Boddy, who is strangely immune) so bad that they all forget who they are and think they're another guest, changing clothes to match their new false identity. All six of them wind up thinking they're someone of the opposite gender at least once.^note False identities: Plum — Green, Mustard, Scarlet; Green — Plum, White, Plum; Mustard — Plum, Peacock, Green; Peacock — Scarlet, Mustard; Scarlet — Peacock, Plum, White; White — Mustard, Green, Peacock.
• Detectives Follow Footprints: In the solution to book #18, chapter 8 ("Footprints in the Fog"), after one of the guests has stolen a treasure from a lighthouse that once stood on the mansion grounds until it mysteriously vanished (and reappears every now and then, as with the night before), they wake up to find the treasure missing... and a set of very large footprints, too big to belong to any of the guests or Mr. Boddy, leading to the marker for where the lighthouse once stood.
• Disney Death: Every death (except for book #1, chapter 1 — "Who Killed Pitty-Pat?", and possibly Boddy in book #18, chapter 10 — "Making Scents") in the series.
  • Special mention for book #6, chapter 9 ("Mr. Boddy's Surefire System"). Someone attempts to kill Mr. Green, who is found dead on the floor and clutching a newspaper after being hit with a blunt object. Except it turns out the blunt object was the floor itself — he'd just read some bad news about one of his stock options in the paper and fainted. Moments after being found, he revives and demands to call his broker.
• The Ditz: Professor Plum, due to his forgetfulness, resulting in him doing such things as forgetting the difference between shoes and earmuffs and consequently going out wearing his favorite pair of loafers on his ears (as mentioned in book #16, chapter 10 — "Danger After Dark").
• The Dog Bites Back: For all that they're thieves and attempted murderers, sometimes Boddy's little jokes on the guests go too far, and they lash out.
  • In book #14, chapter 5 ("Window Pain"), Boddy threatens to never invite the guests back unless they help Mrs. White do one of her chores by helping wash the windows. In the solution, he adds to this by suggesting they tackle the upstairs windows next. Instead, they tackle him.
  • In book #7, chapter 10 ("The Life Of The Party Is Dead"), Mr. Boddy forces his guests to reveal dark secrets about themselves, and threatens to reveal the really dark secrets about them if they don't. Given how many crimes they've already shown themselves capable of committing, Boddy never stops to consider whether the guests might be willing to kill him to keep their secrets.
  • Boddy really gets it in book #18, chapter 10 ("Making Scents") when he keeps them too busy to eat and then won't let them into the Kitchen after his latest project results in them missing yet another meal. Finally, one catches him raiding the Kitchen and murders him in retaliation.
• Doorstopper: Discussed in book #8, chapter 2 ("Read It and Weep"), where one of the guests enjoys biographies that fit this, mentioning a seven-hundred page volume as an example. After the others — save for Plum — try to murder the biography-lover so a new subject can be chosen for the first book of their new book club, they're all forced to read a five-hundred page biography of the would-be victim's choice as punishment.
• Drives Like Crazy:
  • In book #6, chapter 5 ("Tall Tales"), Miss Scarlet drives at well over a hundred miles an hour, on a winding mountain road, much to the terror of her passenger Mrs. Peacock. And then she drives right off the side of the road, taking a midair "shortcut" off the side of the mountain and directly down to the road leading to Boddy's mansion.
  • In book #8, chapter 9 ("Time Is Running Out"), Mrs. Peacock again has bad luck with a crazy driver, in this case the cab she was taking to Boddy Manor. The driver broke every speed limit on the road, turning a fifteen-minute drive into a five-minute one. ^note Adding to Peacock's dismay is that Boddy was promising a cash prize to the guest who arrived at the mansion at exactly midnight, and she'd planned out her travel time very carefully only for the driver to ruin it.
• Duel to the Death: Colonel Mustard constantly challenges people to duels over the slightest infraction, ostensibly to the death... but this being a kids' series, of course, they're never actually fatal — the closest comes in book #2, chapter 2 ("The Challenge"), when he successfully knocks out Mr. Green at the end of a duel. It's also implied that he regularly competes in dueling tournaments that aren't meant to be fatal.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: Book #1. It's the only one where something actually dies (someone bludgeoned Mr. Boddy's parrot, Pitty-Pat, to death) and the only one to have thirteen chapters instead of the usual ten.
• Easily Forgiven: Everyone, all the time.
• Eating Contest: Book #10, chapter 7 ("Pie In Your Eye"), revolves around Mr. Boddy holding his annual pie-eating contest on National Pie Day (though the date given, May 5, is wrong — the actual date is January 23), which Miss Scarlet is noted as having won the previous year with twelve pieces. She wins again this year with ten when the contest is called off early because of the guests' bad behavior.
• Eek, a Mouse!!: In book #17, chapter 2 ("Say Cheese!"), Mr. Boddy reveals that several white mice have escaped from their cage (they were his sister's pets and she accidentally left them behind when she was visiting). The first one to actually do this trope is the duel-crazy Colonel Mustard, but the other guests don't laugh because they're doing the same thing.
• Embarrassing Password: After the events of book #11, chapter 2 ("Boddy's Byte"), in which one of the guests is caught in the act of having stolen a rare coin from Boddy, their room-access password is changed to THIEF.
• Empty Swimming Pool Dive: Discussed in book #11, chapter 9 ("In the Swim").
  Professor Plum: "Water is such a nuisance sometimes. I think someone should invent a waterless swimming pool."
  Mrs. White: "Given the way that his mind works at times, I think Plum once dived into a waterless pool!"
• Epic Fail:
  • In book #4, chapter 2 ("Pick a Pocket, Any Pocket"), Plum mentions the time he invested in an umbrella company. Then a big drought immediately followed.
  • Book #8, chapter 3 ("The Guys in Disguise") revolves around the male guests dressing up in costume, with the female guests trying to identify them. Miss Scarlet is the first to go, speaking rather cockily as she identifies them, and gets all three wrong.
  • Book #5, chapter 4 ("Blackout") has Professor Plum steal Mr. Green's brand-new cufflinks. The solution then reveals that Plum would have gotten away with his crime, except that he forgot how he acquired the the cufflinks and wore them to Boddy's next party.
• "Everybody Laughs" Ending:
  • Book #10, chapter 4 ("The Halloween Costume Caper") has one after the bobbing for apples competition is over, when Boddy reveals that the "golden nugget" in the winning apple is actually a nugget of caramel candy.
  • Book #18, chapter 5 ("Say What?"), in which Boddy tells the guests he had obtained some ancient Egyptian flutes, but not that he'd put out a decoy set, which the last thief ended up with. After this was discovered, everyone had a good laugh at the last thief's expense.
• Everyone Hates Fruit Cakes: In book #13, chapter 8 ("Screaming For Ice Cream"), the final new ice cream flavor the guests are offered is Low-Fat Fruitcake. Miss Scarlet only tries it because it's low-fat, remarking that it can't be worse than the fruitcake she gets every year from her cousin, which are apparently lousy enough that she just uses each one as a bookend until the next one comes.
• Expendable Clone: When Professor Plum accidentally clones Mrs. Peacock in book #3, chapter 9 ("Cloning Around"), he can also erase them easily with the same machine... if he knows which ones are the clones and which is the original.
• Explaining Your Power to the Enemy:
  • Mr. Boddy typically explains his new security systems to his guests, allowing them to circumvent said systems and steal from him. Of course, this is justified by his having bought said security systems to protect him from everyone besides his five guests and maid.
  • Played with on a few occasions when he only explains part of the system, leaving out certain details (such as security cameras that record their comings and goings) and thus thwarting the thieves anyway.
• Fainting: More than a few of the attempted murders result in the "victim" being mistaken for dead, only for it to turn out they'd just fainted from fear or shock. Or a terrible odor. The latter comes up in book #7, chapter 4 ("Mr. Green's Jeans"), wherein Mr. Green is found face-down in a pile of garbage, having supposedly been hit from behind. In fact, he'd fainted from the smell of the trash. Likewise, in book #18, chapter 2 ("Animal Crack-ups"), the guests are trying to steal Mr. Boddy's new miniature animals, only for all but the last thief to pass out from the terrible stench — the mini-animals are ten times smellier than their normal-sized counterparts. Mr. Boddy, on discovering this fact, has the animals all shipped off to a petting zoo.
• Fake Charity: In book #3, chapter 10 ("The Late Mr. Boddy"), the guests are sitting around discussing various crimes they've committed against their host; Miss Scarlet talks about having conned him into giving to a phony charity that was raising funds to develop a cure for a rare disease that turned its victims bright red.
• Falling Chandelier of Doom: Played with in book #13, chapter 9 ("Caught Bare-Handed"), where it's not used to try and kill someone but to try and steal the chandelier itself, which is a valuable antique from the Palace of Versailles. The thief didn't think things through though, because the chandelier fell and shattered on the floor.
• Femme Fatale: Miss Scarlet, to the point where Mr. Boddy uses the trope name to describe her in the introduction to book #12, adding that if you do so to her face, "she takes it as a compliment".
• Fiction 500: Played for Laughs with Mr. Boddy, who's so rich as to be ridiculous. In book #3, chapter 8 ("The Case of the Invisible Cat"), he casually pulls a cool million dollars out of his pockets and calls it "petty cash." Many of the mysteries have him acquiring some kind of impossibly rare and expensive treasure, while others have him spending untold amounts of money on random entertainments and surprises just for the fun of it.
• Find the Cure!:
  • In book #2, chapter 6 ("Plum's Plasma"), when Professor Plum has just developed a cure for cuts and wounds, he accidentally injures Colonel Mustard and needs to find the room where he left the cure in time to save the colonel's life.
  • In book #3, chapter 6 ("A Very Important Poison"), Plum accidentally poisons himself with his newest creation. Mrs. White and Mr. Green hurry to his lab to try and find a cure. Thankfully, it turns out the "poison" was actually just a sleeping potion, and he and Boddy (the latter having been accidentally hit with the same "poison" via a dart) wake up a few hours later.
• Flare Gun: Colonel Mustard uses one in book #1, chapter 5 ("Hide and Seek"). Unfortunately, he mis-aims and the flare goes through the Library window, setting the mansion on fire. (Luckily, firefighters arrive in time to put out the blaze.)
• Food Fight: Naturally featured in book #15, chapter 6 ("Food Fight"), when the guests all get in a buffet line in the Dining Room. All but Plum get hit by food at some point, though Plum does arm himself with a few food items in self-defense when Green threatens him.
• The Fool: Professor Plum has his moments in several of the stories where he isn't trying to commit a crime. In book #8, chapter 4 ("Your Chocolate or your Life"), when Mr. Boddy reveals that there is a valuable diamond inside of a piece of chocolate, everyone else tries to pick the chocolate with the diamond. Plum, meanwhile, just takes one for his bedtime snack. Naturally it turns out that his is the one with the diamond, and he even manages to avoid being robbed of it afterwards! Also, in book #17, chapter 6 ("Taste Test"), he does the best on the test despite having forgotten what several of the sodas tasted like and making a lot of guesses.
• Frame-Up: In book #4, chapter 1 ("Mr. Boddy Kills a Guest"), Boddy is found standing over Mr. Green with a Revolver in one hand and Green's wallet in the other, and is thought to have killed him. It turns out someone else had been wandering around one of the mansion's secret passageways, saw Boddy with the gun and wallet (both of which had been given to him for safekeeping at the time) and Mr. Green standing there, and decided to take advantage of the situation to kill Green and make it look like Boddy did it. Luckily for Green, the shot missed — he'd actually fainted from shock.
• Fun with Acronyms: In book #8, chapter 3 ("The Guys in Disguise"), the guests find some locked trunks in Mr. Boddy's attic. They think the trunks are full of riches, but the keys are long gone. Professor Plum offers up the use of his lockpicks, which he says are endorsed by S.T.E.A.L., the "Society of Thieves, Embezzlers And Lockpickers." The other guests stare blankly back at Plum, and he explains he's always locking himself out of his lab or car and got sick of having to call a locksmith.
• Fun with Alphabet Soup: Used in book #9, chapter 2 ("Alphabet Soup"), where Mr. Boddy has the guests spell out all their last names with the alphabet noodles and then play a little game, identifying the name he's thinking of through a series of clues. After the game is done, Mrs. White gets in on the fun by making everyone spell out "PLEASE" and "THANK YOU" with the noodles before she'll bring in the next course.
• Gender-Concealing Writing: The stories sometimes do this when describing a guilty guest's actions to avoid immediately eliminating half the suspects.
• Goofy Print Underwear: Book #3, chapter 1 ("A Mixed Bag"), has Professor Plum show up at the mansion in purple polka-dot underwear due to forgetting to put his pants on before he left the house (they were in his suitcase instead).
• Gossip Evolution: A variant happens in book #4, chapter 10 ("Mr. Boddy Passes On"); one character whispers "Would Boddy be mad if we all left and went into town? Pass it on!" to the person next to them; they spoke too quietly to be heard accurately though, and the next person "passes on" a different phrase. By the time it's gone around the table and started a second round, the last person hears "Boddy is afraid someone will steal his solid gold crown." Later that night, they go after Boddy and demand the nonexistent crown; when he won't hand it over, they kill him. As luck would have it, they fail twice — first by accidentally using a starter pistol instead of the real Revolver; when they realize their mistake and get the real weapon, they fire that at him and miss.
• Grail in the Garbage: Book #11, chapter 1 ("The White Elephant Murder") is about this, with the guests helping sort out old boxes of stuff in the garage to be sold, with the profits to go to charity. One of the items out there is a valuable old miniature elephant statue made of ivory, which is also to be sold; naturally, the guests would rather swipe it for themselves. Played with in that they're told it is valuable before they find it, but it was still out there among a number of worthless items (and supposedly there are others, though the elephant is the only one specifically shown to be found).
• Grande Dame: Mrs. Peacock is a stock example of one in the game, which carries over to the books.
• Green-Eyed Monster:
  • According to the introduction to book #2, Miss Scarlet doesn't get jealous. She's always jealous to begin with.
  • In the introduction to book #16 (and again in the introduction to book #17), Mr. Green is noted as being prone to envy whenever someone else has something he wants.
• Grows on Trees: In book #14, chapter 4 ("The Money Tree"), Mr. Boddy presents his guests with a tree that supposedly grows leaves made of pure gold and silver. It turns out to be a prank — the leaves are actually chocolates, covered in cheap foil.
• Halloween Episode: Book #2, chapter 8 ("Trick or Treat") and book #10, chapter 4 ("The Halloween Costume Caper") are each set on Halloween.
• Having a Heart: Brought up in the introduction to book #8, where Boddy claims Plum has the brain of a genius... in a jar in his laboratory.
• Head Desk: In the introduction to book #17, it's revealed that the culprit for Boddy's murder in book #16, chapter 10 ("Danger After Dark") had in fact gotten embarrassed and was banging their head on the wall, which he mistook for a gunshot, causing him to faint.
• Hidden Weapons: In book #5, chapter 3 ("Wear are the Weapons?"), after Boddy forces the guests to get rid of their weapons, they all sneak them back in disguised as mundane objects (the Wrench as a new handle for Mustard's monocle, the Lead Pipe as a vacuum cleaner attachment, the Rope as a necklace, etc.).
• The Hilarity of Hats:
  • In book #7, chapter 3 ("You Gotta Have Art"), before displaying a Candlestick made by Paul Revere, Boddy dons a tricornered hat, to the amusement of the guests.
  • Book #11, chapter 8 ("Hats Off!") features Boddy showing off his collection of five historically valuable hats (they belonged to Cleopatra, Queen Elizabeth, Charlie Chaplin, Napoleon Bonaparte and Abraham Lincoln) and one that belonged to his mother, and allowing his guests to wear them. After a lot of trading goes on, Boddy remarks on how silly they look, and insists on a few more trades. Once they've traded to his satisfaction (and are thus looking even sillier), he whips out his camera and, before they can stop him, snaps a picture of the group. Then he threatens to have it printed in the newspaper the next time they misbehave.
• Hired to Hunt Yourself: In book #3, chapter 10 ("The Late Mr. Boddy"), the guests are sitting around discussing various crimes they've committed against their host. Mustard mentions having stolen two million dollars in jewels from Mr. Boddy's safety-deposit box at the Little Falls bank just the day before, and that Boddy had called him on the phone afterward to ask him to help the police catch the thief — something he and the others find very amusing.
• Hollywood Silencer: One is attached to the Revolver in book #10, chapter 10 ("The Screaming Skeleton"). It's not actually demonstrated though, because the guest who attached it forgot that they weren't supposed to have one on it — they're trying to attract Boddy's attention so they can swipe the Study key from him, and they need the Revolver to make noise.
• How the Character Stole Christmas: Book #5, chapter 6 ("The Guest Who Stole Christmas") is a variant — the guest isn't trying to ruin the holiday, they're just trying to swipe the presents after Boddy tells everyone he spent a million dollars for the holiday. It turns out he spent it on the Christmas tree ornaments rather than the gifts, which are tiny party favors and worth only pennies.
• Hurricane of Puns: Oh so many, in practically every chapter.
• Hypno Fool: In book #1, chapter 11 ("The Night the Maid Became a Zombie"), Mrs. White is hypnotized so that when she hears the word "Candlestick", she'll follow any order she hears afterward, until she hears another trigger word. Unfortunately, the hypnotist forgot to specify that she should only fall into a trance when the hypnotist said it. As a result, the effect is unwittingly triggered twice, leading to her jumping into Boddy Pond in response to someone saying "Go jump in the lake", and later trying to drag Colonel Mustard out of his seat when she hears someone say "Please pass me the mustard".
• I Do Not Like Green Eggs and Ham: In "Breakfast Blunders" (book 18, chapter 3), Colonel Mustard beats a quick retreat after hearing the morning's breakfast is oatmeal cheese chunks, but eventually gets hungry enough to have them anyway. He likes them so much that he cooks himself a second helping.
• Idle Rich:
  • Mr. Boddy doesn't seem to have much hands-on involvement in whatever sources of income he has.
  • While Miss Scarlet did once invent a brand of lipstick in the past, book #9, chapter 7 ("There Went the Bride") implies that she lives an idle lifestyle after she asks the other other guests to guess some good news she has.
  Colonel Mustard: I know. You've taken a job. You're actually going to work for a living.
  Miss Scarlet: Heavens, no! Why would I ever stoop to that?
• If I Had a Nickel...: In the introduction to book #18, Boddy comments of Colonel Mustard that "If I had a nickel for every time he said "I challenge you to a duel!", I'd be twice as rich as I am now."
• Ill-Fated Flowerbed: Book #5, chapter 7 ("A Room With a View") opens with Mr. Boddy sitting in his backyard admiring his priceless rose garden. Professor Plum then accidentally drives his Volkswagen through half the roses. Boddy tries to stay happy, saying he's delighted to have company, since only half his roses are ruined, but then Plum lets his dog out of the car. The dog promptly tears through the other half of Boddy's roses.
• Impairment Shot: Saves a few guests' lives in book #8, chapter 4 ("Your Chocolate or Your Life"), when one suspect shoots two others, grabs a diamond from one and runs off. It turns out they'd been hit so hard earlier that they were seeing double and, with their vision being so blurry, couldn't have hit the broadside of a barn. They also grabbed the false double image of the diamond and ran off with a fistful of air.
• Implausible Deniability: Happens often. A notable example is in book #6, chapter 8 ("One of You is the Murderer") when Professor Plum tries to deny that he stole Colonel Mustard's bathrobe even though he is wearing a yellow robe with the initials CM on it (trying to claim that they mean "Clear-Minded" or "Classy Man") before realizing it's hopeless and confessing.
• Improbable Use of a Weapon: In book #12, chapter 9 ("Sands of Time"), Mrs. White mentions that she was using the Rope as a lasso to knock down cobwebs.
• Improbable Weapon User: Per the original game, the Lead Pipe, Candlestick and Wrench, which all see use by various characters over the course of the series. Ironically, the Candlestick is the one weapon that's never used to "kill" Boddy, though it's used to knock out other guests several times.
• Improvised Weapon: In book #15, chapter 7 ("A Bird in the Hand"), several guests try to steal Mrs. Peacock's new brooch. Two of them wind up dueling behind her chair and grab hold of anything they can to fight — besides their weapons, they also use shoes, tennis rackets and pieces of Genoa salami.
• Incredibly Lame Fun: In book #11, chapter 6 ("Saved By the Radio"), the guests all start arguing over what radio station to listen to, until Boddy points out that he has six radios, all in different rooms. While five of them enjoy different kinds of music (jazz, marching music, country, classical, and rock 'n roll), one person's favorite program turns out to be the news and weather station. (And it's a good thing, since this allows him to find out that a bad storm is coming their way and alert the others so they can prepare the mansion for it in time.)
• I Need to Go Iron My Dog: In book #14, chapter 9 ("Musical Chairs"), a number of guests make up excuses such as "watching some paint dry" or "go read the dictionary" to try and get out of Boddy's latest invite to come do something. They don't even find out until after making these excuses that he wants them to come listen to a CD recording of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.
• Inheritance Murder:
  • It's been mentioned multiple times that the guests and Mrs. White are all in Boddy's will, since he's a widower with no children (though he does have some younger family members, be they nephews or cousins). Book #5, chapter 10 ("Mr. Boddy's Funeral") explicitly has the killer attempting to murder him to speed up the inheritance process, informing the others that they all have equal motivation due to all being in the will, and therefore any attempt to finger the actual killer will be viewed with suspicion.
  • Book #2, chapter 4 ("Mrs. White's Horrible Plan"), has Mrs. White find out that all the other guests and Mr. Boddy have recently changed their wills to see to it that she's provided for after they're gone. She promptly attempts to murder them all, but is thwarted; they quickly figure out what's going on and write her back out of their wills.
  • Variant in book #11, chapter 10 ("Death by Candlelight"), in which Boddy intends to name one of his guests to receive a sum of money from his life insurance when he dies. Naturally, they all try to steal it and put their own name on it.
• Insane Troll Logic: In book #17, chapter 8 ("The Secret Stairway"), Boddy hired a man named Banister to make him a secret escape route from the mansion. But when Banister finished, he wouldn't tell Boddy, the only one intended to know its location, let alone use it, where it was — because then it wouldn't be a secret. To top it off, he let one of the guests watch him build it, thus defeating the whole purpose.
• The Insomniac: Various guests have been shown suffering from this problem a few times, such as Mr. Green in book #1, chapter 2 ("Who Stole Miss Scarlet's Diamonds?"), Colonel Mustard in book #4, chapter 4 ("The Deadly Toothbrush") and Miss Scarlet in book #6, chapter 8 ("One of You is the Murderer").
• Instantly Proven Wrong: In Book #7, chapter 1 ("Be My Ghost"), it's mentioned that a guest trying to escape a ghost attempts to hide in the Dining Room, only to find it locked because Mr. Boddy is trying to protect the silverware. The guest then immediately checks the Kitchen and discovers that it's locked, too—Mrs. White is using the room to hide the silverware she stole.
• Insurance Fraud: Book #1, chapter 2 ("Who Stole Miss Scarlet's Diamonds?") has Mrs. Peacock suggest that Miss Scarlet is attempting this by faking the theft of her own diamond necklace, since she had the insurance form in her weekend bag. It's ultimately subverted — Mrs. White stole them.
• It's Raining Men: In book #5, chapter 1 ("Party Crashers"), the Boddy jet has crashed into the Conservatory and Boddy initially believes his five guests who were on it (Mrs. White was already in the mansion with him) are all dead. Then they start falling out of the sky, landing safely thanks to each of them wearing a parachute in their respective color.
• It Tastes Like Feet: Book #17, chapter 6 ("Taste Test") revolves around the characters' favorite soda flavors. Most of them are innocuous, albeit strange flavors for soda: mouthwash, yams, grape jam, chicken, and squash. Mrs. White's favorite, however, tastes like floor wax (as in, that's what it's actually supposed to taste like). Maybe she thinks of it more as a dessert topping?
• Jackass Genie: Book #17, chapter 10 ("The Clue in the Crystal Ball") reveals that Mr. Boddy owns a crystal ball with one of these in it. The genie hates the guests, and is always rude to them and gives them scrambled answers when they ask (such as anagrams of "Get lost" and "Fooled you"). When they smash the crystal in retaliation, the genie gets loose and goes around knocking out most of them.
• Kaleidoscope Hair: In book #17, chapter 9 ("A Hairy Adventure"), Boddy brings home six bottles of hair color, which result in some odd colors for the group, including orange, pink and some of their traditional favorites. Then it gets weirder when the color starts randomly changing on them every minute or so. Thankfully, it washes right out.
• Karma Houdini: There are a couple of chapters where the guests get away with their crimes scott-free. These include book #1, chapter 1 ("Who Killed Pitty-Pat?"), where Miss Scarlet gets away with bludgeoning Mr. Boddy's pet parrot, and book #1, chapter 11 ("The Night the Maid Became a Zombie"), where Mr. Green hypnotizes Mrs. White into stealing a rare Persian statuette from Mr. Boddy and is never caught.
• Killed Off for Real: The very first mystery in the series kills off poor Pitty-Pat, Mr. Boddy's pet bird. This is the only time this happens in the series.
• Killer Robot: In book #6, chapter 7 ("The Robot Butler"), Mr. Boddy gets a robot butler. One guest uses it to their advantage by ordering it to kill another guest. Fortunately, Horace's batteries die just before he can deliver the fatal blow, and Boddy returns him to the store the next day.
• Kill the Poor: In book #18, chapter 1 ("I'm So Loan-ly"), Mr. Green tells the other guests he's made a bad deal and lost all his silver. The other guests decide to kill him, with one saying to themselves that they don't want to hang around a poor person and using that as an excuse. It turns out though that Green was just joking — he was actually richer than ever. The others are not amused and retaliate by locking him in the cellar for several hours when they find out.
• Landline Eavesdropping: In book #5, chapter 2 ("Midnight Phone Calls"), Miss Scarlet slips away to make a private phone call to someone who'll make a secret late-night delivery to the mansion for her. One by one, the other guests also each pick up a phone somewhere in the mansion and listen in on it, with only the first two to do so hearing where the deliveryman will be hiding what Miss Scarlet had ordered. Her favorite brand of jelly beans, as it turned out, though the way she voiced it, it sounded like she was talking about real jewels.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Many, many times, a guest tries to rob, cheat or steal, and suffers a karmic punishment in return. Examples include:
  • In book #4, chapter 4 ("The Deadly Toothbrush"), a guest steals a ruby-encrusted toothbrush. Karma strikes when, due to not using it for its intended purpose, they have six cavities at their next checkup.
  • In book #5, chapter 2 ("Midnight Phone Calls"), Miss Scarlet calls someone to deliver a batch of rubies to the mansion, telling them to hide the jewels in the cookie jar since the other guests are all on diets and wouldn't accidentally stumble upon them there. Two of the guests, however, overhear her and successfully steal the loot. Karma kicks in when it turns out the "jewels" are actually her favorite brand of jelly beans. As the solution says, the thieves got away with their crime, but ruined their diets.
  • In book #18, chapter 6 ("Donut Madness"), the guests all get away with swiping donuts from Mr. Boddy's new donut shop, but they also end up getting stomachaches from eating too many sweets afterward.
• Lethal Chef: Book #3, chapter 5 ("Bad Taste") has the guests deciding to make lunch for Mrs. White and Mr. Boddy, and while all their creations are horrible, one of them is nearly fatal. Fortunately, Mr. Boddy had bottles of stomach medicine on hand. There are also chapters where Mrs. White's cooking is criticized as being awful, though she's normally very good at it.
• Literal Metaphor:
  • In Book #2, chapter 2 ("The Challenge"), Green references this (although he might have been joking) while taunting Mustard about his performance in a tiddlywinks competition (causing Mustard to challenge him to a duel).
  Mr. Green: "Gee Mustard, I really beat the pants off you today, didn't I? I'm glad to see you've put on a new pair."
  • In the introduction to book #7, Boddy says that Mr. Green has stepped on a lot of people on his way to the top, then adds "I should know. I've still got his footprint on my hat."
• Literal-Minded: Professor Plum has his moments. On one occasion when Mr. Boddy says he is tired of things disappearing from under his nose, Plum thinks that means someone stole Boddy's mustache.
• Locked Door: Or "Locked Chest" in book #8, chapter 3 ("The Guys in Disguise"), when Boddy needs to open his uncle N.E. Boddy's old chest of theatrical costumes, but doesn't have a key. Professor Plum provides him with a set of lock picks (which he owns because he got tired of calling a locksmith when he kept locking himself out of his lab or car) that allow him to open it.
• Loophole Abuse:
  • Book #15, chapter 9 ("Trading Cards") has each guest steal one of Boddy's new and valuable vases, but in order to get around the promises each made not to steal the vase each had expressed interest in earlier, each steals a different vase. It doesn't stop Boddy from catching them with the goods and getting them back.
  • Book #18, chapter 6 ("Donut Madness") has the guests visiting Boddy's new donut shop; Boddy tells them they can't eat any of the donuts there, since they're for the customers. Professor Plum points out that he didn't say they couldn't take any home with them, and they promptly start swiping some.
• Lost in a Crowd: In book #7, chapter 6 ("The Plot Thickens"), Boddy invites the guests to play a game, "Mr. Mambo", in which the goal is to put together a jigsaw puzzle of dozens of men in black-and-white checked suits dancing all kinds of dances, and then find the only one dancing the mambo.
• The Lost Lenore: A couple of the early stories mention Mr. Boddy's late wife Bessie, who he seems to deeply miss, and he never shows any romantic interest in another character again throughout the series, even after she stops being mentioned.
• Lotsa People Try to Dun It: The book series usually uses some version of this for the final case in each book. The host, Mr. Boddy, finally does something to incite his guests beyond mooching, larceny and infighting into actually trying to kill him out of stupidity, greed or fear of exposure, they all either off each other trying or simply get in each other's way, while their host typically has a ridiculous run of luck avoiding murder attempts until one finally gets him. (In the next book, it's revealed why nobody actually died and why the host chose to forgive everybody everything. Although he does keep hiring you to come back the next time he's inviting the usual suspects over.) That being said, in some of those chapters, not everyone tried to do it. For instance, the first, seventh, and eighth books all only have one attempted (and seemingly successful at first) murderer and in the final chapter of book #9 ("Saying Goodbye Can Be Murder") Plum and Peacock leave for the weekend before the others try to kill Mr. Boddy.
  • There are also several occasions where most if not all of the guests will try to kill one of their own — such as targeting Mr. Green in book #18, chapter 1 ("I'm So Loan-ly") for losing his silver, or Mrs. Peacock in book #1, chapter 9 ("Miss Feather's Gossip Column") over her embarrassing gossip column.
• Lots of Luggage:
  • In book #9, chapter 10 ("Saying Goodbye Can Be Murder"), it's not specified how much luggage Miss Scarlet had, but it took forty minutes to load it all into a cab.
  • In book #10, chapter 1 ("Murder in the Cockpit"), Miss Scarlet attempts to bring a massive pile of luggage on the plane to France so she can change outfits as many times as she feels she needs. Mr. Boddy has to tell her that since it's a small private jet, there's not enough room for it all, limiting her to a single bulging carry-on bag.
• Magic Antidote: In book #13, chapter 4 ("Please Don't Sneeze"), Boddy provides what he claims is one — his grandmother's secret cold-remedy medicine, of which he says "One teaspoon of grandma's cold remedy and you'll all be fit as fiddles" — to the guests. Luckily, or unluckily, he accidentally drops it and breaks it before he can give it out, which is just as well — none of the guests were too eager to try it because it smelled terrible.
• Magic Mirror: One is the subject of book #18, chapter 4 ("The Magic Mirror"), and for once, the guests aren't interested in how much it costs — they're more interested in admiring themselves in it, because the mirror makes everyone's reflection look better than they really are. It also defends itself — the last thief's weapon leaps from their hand to shatter it; the next morning, the mirror is intact and in its original position on the wall, and no matter who steps in front of it, the mirror shows only a very ugly reflection of the last thief.
• Make It Look Like an Accident: Retroactively in the introduction to book #2, where Boddy says that after he recovered from being hit in the head in book #1, chapter 13 ("Who Killed Mr. Boddy?"), the guests told him the wound was an accident — a plumber had been working on the Kitchen sink when the Wrench slipped out of his hands, flew all the way across the mansion and clonked him. He says it must have hit him really hard, because he doesn't even remember hiring a plumber.
• Malaproper:
  • In book #2, chapter 7 ("A Show of Talent"), Boddy has a bit of trouble with his words after Miss Scarlet accidentally twirls the Candlestick into his head during her baton-twirling demonstration.
  • In book #3, chapter 3 ("Dressed to Kill"), Mr. Boddy suffers from a blow to the head when his five guests start fighting and one hits him by mistake. The next day, he's having a great deal of trouble using the right words.
• Meta Twist: In book #4, chapter 7 ("Mystery at the Masked Ball"), the guests are only described by the color of the mask they are wearing. At this point in the series, readers likely interpret this choice as a clue that the guests aren't wearing outfits that match the color of their name, and that the mystery will involve figuring out who is in what color... only for the last few lines to reveal that the guests' disguises actually do correspond to their names.
• Mighty Roar: At the end of book #13, chapter 1 ("The Lion Ring"), the last thief lets out one of these in victory. Laser-Guided Karma kicks in when the roar alerts Boddy to their whereabouts, and he promptly nabs the guest.
• Mirror Scare: Book #7, chapter 1 ("Be My Ghost") has the six guests each disguise themselves as Bedsheet Ghosts to try and scare their fellows. Later, one of them is carrying the Revolver when they spot another "ghost" across the room with the same weapon and immediately try to shoot it. Per the trope, the second ghost turns out to be the first's own reflection in a mirror, and the explosion of glass causes the shooter to faint from the shock (or be knocked out by the force of the explosion — the chapter itself claims it's the first, the solution claims it's the second).
• Moral Guardians: Mrs. Peacock, due to her obsession with good manners and her efforts to make everyone else behave as she feels is proper, clearly sees herself as one (Boddy, on the other hand, notes in the introduction to book #4 that he wishes she'd mind her own business as strictly as she minds her manners). This is notably demonstrated on a few occasions:
  • In book #2, chapter 5 ("Boddy Language"), she tries to stop a screening of a movie because she hears it has a scene where a white horse walks through a mud puddle, which she finds objectionable.
  • In book #3, chapter 2 ("Cut Down to Size"), the guests all start cutting things out of Boddy's newspaper while he's trying to read it. While the others are looking for specific sections (like articles or advertisements), Mrs. Peacock just cuts out what she considers to be bad words, like "grime", "dirt" and "filth".
  • In book #4, chapter 8 ("Farewell, Mrs. Peacock"), she apparently threw out all of Miss Scarlet's makeup because she considers makeup to be vulgar. Scarlet tries to kill her for it. Luckily, Boddy had taken the bullets out of the Revolver before throwing it out the window, where Scarlet was waiting; when Mrs. Peacock admits she still has the makeup and gives it back, Scarlet gives up her murder attempt.
  • In book #13, chapter 3 ("Urge to Earn an Urn"), she finds herself offended by an ancient Greek urn with naked people painted on it (despite that being the proper style from back then).
• More Deadly Than the Male: The three female guests all prove far more effective at their murder attempts than the men. Of the eighteen books, thirteen end with one (or more) of the women "killing" Boddy.
• Mummy:
  • One of the guests in book #2, chapter 8 ("Trick or Treat") dresses as a mummy for Halloween.
  • Book #13, chapter 10 ("Revenge of the Mummy") revolves around Boddy owning one, and its treasure. He also warns the guests about the Curse of the Pharaoh that comes if someone tries to steal the treasure... and at the end of the chapter, the mummy itself supposedly comes to life and declares that the curse is real... and what's worse, there is no treasure! It turns out to be Mr. Boddy in disguise.
• Mundane Utility: Sometimes the weapons are used for non-weapon purposes.
  • In book #5, chapter 7 ("A Room With a View"), Mrs. Peacock uses the Wrench to tune the Ball Room piano when it starts playing sour notes. In the same chapter, Mrs. White is using the Knife to scrape out some hard-to-get spots in her pots.
  • In book #12, chapter 9 ("Sands of Time"), Mrs. White uses the Rope to knock down cobwebs she has a hard time reaching. In the same chapter, Miss Scarlet dances ballet by the light of the Candlestick.
  • Zigzagged in book #10, chapter 5 ("The Snowball Effect"), where Boddy orders the guests to hand over all their weapons to ensure fair play in the snowball fight they're about to have; Mrs. Peacock claims she brought the Candlestick out for its intended purpose (keeping them warm), and Plum is legitimately reluctant to hand over the Rope because he's using it as a belt. (Boddy still makes him give it up, but also sends Mrs. White in to get him a real belt.)
• Murder by Mistake: Happens a couple of times (though given the rules of the series, the victim is never actually dead).
  • In book #6, chapter 8 ("One of You is the Murderer"), there's a chain of bathrobe thefts (kicked off by one guest stealing a bathrobe because he forgot to bring his own). One of the guests keeps a diary in their bathrobe; when the robe and diary are stolen, the thief tries to blackmail the diary keeper, who instead tries to kill the thief. However, by the time they make the attempt, Miss Scarlet has stolen the bathrobe from its original thief, and the diary-writer accidentally attacks her, mistaking her for the first thief. Luckily, Scarlet survives the attack (with the side-effect of curing her insomnia).
  • In book #16, chapter 9 ("A Sour Note"), the furnace is broken and all the guests are wearing heavy quilts that Mr. Boddy gave them to keep warm. After everyone winds up switching quilts (having lost their originals during a brief blackout), one of the guests attempts to kill Colonel Mustard and accidentally shoots another guest who was wearing the colonel's original quilt. Fortunately, all six quilts are slash-proof, crash-proof and bulletproof, protecting the accidental victim from serious harm.
• Murder Is the Best Solution: Downplayed. The guests prefer theft and threats in most stories, but they try to kill each other or Mr. Boddy over minor things like getting written out of wills or just being annoyed by each other's presence a lot of the time.
• Naked People Are Funny: Book #5, chapter 8 ("The Guest Who Couldn't Shoot Straight") starts with Professor Plum and Miss Scarlet lounging beside Mr. Boddy's pool. Miss Scarlet is wearing a red bikini and sunglasses, which fortunately keep her from seeing that Plum forgot to put on his swim trunks. Plum quickly goes back inside to get his trunks, and when he comes back Miss Scarlet never even noticed he'd left.
• Nice to the Waiter: In book #14, chapter 5 ("Window Pain"), Boddy encourages this from the guests — challenging them to wash all the downstairs windows to give Mrs. White (who joins in the contest) a helping hand. They refuse to do so until he bribes and threatens them. They do play it straighter on other occasions though.
• No Antagonist: A few of the stories don't have anyone doing anything illegal. Instead, they're shown doing other activities like making their own sundaes, having a pie-eating contest or trying to trick one another with costumes.
• Nobody Calls Me "Chicken"!: According to the introduction to book #14, Mustard was once called "yellow" as a boy, and ever since he's taken to dueling to settle any dispute.
• No MacGuffin, No Winner: One guest threatens to do this in book #13, chapter 3 ("Urge to Earn an Urn") and shatter the Greek urn if Boddy doesn't hand it over. Boddy refuses to call their bluff and gives it up.
• Non-Idle Rich: Mr. Boddy completely overshadows the rest of the cast, but several stories imply most of the guests are pretty wealthy themselves. Several cases depict priceless treasures being stolen from one of the guests rather than Mr. Boddy, and there are a few references to their own business ventures like the "Peacock School Of Manners."
• Noodle Incident: Book #5, chapter 1 ("Party Crashers") includes a mention of how Mr. Green once drove a golf cart through the wall of the Billiard Room, apparently recently enough that the workmen had just finished repairs the day before.
• Not Me This Time:
  • There are stories where a guest is (somewhat justifiably) accused of a crime actually committed by a different guest. In book #6, chapter 8 ("One of You is the Murderer"), when Plum thinks he's being accused of murdering Miss Scarlet, he protests that he would never do that, then admits that he has tried a few times in the past but she always recovered, but insists that he didn't try to kill her this time, or if he did, he can't remember.
  • There are two stories where the mansion is burglarized by someone other then Mr. Boddy's regular guests: Book #7, chapter 8 ("Sound the Alarm!") and book #3, chapter 8 ("The Case of the Invisible Cat"), although in the latter story, one of the guests is an accomplice.
• Not Quite Dead: There are rare cases of someone actually being fatally injured, but hanging on long enough for a doctor to come and save their life.
  • Book #2, chapter 6 ("Plum's Plasma") has Colonel Mustard get accidentally wounded with a Knife. Luckily, Plum figures out where he created his latest cure, an instant remedy for cuts and wounds, and gets it to him in time to save his life. (But it takes months for the colonel's mustache, which also got a trim from the wild Knife, to grow back.)
  • Book #3, chapter 2 ("Cut Down to Size"), has Mustard get stabbed with a Knife while the culprit tried to cut an article out of his newspaper. Unfortunately, they accidentally missed the paper and got the Colonel instead; luckily a doctor was called and arrived in time to save him.
• Not So Above It All: Mr. Boddy is generally presented as a Nice Guy and even an Extreme Doormat, but sometimes he can be just as conniving as any of his guests. In book #7, chapter 10 ("The Life of the Party is Dead"), he has background checks done on all of the guests to find out their Dark Secrets as part of a dinner game contest where he'll force them to reveal those secrets. Another story has him openly threatening the guests with the Revolver to show them he means business when he tells them to stay out of one of the mansion's rooms.
• Not What I Signed Up For: In Book #2, chapter 2 ("The Challenge") Mr. Green asks Miss Scarlet to be his second for the duel. She seems to think that he's asking if she'll be his Second Love when she agrees, and is visibly terrified throughout the preparations for the duel (during which she is injured in the crossfire).
• Old Flame: Discussed a few times.
  • In book #3, chapter 2 ("Cut Down to Size"), the guests all start cutting things out of Boddy's newspaper while he's trying to read it. Miss Scarlet's target is a wedding announcement for an old flame of hers, a John Hartzbreaker.
  • In book #16, chapter 7 ("Burning the Candle at Both Ends"), Scarlet receives a valuable candle, encrusted with gold and diamonds and that will supposedly burn forever, from an old flame of hers who ran off with a rattlesnake charmer and is now trying to win Scarlet back.
• One-Wheeled Wonder: Book #12, chapter 1 ("Thief on Wheels") is all about the guests receiving unicycles for use in getting around the mansion. Only Mrs. White refuses to use one, just following the others around and cleaning their tire marks off the floor (hers later gets claimed by another guest who got a flat tire).
• Only the Chosen May Wield: Book #13, chapter 6 ("The Inky Trail") features Boddy's special pen, which explodes if anyone other than him tries to use it. One guest doesn't know this and tries to forge their name on a bond, setting off the pen and making a huge mess, thus forcing Boddy to follow the trail of inky handprints throughout the mansion and identify the forger.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: In book #6, chapter 2 ("A Dynamite Dinner"), some workmen tell Professor Plum that the mansion has been scheduled for demolition. For once, he recognizes the significance of this (and how likely it is that he'll forget in time to do anything) and makes sure to write it down so he can tell the others.
• Our Gargoyles Rock: Book #12, chapter 10 ("The Haunted Gargoyle") is about Boddy having obtained a small marble statue of a gargoyle (the inanimate kind), which is hundreds of years old and quite valuable. It's also supposed to be haunted, and legends say that strange things will happen if it falls into the wrong hands. Strange things do happen, but that's more because the guests are superstitious.
• Outside-Context Problem:
  • Book #3, chapter 8 ("The Case of the Invisible Cat") has the mansion robbed by famous cat burglar Kitty Lyon, the eponymous "Invisible Cat". (She also had inside help, but double-crossed her partner and took off with all the loot.)
  • Book #7, chapter 8 ("Sound the Alarm!") has the mansion robbed by unidentified thieves, who emptied the mansion's safe. The solution reveals they also stole everyone's luggage, leaving the guests rather steamed.
• Overly Long Name: Book #10, chapter 3 ("Dance Until You Drop") mentions one of Boddy's relatives, whose portrait hangs on the Ball Room wall — his great-great-great-uncle Sir Reginald Arthur Charles Edward George Richard Boddy.
• Over-the-Top Christmas Decorations: Variant in book #5, chapter 6 ("The Guest Who Stole Christmas") — the lights and decorations on Mr. Boddy's house don't look too extravagant, but then it turns out he spent a million dollars on the Christmas tree ornaments.
• Parachute in a Tree: In book #5, chapter 1 ("Party Crashers"), five of the guests manage to jump out of the Boddy jet in time to avoid dying in the crash. Colonel Mustard, the last one to do so, gets stuck in a tree partway down.
• The Password Is Always "Swordfish":
  • Book #6, chapter 4 ("Password, Please") has Boddy gain access to online banking; the guests immediately try to figure out his password, trying some significant date like his birthday first. It turns out to be that day's date, to celebrate the first day he got access to his online banking program.
  • Book #11, chapter 2 ("Boddy's Byte") has Boddy install a new security system where the guests must type in a password to access each room. Their personal passwords are always tailored to that person and incredibly easy to figure out — DUEL, RUBY, WEALTH, MANNERS, APRON, and PUDDING (as in plum pudding).
  • Book #17, chapter 10 ("The Clue in the Crystal Ball") revolves around the guests trying to figure out the password to the display case that held Mr. Boddy's latest treasure. It turned out to be, of course, "swordfish".
• Percussive Pickpocket: In book #1, chapter 7 ("The Secret Changes Hands"), Professor Plum thinks Mustard has stolen his roll of film from Mr. Green (who previously swiped it from Plum), and slaps at his chest, excusing it as a claim that he's looking for matches. The colonel believes him, unaware that Plum had really swiped two rolls of film (neither of which turns out to be the one he was looking for) from him in the process.
• Perplexing Pearl Production: Book #12, chapter 2 ("Shell Shock") is about Boddy having acquired the world's largest oyster, and the mother of all pearls inside it. When it's finally opened, the pearl is perfectly round and flawless, something that is not normal without careful work.
• Pet the Dog: All of the guests have very occasional moments of this. Notable examples include:
  • In book #1, chapter 1 ("Who Killed Pitty-Pat?"), Colonel Mustard challenges Mr. Green to a duel for threatening Ms. Scarlet.
  • Book #1, chapter 3 ("Happy Birthday Mr. Green") has the other guests seem unusually sincere when they throw Mr. Green a birthday party, and he is uncharacteristically grateful.
  • Book #1, chapter 4 ("The Ghost of Mrs. Boddy") has the guests throwing a seance for Mr. Boddy to talk to his dead wife in and not telling him when they realize someone is faking it, so he can go to bed happy, but then getting upset about it.
  • Book #1, chapter 5 ("Hide and Seek"), has Mrs. White trapped in the burning mansion. On realizing this, all of the the guests race back in to save her.
  • Book #1, chapter 7 ("The Secret Changes Hands") has Professor Plum actually feel guilty about stealing some industrial secrets from Mr. Boddy and (after a few harrowing experiences where people try to steal them from him) ultimately destroy the information.
  • Book #2, chapter 2 ("The Challenge") has Mrs. White, Mrs. Peacock and Professor Plum (and Body too) all trying to help Colonel Mustard get off his latest temper binge and keep him from challenging Mr. Green to a duel. It doesn't work (because Green keeps taunting him), but at least they tried.
  • In book #2, chapter 9 ("The Wrong Briefcase") after Professor Plum accidentally takes a briefcase with a million dollars in it from another bank customer, he strives to return it to its rightful owner rather than keep it for himself (the others have other plans though).
  • In book #3, chapter 5 ("Bad Taste") after an overworked Mrs. White collapses in the middle of serving a meal, all of the guests decide to make a meal for her instead. Unfortunately, their efforts nearly poison her, Mr. Boddy and Colonel Mustard — completely by accident for once — instead.
  • In book #4, chapter 4 ("The Deadly Toothbrush"), Colonel Mustard is reluctant to wake up the whole mansion after accidentally being locked outside, and also shouts out a warning to Miss Scarlet after seeing an intruder in her room.
  • Book #4, chapter 8 ("Farewell Mrs. Peacock") has Colonel Mustard promises to guard Mrs. Peacock from whoever is threatening her life despite his own issues with her.
  • In book #5, chapter 4 ("Blackout") there are two. Miss Scarlet insists that she isn't trying to steal Mr. Green's cufflinks for once, and supports this by voluntarily turning over her weapon to him, while Mrs. Peacock accompanies Mr. Boddy to the basement to turn on the power upon realizing he's afraid of the dark.
  • In book #5, chapter 10 ("Mr. Boddy's Funeral") Mrs. Peacock and Mrs. White both seem genuinely grief-stricken upon being (falsely) told that Mr. Boddy has died, and Colonel Mustard angrily threatens Mr. Green and Miss Scarlet for showing disrespect.
  • In book #6, chapter 2 ("A Dynamite Dinner") everyone tries to snuff out the fuse of the bomb threatening to destroy Boddy's mansion rather than just fleeing to save themselves. Though given it's a long fuse that they probably thought they could easily catch and cut, and the house being blown up meant they wouldn't be able to keep coming back and stealing more things from Mr. Boddy, this may arguably be a case of Pragmatic Villainy.
  • In book #9, chapter 1 ("On the Scent") Colonel Mustard is outraged by Mrs. Peacock insulting Mr. Boddy's dog.
  • In book #9, chapter 3 ("Seeing Double"), Colonel Mustard willingly guards Boddy's valuable wax statue (it's covered in jewels) rather than try to steal it, even though he'd been thinking about doing just that before Boddy asked him to protect it.
  • In book #10, chapter 2 ("Baby Booty"), Mrs. Peacock is the only one who seems interested in looking after Mr. Boddy's baby nephew before he offers a reward for doing so.
  • In book #10, chapter 6 ("The Case is All Sewed Up"), Mrs. White compliments Miss Scarlet's abilities as a seamstress, and also helps Mr. Boddy confront the thieves rather than try to take part in the theft herself.
  • In book #11, chapter 4 ("The Fake Fruit Frolic"), Mrs. White warns the other guests off trying to steal Boddy's valuable glass fruit. In the same chapter, Professor Plum spreads a warning when he sees a thief rather than just try to knock out the thief and steal the treasure himself as usual, and Mrs. White and Mr. Green both respond to his summons.
  • In book #11, chapter 9 ("In The Swim"), after Mr. Boddy falls into the pool and is drowning, everyone else jumps in to try to rescue him (and then each other when that keeps going poorly). Mr. Green expresses a desire to charge them for the rescue, but everyone else is pretty horrified and concerned, with Miss Scarlet showing shock when Mrs. White suggests just watching everyone else drown, and even Mrs. White coming around and diving in to help when everyone else is in trouble.
  • In book #11, chapter 10 ("Death By Candlelight") Mrs. White voluntarily turns over something she'd stolen from Mr. Boddy when he's made everyone else do the same, before he even seems to suspect her (although she might have just realized it would only be a matter of time until he did).
  • In book #12, chapter 1 ("Thief On Wheels") there is a somewhat twisted one. Even though Mrs. White hates having to clean up after the tracks of the unicycles, when Mrs. Peacock shows no interest in riding one, Mrs. White encourages her to by pointing out how convenient they'd be for quick getaways after stealing.
  • In book #12, chapter 5 ("The Rosy Scarecrow"), several of the guests try to steal Mr. Boddy's blue roses, only for the last one to be stopped by a living scarecrow. It's Mrs. White in disguise, who convinces Boddy she was indeed trying to protect the roses rather than steal them.
  • In book #15, chapter 4 ("Ham it Up"), Plum pursues a man he sees robbing Mr. Boddy while loudly yelling for him to stop (although it's possible he just wanted to rob the man in turn).
  • In book #15, chapter 6 ("Food Fight") Mrs. White defends Professor Plum from an attack by Mr. Green during a fight over who was cutting in line.
  • In book #16, chapter 6 ("Money May I?"), during Boddy's latest game challenge for the guests, one player persuades Boddy to let them go out and the person just eliminated to come back in. Later, when another guest is eliminated, all the others make a rare display of friendship and get him to let this person stay in.
  • In book #16, chapter 10 ("Danger After Dark"), Miss Scarlet starts a nasty rumor about Mrs. White's housekeeping abilities to get back at her for saying Scarlet's new handbag was tacky. Mr. Green is the only one not to believe it, assures Mrs. White that she's an excellent housekeeper and then starts an embarrassing rumor about Miss Scarlet in retaliation.
• Picture Day: Boddy holds one in book #7, chapter 2 ("The Picture-Perfect Crime") to celebrate his new camera, taking a series of group pictures of his guests standing or sitting on front of the mantel. He figures out who stole his Fabergé egg by comparing the photos and determining who was closest enough to swipe it at the time it disappeared.
• Pie in the Face: In book #10, chapter 7 ("Pie In Your Eye"), Boddy holds his annual pie-eating contest. At one point, Green tries to steal a piece of pie from another guest's plate, gets stabbed in the back of the hand with a fork, and accidentally knocks a whole pie to the floor when he jerks back in pain. A tired and cranky Mrs. White (who was up all night baking), furious at him for ruining her hard work, picks up a lemon pie and throws it at his face. This prompts Boddy, disappointed in them for their behavior, to call an end to the contest.
• Plot Allergy: Comes into play in book #9, chapter 9 ("Mystery in the Moonlight"), in which the six guests identify their allergies, and the three men's prove to be key to solving the mystery. Mrs. Peacock shuts herself up in her room so she won't see the full moon, claiming to be allergic to it; Mrs. White claims to be allergic to dust (which Boddy doesn't believe, assuming she's just trying to get out of dusting a room like he asked her), and Miss Scarlet says she's allergic to mold. Of the men, Mr. Green is allergic to chalk dust, Colonel Mustard to flowers, and Professor Plum to feathers, which gives him away as the culprit — he starts having a sneezing fit brought on by trying to rob Miss Scarlet, who was wearing a feather boa.
• Pocket Protector:
  • In book #2, chapter 7 ("A Show of Talent"), Colonel Mustard is performing a marksmanship act, having the other guests hold out cards while he uses a mirror to aim while shooting over his shoulder. Professor Plum forgets what's happening and what he's holding, so he steps forward to see what it is and walks right into the path of a bullet. Fortunately, it gets stuck in the jaws of the Wrench in his breast pocket.
  • In book #5, chapter 10 ("Mr. Boddy's Funeral"), Mr. Boddy is stabbed in the chest... the introduction to book #6 reveals that he wasn't hurt a bit because the Knife was stopped by his "custom-made, titanium-lined, mega-million sized" wallet.
  • As the solution in book #15, chapter 1 ("Something To Talk About") reveals, the guests' latest murder attempts on one another were all thwarted by the thick self-help books they were carrying under their clothes.
• Police Are Useless: Subverted and played straight, depending on the chapter.
  • In book #1, chapter 13 ("Who Killed Mr. Boddy?"), the police arrive, examine the area and take away the unconscious Boddy, but apparently never identified which of the guests tried to kill him.
  • In book #6, chapter 5 ("Tall Tales"), the police are shown doing their jobs, but apparently none of them thought to check for a heartbeat or pulse on the supposedly dead victim, who turns out to have just been deep in thought and didn't come out of it until later.
  • In book #7, chapter 8 ("Sound the Alarm!"), Police Sergeant Rhett Herring questions the guests about some stolen jewelry from Mr. Boddy's safe (which had been robbed by an outsider, for once), and since the guests only got a fleeting glimpse of the items, they can't remember what exactly it looked like. However, they do remember enough that the Sergeant is able to put their clues together and accurately describe the pieces in his report.
• Posthumous Character: Boddy's late wife, Bessie Boddy, whom the guests attempt to contact via seance in book #1, chapter 4 ("The Ghost of Mrs. Boddy").
• Pragmatic Villainy:
  • In book #6, chapter 1 ("That Gun Rings A Bell"), Mrs. Peacock tries to blackmail Mr. Green and Mrs. White with her photo evidence of them robbing Mr. Boddy blind. It seems like one of them kills her, but she actually fainted from the shock of Boddy's new gimmick doorbell, which makes a gunshot sound when it's pushed. Instead of killing Mrs. Peacock, Mr. Green simply steals and then destroys her blackmail material.
  • In Book #7, chapter 10 ("The Life of the Party is Dead"), one of the guests tries to kill Mr. Boddy to keep him from revealing any of their Dark Secrets. Their attempt simply gives Boddy Laser-Guided Amnesia and makes him forget all of the secrets and his efforts to reveal them. He spends the rest of the evening telling bad jokes, and the guests indulge him because they got what they wanted.
• Prank Call: Two of the guests get a few of these in book #18, chapter 9 ("Prank Phone Calls"). They're not amused.
• The Prankster: book #8, chapter 1 ("The Bug Stops Here") revolves around one guest pranking some of the others at dinner one night — a plastic bug in the soup, a rubber hand on another guest, and a worm in one guest's noodles. When the other guests figure out who it is, they prank the culprit back with salt in their coffee, a rubber snake in their bed and itching powder in their underwear.
• Priceless Ming Vase: At least a few of Boddy's prize possessions have been broken because of the guests.
  • Book #8, chapter 6 ("Who Bent the Bentley?") revolves around the guests swiping Mr. Boddy's classic Bentley and taking it out for a spin when he specifically said not to because of its value. Naturally, it gets totaled.
  • In book #11, chapter 4 ("The Fake Fruit Frolic"), Boddy has acquired some valuable glass fruit. Most of it gets shattered when a would-be thief holding the Revolver accidentally fires it.
  • In book #13, chapter 3 ("Urge to Earn an Urn"), one thief threatens to do this deliberately in order to get Boddy to hand over his valuable Greek urn.
• Punny Name:
  • Mr. Boddy's relatives, when they're mentioned, usually have these, such as his aunt Annie Boddy and his cousin Noah Boddy.
  • Book #18, chapter 9 ("Prank Phone Calls") has some of the cast go to a premiere of a movie starring Dianne Tooleave and Kenny Gonow.
  • Book #7, chapter 8 ("Sound the Alarm!") had a police detective named "Rhett Herring", while book #18, chapter 7 ("Party Poopers") featured Mr. Boddy's neighbor "Mr. Beau Legg."
• Race Against the Clock: Used in a few of the chapters.
  • Book #1, chapter 3 ("Happy Birthday, Mr. Green") revolves around a search for a Time Bomb.
  • Book #4, chapter 6 ("Seating Arrangements") gives Boddy a limited time to find a seating arrangement that will make all the guests happy before the meal he's serving gets cold.
  • Book #6, chapter 2 ("A Dynamite Dinner") gives the guests a limited time to find a Big, Bulky Bomb hidden somewhere in the mansion.
  • Book #12, chapter 9 ("Sands of Time") gives the guests three minutes to get back to what they were doing and check in if they want to receive a prize.
• Real Men Eat Meat: In book #14, chapter 7 ("To Top It Off"), Mr. Boddy buys pizza for the guests, and Colonel Mustard insists on eating only meat toppings. He even refuses to eat meat-topped slices from pies that are half-meat, half-veggie, in case any of the vegetables have wandered too close. (However, he has no problem having some of Mrs. Peacock's cheese-only pizza.)
• Recycled Title: "Sound the Alarm!" is used as a title twice, first for book #3, chapter 7, and then in book #7, chapter 8.
• Replaced with Replica: In book #11, chapter 10 ("Death by Candlelight"), the last guest uses the Knife to stab another guest, then takes the insurance policy. In the introduction to book #12, it turns out Boddy had switched out the real Knife for a copy with a retractible blade, so the victim was unharmed.
• Rhino Rampage: In book #5, chapter 8 ("The Guest Who Couldn't Shoot Straight"), a vicious rhino escapes from the nearby zoo and shows up at the mansion, trying to attack the guests and briefly getting stuck in the outside wall of the Billiard Room.
• Riddle for the Ages: Did Mr. Boddy die for real in the final story?
• Right Behind Me: A variation in book #3, chapter 10 ("The Late Mr. Boddy") where the guests brag about everything they've stolen from Mr. Boddy, only for Plum to suddenly remember that Mr. Boddy had told him that he wanted to test his new intercom and has spent the last few minutes listening to everything they've said.
• Satchel Switcheroo:
  • In book #2, chapter 9 ("The Wrong Briefcase"), Professor Plum finds he accidentally did this — he stopped at the bank earlier that day, but left his briefcase by mistake. When he went back, he found an identical one next to another person in line and took it, thinking it was his own, but didn't discover this until he tries to find his lecture notes and discovers it's actually a Briefcase Full of Money. Which turns out to be play money from a board game.
  • Book #3, chapter 1 ("A Mixed Bag"), has all of the guests arrive at Mr. Boddy's mansion with identical-looking suitcases. Some contain valuables, and others contain valueless personal items. Given the characters involved, it should be no surprise that the ones who own the cheap items attempt to swap suitcases with the other guests, resulting in one character attempting to steal valuables but winding up with mouthwash.
• Scary Scarecrows: In book #12, chapter 5 ("The Rosy Scarecrow"), several of the guests try to steal Mr. Boddy's blue roses. The last pair to make the attempt are stopped by a living scarecrow and run screaming back to the mansion. It's really Mrs. White in disguise, taking steps to protect the valuable roses.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Attempted a few times and pulled off successfully at least once.
  • In book #5, chapter 2 ("Midnight Phone Calls"), Mr. Green abandons his duel with Colonel Mustard partway through because he's tired of fighting and leaves to go to bed.
  • In book #7, chapter 1 ("Be My Ghost"), the ghost of Sir Squatty-Boddy emerges from his painting to terrorize the mansion until dawn. The guests decide to run for it until Mr. Boddy mentions that Sir Squatty-Boddy will lead them to his treasure if they stay, which prompts them to do so. However, Boddy himself has no interest in staying when there's a ghost about, and leaves to spend the night in the nearest motel.
  • In book #7, chapter 9 ("Mr. Boddy's Wild Ride"), some of the guests try this when they get terrified out of their wits during the "Monsters of the Caribbean" theme park ride that they're on, but it doesn't work out like they planned.
• The Scrooge: Mr. Green, whose first concern is always how much things will cost.
• Secret Path: Mr. Boddy has multiple secret passages in his mansion, most prominently the two that between the Kitchen and the Study, and the Conservatory and the Lounge, also featured in the board game. Others are discussed throughout the series, though they're usually only used in one chapter and then forgotten about.
  • In book #15, chapter 8 ("Autograph Hounds"), four are discovered around the mansion by the various guests. They're also all full of trick mirrors, throwing everyone's aim off when they try to attack one another within them.
• Self-Made Man: Mr. Green is implied to be this, as it's mentioned in book #9, chapter 6 ("The Case of the Blue-Ribbon Cookies") that he made his first dollar selling his mother's cookies.
• Senseless Violins: In book #14, chapter 2 ("Fiddling Around"), the guests observe a violin case, and Professor Plum likens it to the kind gangsters carry their guns in. It actually contains an antique violin that becomes the subject of the story's heist, but Mr. Boddy is such a Dreadful Musician that bullets may be less painful.
• Series Continuity Error:
  • Book #1, chapter 10 ("Who Was Fiddling Around?") has Boddy owning and skillfully playing a Stradivarius. However, in book #9, chapter 4 ("Stormy Weather"), he gets a solid gold trumpet, and book #14, chapter 2 ("Fiddling Around") has him gets a Stradivarius. Both times, it's indicated that each instrument purchased is his first, and he's shown to be a Dreadful Musician.
  • Book #5, chapter 8 ("The Guest Who Couldn't Shoot Straight"), has Plum and Scarlet out at the Boddy Mansion's pool. Yet in book #11, chapter 9 ("In The Swim"), Boddy decides to open the pool, and Mrs. White's comments suggest that it's brand new.
  • Pizza is discussed in two books — book #10, chapter 2 ("Baby Booty"), and book #14, chapter 7 ("To Top It Off"). In the former, Mrs. Peacock expresses a distaste for pizza (since you eat it with your fingers), and Miss Scarlet wants hers with pepperoni. In the latter, Mrs. Peacock has no problem with pizza in general (though she shuns any topping other than cheese), and Miss Scarlet insists on only eating vegetarian toppings.
  • Book 1, chapter 13 ("Who Killed Mr. Boddy?") has Mr. Boddy tell his guests that his estate will be divided between the six of them since he's the last living member of the Boddy family. Later books have cameos from other members of the Boddy clan.
• Sham Wedding: Book #9, chapter 7 ("There Went the Bride") is about setting up one of these, as Miss Scarlet announces she's getting married, but it turns out there was never a real groom — the whole thing was just a scheme on Scarlet's part to get valuable wedding gifts and then run off with them.
• Significant Anagram:
  • Used in book #8, chapter 10 ("The Clue in the Shadows"), when the guests and Boddy are playing a round of "Anagrams" (a tile-based word game). When Boddy's attacked for the prize, he spells out anagrams for the names of the room he's in and the weapon that killed him. And then two more words — unscrambled, they read "APRIL FOOLS", revealing he's not really dead.
  • Book #9, chapter 2 ("Alphabet Soup") has the guests playing a game at the dinner table, using letter-shaped noodles. The last clue is to devour the letters the last two names have in common, and then anagram the last letters of the winning name into a real word.
  • Book #17, chapter 10 ("The Clue in the Crystal Ball") has a Jackass Genie who gives all his clues in this form.
• Silent Treatment: Pretty much everyone in book #15, chapter 1 ("Something To Talk About") is giving everyone else this treatment and talking to themselves only, until Boddy gathers them together for one conversation. Naturally, things go off the rails and Boddy has to call it off, but it doesn't stop them from trying to kill one another over the perceived insults later.
• Skeleton Key Card: Book #3, chapter 7 ("Sound the Alarm!") has Boddy installing a great deal of security equipment in the mansion, and asks Mr. Green (and all the other guests) to try to break in through the front door. Falling back on this trope, Green uses a credit card to slip the lock... and like everyone else who tried to break in that way, triggers a trap door under the welcome mat. And then his suitcase falls in after him, landing on his head.
• Skewed Priorities: In book #3, chapter 4 ("Charades"), when Mrs. Peacock is (seemingly) killed during a game of charades, her teammate Mrs. White decides to announce the answer to the clue that was being acted out (and in the process securing a victory for her team) before telling them she's also figured out who the attempted killer was.
• Sleepwalking: Book #1, chapter 8 ("The Sleepwalking Killer") features... a sleepwalking killer. Fortunately, as always, the victim wasn't dead — they'd just fainted from fear, and the "blood" around them was from the glass of fruit juice that was actually hit by the bullet.
• Sliding Scale of Living Toys: Book #16, chapter 2 ("The Million-Dollar Dolly") features what might be alive. The titular doll, as revealed in the solution, can talk and is a tattletale (which Boddy knew, but deliberately kept from the guests); she tells Boddy that all six guests tried to steal her over the course of the chapter, and he puts them all to work making doll clothes as a result.
• Small Name, Big Ego: In the introduction to book #10, Boddy mentions that he's heard Miss Scarlet buys two tickets whenever she flies — one for her and one for her ego.
• Snake Pit: In book #2, chapter 10 ("Mr. Boddy's Pyramid"), Boddy's built a pyramid on his property to use as his tomb, and stocked it with traps to protect the wealth he'll have buried with him. A snake pit is among the traps, and naturally, he falls in at one point and gets bitten. Thankfully, he has an emergency supply of the antidote on hand.
• Snowed-In:
  • Used in book #4, chapter 8 ("Farewell, Mrs. Peacock"), when the guests are all stuck because of the weather. One of them uses this as an opportunity to try and kill Mrs. Peacock.
  • In book #8, chapter 7 ("The Slumber-less Party"), the mansion is snowed in (with a huge drift blocking the doors) and the furnace is out, forcing the guests to camp out in the Ball Room, each in their own tent. Except for Boddy, who sneaks back upstairs to his own room, warmed by his private electric heater.
• Something We Forgot: Mentioned in book #1, chapter 6 ("Where There's Smoke, There's Fire!"), in which Mrs. White tells the others she almost started a fire because she had gone to bed and left a pot of potatoes cooking on the stove; when she suddenly remembered, she got back up and hurried back to deal with it in time.
• Sore Loser: The guests tend to be this in more than a few of the contests Boddy holds. Most prominent in book #9, chapter 5 ("Go Fly a Kite"), in which the last kite-flier standing is forced to repair the other five kites and denied a chance to compete in the rematch for the prize. (Admittedly, the last one standing did cheat, but so did four of the five losers.)
• Spot the Imposter: In book #3, chapter 9 ("Cloning Around"), Professor Plum inadvertently makes five clones of Mrs. Peacock, all of whom are murderously insane. At the end of the story, Plum works out a way to eliminate the copies, but the guests don't want the original to be hurt, so they must determine which of the six is the real Mrs. Peacock.
• Status Quo Is God: No matter who tries to kill who, or steals from Mr. Boddy or another guest, they'll always survive and/or be invited back.
• Stuff Blowing Up: Something exploded when Mrs. White was cooking dinner in book #6, chapter 2 ("A Dynamite Dinner"), with the guests hearing a loud blast from the Kitchen. It's luckily averted with the huge bomb that was planted elsewhere in the mansion. Also with the Time Bomb featured in book #1, chapter 3 ("Happy Birthday, Mr. Green"), which, as it turns out, the giver forgot to set.
• Suspect Is Hatless: Non-crime version in book #9, chapter 1 ("On the Scent"), in which Professor Plum is trying to find a book in the library... but all he can remember is the shape (rectangular); the title and author's name escape him.
• Swiper, No Swiping!: Mrs. Peacock's "Stop It!" technique, taught in her self-defense class in book #5, chapter 9 ("A Purple Belt in Karate"), is based on this — if the criminal attacking the practitioner is polite, the practitioner merely has to order them to "Stop it" to make them back down.
• Tap on the Head: More than a few of the guests (and Mr. Boddy) are hit over the head and knocked out harmlessly, including in book #1, chapter 5 ("Hide and Seek"), in which Mrs. White is hit by a falling Candlestick and falls unconscious, but survives both the blow and any smoke inhalation that might have happened while the mansion was on fire.
• The Tell: The guests all have at least one, to make it easy to identify them in passages where their names are withheld from the reader. Some are more obvious than others, relying more on the reader intuiting from what they know of their backgrounds and personalities than noticing a Catchphrase.
  • Colonel Mustard is always challenging people to a duel and is the only guest with a military background; Professor Plum is terribly forgetful and is the most scientifically inclined; Mr. Green is greedy and business-minded, and is the nastiest of the men with a short temper; Mrs. Peacock is prim and proper and reprimands others for bad manners, and is the plumpest of the women; Miss Scarlet is flirtatious and beautiful, and interested in men; Mrs. White will often clean while committing a crime to catch up on housework, and is the meanest of the women most likely to fling insults and dirty looks.
  • Some singular stories will give specific tells to each guest, like mentioning if they're wearing costumes or a particular article of clothing, and who is wearing them.
• Tempting Fate: It's noted that Colonel Mustard is willing to fight a duel at the drop of a hat. When she hears this in book #2, chapter 2 ("The Challenge"), Mrs. Peacock remarks that it's a good thing she never drops her hat... and then does so accidentally, her hat landing on the colonel's head and making everyone laugh at how silly he looks and setting off his temper again. In the same chapter, when Mustard and Green begin their duel, Mr. Boddy hopes that they won't break his priceless antique chandelier—and ten seconds later it's in pieces on the ground.
• Thanksgiving Episode: Book #10, chapter 9 ("The Thanksgiving Murder") is one, with the guests being assigned to different tasks to get ready for the big meal; meanwhile, each of them tries to steal a ring from Mrs. Peacock.
• They Killed Kenny Again: Mr. Boddy is killed in the final chapter of each book, then explains how he survived in the introduction of the next book.
• 13 Is Unlucky: Mr. Boddy was born on a Friday the 13th in November. Book #17, chapter 1 ("Friday the Thirteenth") is set on Friday the 13th, and involves the guests developing various phobias.
• 30-Second Blackout: In book #5, chapter 4 ("Blackout!"), Boddy Manor suffers from one of these. Then about ten seconds after the power's back, it goes off again, this time for a more traditional and lengthy blackout.
• Time Bomb: Professor Plum intends to give one to Mr. Green as a birthday present in book #1, chapter 3 ("Happy Birthday, Mr. Green"), revealing that it's due to go off in just a few minutes... but he can't remember where he left it; when asked why he thought it was a good idea, he claims that he thought it would liven up the party and that he planned to turn it off once it was unwrapped. Luckily, the others figure out where he left it in time. Even more luckily, he also forgot to set it before he wrapped it.
• The Tooth Hurts:
  • Book #4, chapter 4 ("The Deadly Toothbrush"), has one of the guests stealing a ruby-encrusted toothbrush from Miss Scarlet. The solution notes that although the thief got away with their crime, they never actually used the stolen toothbrush for its intended purpose. As a consequence, they had six cavities at their next checkup.
  • Book #7, chapter 5 ("Mrs. Peacock Bites the Bullet"), has Mrs. Peacock losing her gold tooth after she accidentally bites a bullet that had fallen into the cream puff she was eating.
  • Book #11, chapter 3 ("Creature Features") has the guests eating popcorn and watching monster movies. Mr. Boddy's gold pocket watch falls into one of the bowls, and after getting switched around a few times, ends up in the bowl of a guest who doesn't notice its presence and, consequently, bites into it. As a result, Mr. Green has to buy Boddy a new watch and himself a bridge of false teeth.
• Total Eclipse of the Plot: Actually portrayed pretty realistically in book #12, chapter 7 ("Dark Side of the Moon"), when a lunar eclipse takes several minutes to start, and then a little while longer to end, with the returning light catching a would-be killer off guard.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Mr. Green loves ham, as seen several times.
• Treasure Chest Cavity:
  • In book #11, chapter 4 ("The Fake Fruit Frolic"), one of the guests steals a valuable glass grape and hides it in their mouth. It pops out when they scream upon seeing another guest with a weapon.
  • In book #12, chapter 8 ("Doggone it!"), one guest steals a diamond dog collar and hides that in their mouth. Their inability to contribute to the following discussion (due to their mouth being too full) leads to their exposure as the thief.
• Trick Bullet: The introduction to book #4 reveals that the bullets the guests used to try and kill Boddy in book #3, chapter 10 ("The Late Mr. Boddy") were this — they pierce everything but human skin, making them useless for murder attempts.
• Troll: Mr. Boddy sometimes comes off as one with the prizes he offers... and also the incidents where he purposely tricks his guests into doing something that makes them look silly.
• Two Men, One Dress: Book #2, chapter 8 ("Trick or Treat") is set on Halloween, with seven characters in six costumes. The last to arrive at the mansion is a two-headed man with a knife in each head, who turns out to be two guests sharing one outfit.
• Uniqueness Value: Many of Boddy's treasures fall under this, because they're so old and/or rare, such as the five thousand-year-old astronomy text in book #7, chapter 7 ("A Textbook Murder") or Clarence the Quazi-Motoh miniature grouper in book #8, chapter 5 ("Something Fishy"), one of only five of his kind known to exist.
• Vampires Hate Garlic: Book #15, chapter 10 ("The Vanishing Vampire") has Boddy reveal he owns a painting of a vampire's coffin, which must be kept well-lit at all times. If it isn't, the vampire will escape the painting and attack anyone they find. The final thief, firmly believing this, wears a bulb of garlic around their neck for protection in reference to this trope. Subverted when the "vampire" turns out to be Boddy's eccentric cousin Bittsy Boddy in costume, who just snatches the garlic away and says "Great! I can use this to make a pizza." before "attacking" the would-be thief.
• Verbal Backspace: In book #14, chapter 5 ("Window Pain"), after the guests have agreed to wash the downstairs windows, Professor Plum eagerly says "Let's get cracking!" Then he realizes what he said, backpedals and adds "Not the windows, of course."
• Walk This Way: Done at least twice.
  • In book #3, chapter 7 ("Sound the Alarm!"), with the guests merely imitating Mr. Boddy's normal walk.
  • In book #7, chapter 5 ("Mrs. Peacock Bites the Bullet"), Mrs. White says this when she's gotten a pebble in her shoe and is limping, with the guests all imitating her abnormal walk. Once they arrive...
  Mr. Green: "Why are we walking this way?"
  Professor Plum (shrugging): "Because she told us to."
• Watch Out for That Tree!: The titular question of book #8, chapter 6 ("Who Bent the Bentley?") comes up after two guests, fighting over the radio, accidentally cause Boddy's valuable car to drive off the road into a tree, with the guests in the back yelling "Look out!" moments before they hit.
• Weight and Switch: In book #14, chapter 10 ("The Dangerous Diamond"), part of the security system around the titular diamond is a counterweight system, which would detect the absence of its weight and sound an alarm. The thief outsmarts it by immediately replacing the diamond with the Lead Pipe.
• We Win, Because You Didn't: In book #2, chapter 3 ("The Joke Contest"), Miss Scarlet, Mr. Green and Mrs. White each make a joke and then, when Miss Scarlet starts bragging about hers getting more laughs, the trio get into an argument over who's funniest. When Mrs. White wins, Mr. Green isn't thrilled at losing, but admits that "I guess it's okay, as long as that braggart Miss Scarlet didn't win."
• When the Clock Strikes Twelve: Book #8, chapter 9 ("Time Is Running Out") features Boddy throwing a party with a cash reward for the guest who rings the doorbell at the stroke of midnight. All five guests (not counting Mrs. White, who's already there and waiting to answer the door when the others show up) arrive on the mansion grounds before the proper time, but because of a string of events, one comes inside early, one rings the bell at precisely the right time, and the other three get caught up in other tasks and arrive at the door late.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?:
  • Book #5, chapter 4 ("Blackout"), reveals that Mr. Boddy is scared of the dark.
  • Book #17, chapter 1 ("Friday the Thirteenth"), has the guests all developing random phobias because it's Friday the Thirteenth, and naturally, all of them have to face these fears, which include heights, spiders, cats, snakes, the dark, and water (which is so strong that the guest with hydrophobia is too afraid to even wash their face). Only Mr. Boddy is unaffected.
• With Friends Like These...: Boddy is fully aware that his friends regularly try to kill him on multiple occasions. The problem is he's too terrified to not be friends with them if this is how they treat him on friendly terms. (Though he does punish them, or threaten to do so, for misbehaving on occasion.)
• Worthless Treasure Twist:
  • In book #2, chapter 9 ("The Wrong Briefcase") after Professor Plum accidentally takes a briefcase with a million dollars in it and another guest steals it from him, the thief gets away with it, but the money turns out to be play money from a board game.
  • Completely accidental in book #8, chapter 3 ("The Guys in Disguise"), when Mrs. White discovers an old trunk under the eaves in the attic that belonged to Boddy's Uncle N.E. Boddy. She's initially hopeful that it has something valuable, but is rather disappointed to learn the man was poor as a church mouse, and the chest instead contains a lifetime's worth of theatrical costumes that he used to entertain people with.
  • In book #10, chapter 6 ("The Case is All Sewed Up"), Boddy shows the guests an old quilt once owned by his great-great-grandmother, who hid the family's "most valuable possessions" in it for protection during World War I, in case the family home was invaded by enemy soldiers. The guests assume it's something valuable. The solution reveals that it's actually this trope — the "treasure" is a packet of old family photos.
• Wounded Gazelle Gambit: Book #10, chapter 8 ("Pea Is For Pretender") involves Miss Scarlet talking about how her favorite fairy tale is "The Princess and the Pea", in which a woman is so delicate she can feel a single tiny pea through an entire stack of mattresses and it's considered proof that she's a princess. Scarlet decides to put this to the test, and naturally plans to cheat (via painting a fake bruise on her leg) so she can get the diamond tiara Boddy promised her if it turned out she was a real princess. Professor Plum catches her at it and exposes her as a phony in time.
• Wrench Whack: Per the original games, this is one of the mansion's six weapons. Notably, it's how Boddy's knocked cold in book #1, chapter 13 ("Who Killed Mr. Boddy?").
• Wrote the Book: In the introduction to book #15, Mr. Boddy says of Mrs. Peacock, "When it comes to manners, this lady wrote the book. In fact, she wrote all of them."
• You Fool!: In book #4, chapter 7 ("The Mystery at the Masked Ball"), the guests are all wearing masks in their own usual colors for the dance, yet Mr. Boddy says that with those masks on, he can't tell who they all are. Mrs. White even quietly says "What a fool!" in response to his comment before noting the color fact to herself.
• Zonk:
  • Mr. Boddy would periodically arrange various contests for his guests. Sometimes the prizes were genuinely valuable (usually cash or a valuable treasure); other times, they were gag prizes (and at least once the "prize" was a punishment). Examples included:
    • Book #4, chapter 3 ("A Tug-of-War"), featuring a tug-of-war competition in which each member of the winning team would receive a rare Boddy treasure ( a big kiss on the nose from Mr. Boddy);
    • Book #10, chapter 4 ("The Halloween Costume Caper"), featuring a game of bobbing for apples in which one of the apples contains a golden nugget ( actually a nugget of caramel candy, though in that case everyone had a good laugh when it was revealed);
    • Book #10, chapter 5 ("The Snowball Effect"), featuring a snowball fight ( in which the winning team got ice cream cones);
    • Book #15, chapter 5 ("Door Prize"), featuring a competition to paint the most doors in the mansion's downstairs ( everyone got a prize — bars of soap to clean the paint off their hands);
    • And book #16, chapter 8 ("A Little Horse"), featuring a horse race where ( everyone's "prize" was being forced to muck out the stalls, since Boddy had gotten angry with them for fighting over who was the best rider and demanding a race to prove who was best).
    • Played with in book #12, chapter 3 ("Tennis, Anyone?"), which featured a lottery drawing with a half real, half zonk prize; while the guests weren't too happy about playing for the zonk (a chance to see Mr. Boddy compete in a tennis tournament being held at some point later on), they did want to win the money he was also putting up. After Boddy lost badly in the tournament, the winning guest graciously gave him some of the prize money to spend on private lessons.
  • A couple of their attempted thefts could qualify as Zonks as well. Such as:
    • Book #5, chapter 2 ("Midnight Phone Calls") has two guests overhearing Miss Scarlet making a call to have a batch of rubies delivered to the mansion. It turns out they aren't literal rubies — they're her favorite brand of jelly beans.
    • Book #6, chapter 6 ("Caught Blue-Handed") has the case of the priceless records — they're literally priceless, in that they're not worth a dime.
    • Book #15, chapter 4 ("Ham It Up") has the guests fighting over a valuable sculpture of a set of teeth. It turns out to be Boddy's grandfather's old false teeth with a fake signature on it, which he set up to trick the guests into dressing up for a food-themed costume party.
    • Book #17, chapter 3 ("A Flying Saucer Story") involves the theft of the Ersatz Diamond, being sold to Boddy by aliens from the planet Xaoh. Naturally, given the names involved, the diamond is a fake — Boddy was deliberately trolling his guests as a prank.
    • Book #17, chapter 5 ("Truth Serum"), has the culprit break into a large, mysterious crate that's sitting out on the lawn; Boddy's refused to identify the contents, so the guests are sure it's a new treasure. It turns out to be a new bathtub he was having installed.

Clue Mysteries:

• Anti-Hero: Each story follows one of the guests investigating the murder of Mr. Boddy (under vastly different circumstances), while often (but not always) displaying an It's All About Me attitude while at the same time (usually) striving to get justice for Boddy despite not feeling much emotion at his death.
• Bad "Bad Acting": Miss Scarlet is an actress but considered a bad one, once having caused the curtain to go down early her acting was so bad. The only story where her acting is portrayed as (somewhat) good is "A Designated Casualty".
• Big Friendly Dog: One story has Miss Scarlet babysitting a friend's Afghan Hound which keeps eating anything made of rag paper.
• Boarding School: Miss Scarlet spent a lot of her childhood in one and seems to have gotten into hijinks there, referencing learning skills like forgery.
• Disappeared Dad: The fathers of Plum, Scarlet and Boddy all died when they were young (how relevant this is depends on which story it is).
• Duel to the Death: In an apparent Mythology Gag, one story where Colonel Mustard is the killer has a duel as as the circumstances behind Boddy's death. Boddy had apparently thought the whole thing was a joke when Mustard gave him the gun, but Mustard insists it was "Not my fault he wasn't ready."
• Fake Charity: In "The Chartreuse Trust", Mr. Green recommends the titular charity to all of the guests and when they compare notes they realize he told Mustard it provided for veterans, widows and orphans, Mrs. Peacock that it gave money to struggling fashion designers, Miss Scarlet that it helped get out of work actresses (like her) parts in plays, Professor Plum that it helped out of work archaeologists (like him) find grants, Mrs. White that it wanted to liberate Scotland from England and Mr. Boddy that the Trust was dedicated to the preservation of stately homes. Mr. Green finds himself being chased into a corner with things being thrown at him.
• Gold Digger: Both Miss Scarlet and Mrs. Peacock pursue rich men in certain stories.
• Happily Married: Mrs. White and her husband, before he died, to the point where fond memories of him cause her to return a valuable pen from one of Mrs. Peacock's husbands due to thinking about how much something like that from her husband would have meant to her.
• Lethal Chef: Mrs. White. The only thing she can make good are scones (a family recipe) or a few dishes which evoke an I Ate WHAT?! reaction after being complimented, and she insistently brushes off any criticism about the rest of her cooking. One story even implies that her bad cooking accidentally killed her husband when she made him a surprise birthday dinner.
• Karma Houdini: There are several stories where the murdering guest destroys the evidence, avoids suspicion, or manages to buy off or intimidate into silence whoever figures it out.
• Lack of Empathy: Mr. Boddy's murder tends to inspire any grief from each story's main character, although the stories can vary whether or not this is due to Stiff Upper Lip feelings. One notable exception is in "A Designated Casualty" when Boddy is shot with a gun that wasn't loaded with blanks and initially Plum (that story's POV character) has a brief bout of These Hands Have Killed sentiment as he wonders if Boddy died from being shot with one of his blanks too close, before he figures out the truth.
  • Whenever either Miss Scarlet or Mrs. Peacock is the killer, the other rarely seems that upset about it.
• Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe: In one story Mrs. Peacock tells Miss Scarlet that she had an affair with Sir Hugh shortly before meeting her legal father and suspects that the former man was her father.
• Meaningful Name: Three separate crooked institutions across two stories (Jade Collectibles, Verdant moving and the Chartreuse Trust) all translate to green, and all three were set up by Mr. Green and funnel money to his pocket.
• Miles Gloriosus: Two separate stories have Mustard telling a tale of his heroic survival of a battle in India and both times it turns out he survived by hiding.
• Murder Is the Best Solution: Zigzagged. People constantly kill Mr. Boddy for petty reasons, such as because they can't take the time to talk through innocent misunderstandings, stomach a drawn-out but winnable lawsuit (in one story, Mrs. Peacock notes that "rather than fight John in court, it seemed easier to push him down the stairs") or use deception to keep him from finding something out, but often there are other characters in the same story who defy this.
  • In one story, Mustard is sore at Mr. Boddy for supposedly cheating him in a smuggling racket (actually, Mrs. White is unknowingly intercepting the goods and so Boddy doesn't think Mustard is really sending as much as he claims), but merely sends letters insulting his honor and demanding payment rather than retaliate violently.
  • On one occasion, three different characters try to prevent Mr. Boddy and Ms. Scarlet from going to America (two to protect Dark Secrets and Mrs. White just due to a feeling of personal inconvenience) and two try to stop the trip in non-lethal ways, but the third kills Boddy. Rather humorously, Colonel Mustard speculates that Boddy himself was about to indulge in this trope when he died by planning to kill Ms. Scarlet out of outrage at her effort to make him take a ridiculous acting role rather than just telling her no.
  • In the final story, Mustard notes that most of the guests (including himself) wouldn't have killed Boddy over his plan to stop their allowances, but merely would have stayed around all summer trying to talk him into changing his mind.
• Pet the Dog: Very rare but sometimes the guests might show some sympathy towards or do favors for each other, such as Mr. Green leaving a pound note for Professor Plum to "find" after seeing how broke he is (granted it was just one bill from a large wad Green had just stolen).
• The Quiet One: Outside of the prologue of the two books, Mr. Boddy rarely gets in a word before being murdered.
• Reset Button: The stories have no continuity between them. Each involves Mr. Boddy being murdered, apparently for real, then rewinds back to the start of the weekend for the next tale with new motives and such before Boddy is killed again.
• The Roaring '20s: The stories are all set in 1926.
• Science Hero: Plum, on some occasions where he's innocent, such as figuring out a solution due to the dating of some paper.
• Serial Spouse: Mrs. Peacock has been widowed three times and in at least one story is implied to have killed all of her husbands.
• Sinister Minister: Mr. Green (although his status as an ordained minister is questioned in some stories) is constantly stealing things or scamming people even in stories where he's innocent of murder.
• Spoiled Brat: Miss Scarlet is entitled and temperamental in most of the stories where she has any prominence.
• Stealing from the Till: Mrs. White's motive some of the times she's the killer relates to embezzlement.
• Wrongfully Accused: Plenty of stories have the wrong suspect accused originally before new facts come to light during the summation.

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