A review by kittykornerlibrarian
Ten Dead Comedians: A Murder Mystery by Fred Van Lente

2.0

I read this because I was curious. My curiosity is now satisfied, so that's all to the good. This mystery was well-executed and suspenseful; I couldn't go to bed last night without finishing it first. My overall reaction after finishing it is that it's a slick, shallow, and heartless performance. It probably doesn't help that I don't enjoy watching stand-up comics. They come across as slightly desperate and a little pathetic and anxious. This book was kind of like that. I would have hoped that the artifice of the closed-door murder mystery and the outrageous quality of the comedy would have come together in a more effective way, but each seemed to detract from the other. And since I've apparently got to mention Agatha Christie's famous And Then There Were None, I would class this as a less dignified rendition, and I think it was a mistake both to enmesh the confession into the plot and to leave survivors. I'm looking for nothing but a pile of dead bodies and the murderer's confession at the end of a locked-door murder mystery. I'd be interested to see what this writer would do with character and dialogue in a less artificial setting and with less forced humor. Maybe.