A game you can't refuse

Last Thursday night, despite getting on my knees and begging hysterically, I was "lynched" by a group of my closest friends (including my husband), and "murdered" most horribly. We had only just finished dinner.

Welcome to the vicious world of Mafia, a merciless game of double bluff, murder and deceit, which has proved a massive hit in New York and is now heading across the Atlantic. A Russian psychologist claims to have invented it in the Eighties to show how an informed minority (the "mafia") can defeat an uninformed majority.

It's Murder in the Dark for grown-ups. There's no board, cards, money or dressing up, and alcohol is more a hindrance than a help. In fact, holding a Mafia party is the perfect way to inject excitement into a dreary January.

In America, hundreds of websites are devoted to the game. In New York, the literati are obsessed. Authors such as Rick Moody (The Ice Storm and Wonderboys) and editors from Vanity Fair and The New Yorker, gather every Friday to pit themselves against one another. At Princeton and Harvard it has become a cult.

The rules are simple, but you'll need complex psychological tactics to win. It is best played among friends. Three people are the mafia and everyone else has to discover their identity by taking it in turns to guess which player is telling the truth. Those who have the best verbal skills will win. It's all about betraying your nearest and dearest to save yourself.

The game moves between imaginary nights and days: at night the mafia will strike and one person will die; when morning breaks, the rest must wheedle out the killers, while the mafia will secretly attempt to sway everyone against one another.

I invited over 13 friends, including two actors, whom I worried would have an unfair advantage. Within an hour my civilised group had turned into screaming harpies. I took my murder very personally indeed.

My friends, wrongly assuming I was part of the mafia, turned on me, chanting "guilty, guilty, guilty". In an attempt to save my skin, I wailed: "I am the hostess, the provider of food and drink, doesn't that count for anything?" Clearly not. I was sentenced to death and had to spend the next 30 minutes watching in silent fury as the real mafia members - my sister, a young mum and the best man at my wedding - smiled as they dispensed with nine more players.

Those I thought incapable of guile turned out to be expert liars; the men relished acting out Godfather fantasies, but the girls were the most vicious, especially against one another. Family ties meant nothing; one husband failed three games in a row to spot that his wife was the killer.

My sister tried to kill me twice. We're still hardly speaking. We played four games in all, ending our night, hoarse from shouting and exhausted, at 1am. I had been murdered four times.

There are plans for a rematch this weekend ... some of us want the chance to get revenge.