Outside the Steiger Haus Bed and Breakfast, the cobblestone streets of St. Genevieve, Missouri, are silent. Late afternoon sunlight filters through lace curtains onto hardwood floors, illuminating an antique buffet and several bright landscape paintings.

The stillness is broken as the door opens and a small crowd of people filter in, filling the front room and moving back into a dining area with separate groups of tables and chairs. Dave Thompson, one of the first to enter into the sunlit sitting room, laughs and gestures to the staff, saying, “I’ll give someone 100 bucks to tell me who done it.” A few mysterious smiles light in response, but no one can answer.

Within the next few hours, he and the other guests at the bed and breakfast will take on different personas, enact a fictional art auction and witness deception, drugs and murder. By lunchtime the next day, they will have explained it all.

For the last 18 years, more than 55,000 guests from around the world have taken part in one of more than 72 murder mysteries written by the owner of Steiger Haus, Rob Beckerman, who writes under the alias J. Masterson.

Beckerman, who grew up in the original Steiger Haus location (at its peak, the murder mysteries were run out of three separate houses), converted the house into a bed and breakfast and was searching for a way to increase winter reservations when he heard of another hotel running murder mysteries for guests. So he wrote a mystery and tried it.