Henry Keating. Murder by Death (1976) 189
pp. [pbo]
Novelization of the motion picture screenplay written by Neil Simon
and filmed by Robert Moore, starring Eileen Brennan, Truman Capote, James
Coco, Peter Falk, Alec Guinness, Elsa Lanchester, David Niven, Peter Sellers,
Maggie Smith, Nancy Walker, and Estelle Winwood. In this murder mystery
spoof, the enigmatic, eccentric, and fabulously wealthy Lionel Twain, frustrated
by the predictability and implausibility of the mystery novels he devours,
invites the world’s five greatest living detectives to his San Francisco
mansion for dinner—and a murder. The detectives are thinly disguised pastiches
of some of literature’s most famous sleuths: Sidney Wang (Charlie Chan),
Milo Perrier (Hercule Poirot), Dick and Dora Charleston (Nick and Nora
Charles), Miss Marbles (Miss Marple), and San Francisco’s hard-boiled P.I.
Sam Diamond (Sam Spade). Since all of the action takes place inside Twain’s
spooky mansion, there is really no need to set the story specifically in
San Francisco, except, perhaps for the fog:
“Fog everywhere. Fog down in San Francisco
Bay where it flowed past Goat Island and Angel Island and Alcatraz. Fog
in the streets where it rolled defiled among the blocks of high-rises and
the curbside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city. Fog in Chinatown,
fog on Nob Hill. Fog creeping into the cabins of the cable cars, fog lying
up on the roofs and hovering in the TV aerials of tall buildings; fog drooping
on the signboards of restaurants and nightclubs. Fog in the eyes and throats
of ancient waterfront hookers, wheezing by the screens of their TV sets;
fog in the stem and bowl of the evening pipe of the dreamy addict, down
in his close cellar; fog cruelly pinching the toes and fingers of his shivering
little girl friend on her way to the liquor store. Chance people on the
Golden Gate Bridge peered from their cars into a sky of fog underneath
them, with fog all around them, as if they were in a helicopter and hovering
in the mist clouds.
The raw evening was at its rawest, though, and the
dense fog was at its densest near those high old Victorian piles that dot
either side of Lola Lane out in the remote countryside. [?] And No. 22
Lola Lane was at the very heart of the fog.”