It is for me, at any rate.
In past entries for the MWA-NY blog I’ve written about the mystery play. I’d like to return briefly to the subject — briefly, for the best of reasons: I’ve got a play to finish.
Might As Well Be Dead, my second adaptation of one of Rex Stout’s tales featuring the heavyweight detective Nero Wolfe, will be produced next year at Park Square Theater in Saint Paul, Minnesota. I’ve spent a good portion of the summer working on the script; the goal is a complete draft by the end of the month.
Turning a book into a play involves the deepest kind of study and sympathetic magic. One becomes a literary safecracker, seeking the combination to unlock a book’s secrets and transpose them into another medium. A successful work of art is like a successful crime; it is an accomplished fact, something as beautifully constructed and functional as a Chase Manhattan bank vault.
Apart from a number of aesthetic and pragmatic factors, an event earlier this year plays a part in how I’m approaching the process of adaptation.
It started with a piece of mail from the Queens County judicial system.
I’d been summoned for jury duty. It’s a task few look forward to, but it had its benefits. Apart from the princely sum of 40 dollars a day, I’d get a first-hand look at the legal system — and a trial plays a small but not insignificant part in Might As Well Be Dead.
This was research, in a way, for the adaptation and maybe even a short story or two. The trial had its moments of sadness and its unexpectedly comic moments — when the court reporter’s necklace got caught in her keyboard, and a witness had to pause in his testimony until the court reporter had been freed. Most importantly, the trial vividly illustrated the fact that our actions, criminal and otherwise, have consequences.
Something very important was at stake in that courtroom: a man’s freedom. As one of the jurors, I played a direct part in making decisions that could seriously affect not only his present, but his future as well.
Mysteries tell us that time is on the wing, death is inevitable, and life is precious beyond belief. It’s at the heart of every mystery — every piece of writing, really — whether it’s a cozy set in a charming English village or a hard-boiled tale set in a blood-spattered, low-rent Hollywood hotel.
Or a brownstone building on West 35th Street.
Which is where I came in.
I hope to see you at the party on August 11 with the Horror Writers and Romance Writers at Le Poisson Rouge. Now, let’s see. Archie Goodwin was on the phone, Wolfe was at his desk, and . . .
— Joseph Goodrich
Joseph Goodrich is the author of South of Sunset: Nine Plays and “Incident on Clinton Street,” which appears in the January/February 2016 issue of Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine.