Author of Mystery Tour Dramas : For Stager of Whodunits, Crime Pays and Entertains

Carder Hunt’s avocation is to involve people in murder.

And they love it.

Hunt, manager of Scottsdale’s municipal airport, writes tongue-in-cheek murder mystery plays during his off-hours for Safari Inc., a San Francisco-based firm whose business is to arrange conventions and travel.

Part of the Safari package is an offer to stage a whodunit as mystery theater entertainment. Enter Hunt, who will concoct an original drama tailored to the occasion and its participants. Murder mysteries, it appears, are the most popular, although Hunt also writes “double theft” mysteries for those with an aversion to murder.

‘Entertaining Crime’

“Murder is the most entertaining mystery crime,” he explained. “People want someone to die. Preferably, they want to see him or her die before their eyes rather than to hear about it.”

The conventioneers are more than mere spectators. “Our goals are to intrigue the guests and involve them as well as entertain them. We want to present them with a solvable mystery and have them solve it themselves,” Hunt said.

Safari produces the plays and has developed casts for the productions. “They have 40 or 50 people who can get into the act. We can play with as few as seven or as many as 10 or 12,” Hunt said.

Hunt, 36, began writing plays when he was 8 or 9. “Our whole family performed in them--my brother and I, my father and mother,” he recalled. “Dad and I each wrote plays and did them for Christmas and birthdays. As we got better, the plays became more involved.”

Brother’s Role

Hunt became involved in writing for conventions when his brother, who was a Safari Inc., employee at the time, called him and asked him to write mystery theater entertainment for a forthcoming convention.

“It sounded like a lot of fun,” Hunt said, “so I did it.”

The first step in preparing a play for production is to find out about its audience, Hunt said. “What does the client want? What kind of people will we be addressing--stockbrokers or salesmen? Are they a group whose members are strangers to each other or a fairly homogenous crowd?

“We always customize our plays. We ask the client to give us two or three people they’d like to see involved. We want to draw a fine line between fantasy and realism, real time and real space.

“There’s a lot of stuff out there, if you can get the essentials. As the central cast of the play, we let the participants interrogate us as the play progresses. The questioning has to be done in public so people can get involved.”

Clues Are Left

Before staging a typical mystery drama, Safari informs the guests about what to expect. Sometimes, to underscore the atmosphere of realism, clues are left, Hunt said.

“Part of a burned note in an ashtray in the guest’s room, a memo to telephone a certain number where a voice responds ominously, ‘It’s still on,’ or, ‘Meet me at the bridge.’ ”

Both before and after essential scenes staged for the guests (the murder, for example), the cast mingles with guests, occasionally engaging in mysterious mutterings. Sometimes Hunt plays the part of Inspector Hiram Boggs, a bumbling detective.

“Some of the guests become suspects,” said Hunt. “Finally, I make an arrest. It’s wrong, of course. Then the audience has to solve it, based on all the clues they’ve been given.”

Invariably, there’s at least one individual who, Hunt said, “nails it right down.”

Some guests can get rather seriously involved. “Once one guy laid four $100 bills on the table,” Hunt related, “and leaned over and whispered to me, ‘Tell me who did it.’ ”