Who doesn’t love to spend the occasional late-winter weekend afternoon curled up with a good Agatha Christie or a couple of taped episodes of Law and Order … or maybe Conan Doyle’s “Adventure of the Speckled Band”? Take your passion for suspense, and for Sherlock Holmes in particular, to the streets – of Cape May. Twice a year, the Mid-Atlantic Center for the Arts stages its Victorian Holmes Weekend, in which guests, who stay at a handful of participating seaside Victorian inns, solve a carefully scripted whodunit alongside actors portraying Holmes and Dr. Watson. Participants are encouraged to suit up in Victorian gear (and be judged by a period-fashion designer), creating what is undoubtedly the highest concentration of deerstalkers, meerschaum pipes, and inverness capes ever to be found in southern Jersey. Follow the duo in and out of neighboring inns grilling witnesses, inspecting crime scenes, and combing the charmingly gaslit streets for clues before inevitably solving the mystery and putting Scotland Yard to shame.
DETAILS Mid-Atlantic Center for the Arts (800-275-4278; $105 per couple, including performances and lunch); call for a list of participating inns.