A great early release by Lubor Fiedler, he sold these in bulk to a magic historian in Germany when he got out of being a magic dealer and focusing on third party projects, like his releases thru Tenyo.
Three members of the audience are asked to assist in solving a criminal mystery.
Five cards are introduced on which one of the possible murder weapons are displayed, a knife, gun, rope, poison & ax. The cards are placed face-up on the table.
Next three cards are introduced which will assign a specific role to each of the three spectator: Victim, Witness & Perpetrator. The cards are turned face down and shuffled and each of the spectators selects one of them without telling you or anybody which one they have selected.
Lastly each of the three spectators is assigned yet another card which has specific instructions on which weapon they should choose depending of their role. While the performers back is turned each of the three takes his murder weapon of choice and then places his cards face down on the table (or puts them away in his pocket).
The magician turns around and now acts as a detective to find the truth about the mystery.
He brings out a small notebook and starts questioning the witnesses (as none is yet identified as the murderer).
This can be done in a funny or serious way depending on your style.
In the course of the interview you determine that all three of them carry weapons. You determine which weapons the three carry and finally determine who is the witness, perpetrator and victim.
This idea from Lubor Fiedler is easy to perform. We supply a copy of the original German instructions and an English translation for the use of the buyer. We also supply the set of the original cards as supplied by Lubor and have recreated the language specific cards in English.
The beauty of this routine is that it can be performed for audiences as small as three people up to large scale performances. The basic principle can be adopted to many different routines.