Homicide for the Holidays

As I write this, Thanksgiving is a recent memory and Christmas a (relatively) distant event. It hasn’t even snowed yet in an unseasonably warm city. This is my last blog post, and my thanks to MWA-NY for the opportunity to expound on a few favorite subjects. I hope I’ll see you at the Winter Revels on December 2. The Lee Child and Mother Reunion is only a motion away . . .

But seriously, folks . . .

Sleuth is one of my favorite plays, and its author, Anthony Shaffer, is someone I dearly wish I’d had the opportunity to meet. His memoir So What Did You Expect? is a fascinating-if-slapdash look at a life of plays, movies, practical jokes, and a great deal of whiskey. One of my favorite sections of the book (which I must have read four or five times by now; I take it off the shelf every couple of years) shows that even Shaffer, an acknowledged master of the mystery play, hit a rough patch now and again. We’ve all gone through our own agonies in realizing our work, and it was heartening to know that Shaffer had, too.He left a lucrative job in the advertising world to write a play. And he’d made progress.

But there was a fly, shall we say, in the ointment:

After a month of busy scribbling I’d completed the first act. Upon reading it through, I realized that I’d written the most threadbare, hackneyed, overused format known to the West End—a marital quartet consisting of husband, wife, mistress and lover. Was this what I had left my business for in such a blaze of courage and saluting trumpets?

Gloomily I contemplated the manuscript, wondering what to do next. Throw it in the fire and return to my company seemed the likeliest answer. A view from the very bottom of the barrel is the perspective of desperation, and it often generates enlightenment. Thus it was at this moment my eye happened to fall on a coffee-table book of Greek temples. Idly turning the pages, I came to notice that as time passed the Greeks gradually reduced the number of columns on which the roof and architraves rested, and that as a result of having fewer visible means of support the structure appeared mightier and more impressive. The conclusion was easy to draw.

What did I need with the routine sexpot mistress, with her endless double entendres, or the equally routine wife, with her endless nagging and tart put-downs. With infinite relief I removed both of them at one stroke, and also for good measure killed off at the end of the first act the lover, thus leaving myself with only one character with whom to complete the entire second act!

Now, those of you who’ve seen Sleuth know what Shaffer did with his second act. For those of you who haven’t seen it, I won’t spill the beans—I’ll merely urge you to read the play or watch the film version with Laurence Olivier and Michael Caine. Suffice it to say, Sleuth is one of the greatest of all mystery plays, and it’s a source of hope and help in difficult moments to know that Anthony Shaffer went through the same kind of hell writing it as we mere mortals do.

One final thought on the mystery play. If you believe, as I do, that the Best Play category is alive and well and deserving of consideration come Edgar Award time, let MWA National know how you feel.

Once again, my thanks to MWA-NY for the chance to express a few opinions and speak about some of the people and works I admire. My best wishes to you all for a happy holiday season and a pleasant, productive, and profitable New Year.

Onward and upward with the art of the mystery!

—Joseph Goodrich

Joseph Goodrich brought Nero Wolfe to the stage for the first time in his adaptation of The Red Box, which was produced by Park Square Theater, Saint Paul, MN, in 2014. His second Wolfe adaptation is scheduled to open at Park Square in the summer of 2017.