The Crime Club Game

published by Pepys

The Crime Club Game by Peter Cheyney comes in a gold-lined box with a padded lid and a Peter Cheyney card stuck to the bottom, containing the pack of 50 cards – 6 suits of 8 cards (split into 3 detective and 3 crook siuts featuring characters – such as Lemmy Caution and Hercule Poirot – objects and locations) and 2 jokers plus an instruction booklet and reminder slips. The back of each card features the masked Crime Club gunman on a geometric pattern. The game was produced in two colour variations: green box with green-backed cards and purple box with purple-backed cards.

I Commit

published by Pepys

“an ARRESTING game of THRILLS” – “A new, skilful and thrilling CRIME CLUB CARD GAME – Invented by the popular Novelist and Broadcaster, Lawrence Meynell”

The 53 cards have illustrations similar to those of the Crime Club game, with the Crime Club gunman in red on the back. The front of the box is illustrated with a man firing an automatic and knocking over a lamp, the back shows a selection of the playing card characters. The game includes an instruction booklet.

Contraband

published by Pepys

A card game based on smuggling contraband through customs from Paris to London. The game box contains cards, a rule book and Pepys Currency.

Secret Agent - The Card Game with the Magic Monocle

published by Pepys (Castell Brothers, London)

Each player is a secret agent undertaking a dangerous mission abroad. The game has 39 pictorial cards, a 12-page rules booklet, and the Magic Monocle itself, which is made of card with red cellophane “glass” used to de-code the secret message cards.

Photo Crime – The Crime Club Party Game

published by Pepys – TEST YOUR POWER OF OBSERVATION!

A game with photographic clues to the solution of each crime.

Krimo

by G T Storey, published by T Storey, Leeds

The 60 cards in the deck include suits of red, green, black and orange “clues” with “crime”, “alibi” and “guilty” cards, and one “guilty” and one “detective” joker, plus a rule book. The blue and black box has a padded, hinged lid.

Sexton Blake Game

by Waddy

Boxed detective card game with rule booklet.

Dennis Wheatley’s Alibi

designed by Dennis Wheatley, British author of detective & horror stories, and published by Geographia Ltd., April 1953
(find out more on Dennis Wheatley at: http://www.denniswheatley.info)

The rule book details a murder scenario: Mr. Owen Morgan is found dead, clad in pyjamas, his head battered... You are the detective, and by a process of deduction, you must find out who killed the mysterious victim.

Up to five players move painted lead detective figures around the map of Britain to look at the 32 alibi cards. The box also includes die, shaker, book of warrants and rules booklet.

Dennis Wheatley’s first game was Invasion – “Attack & Defence by Land, Sea & Air”, published in 1938 by Hutchinson & Co.. Comprising a board, rules booklet, dice & approx. 160 wooden playing pieces, it uses a stylised map of Northern Europe with fictionalised country & place names. His second game Blockade (published in 1939) has a very similar format.

And Then There Were None
by Agatha Christie

by Ideal Toys, 1968

“An Agatha Christie Mystery Game” with figures moving around a board showing the plan of a house and gardens.

Cluedo

Probably the World’s best-known crime game. Re-named “Clue” in the US, Cluedo was invented in 1946 by Anthony E. Pratt, a solicitors’ clerk from Birmingham, and published by Waddingtons Games Ltd., in Leeds.

“For more than 50 years, this mystery’s kept everyone guessing! Poor Mr. Boddy’s been murdered in his own stately home! Who could have done it? And how? And where? Was it Colonel Mustard in the Conservatory with the Revolver? Or did Miss Scarlet commit the crime in the Library with the Candlestick?
With six suspects, six possible murder weapons and nine rooms in the mansion, there are hundreds of possibilities, and plenty of clues to investigate!”