Monday, September 8, 2014

The Last Murder Mystery You'll Ever Need

How impractical would it be to get Angela Lansbury, Tony Shalhoub, David Suchet, Emily Deschanel and Benedict Cumberbatch to star in an Expendables-esque murder mystery*? Each playing peculiar and familiar personalities, if not necessarily named "Monk" and "Bones." I promise this isn't an excuse to have an 88-year-old Lansbury hit on Big Ben Cumberbatch, though it is an ulterior motive. No, all the detectives are on the same case to clear their names, because they are the suspects of the same locked-room murder.

Thus each will be suspicious of the others, and some directly investigating their competition. Poirot suspects Monk’s phobias are a façade that would let him get away with it; Lansbury finds Deschanel suspiciously sanguine about the whole thing. But Lansbury was a mystery novelist; could she have cooked up a murder?

Whodunnit? That would spoil the fun. But the victim is most certainly their host: a butler played by Tim Curry.



*Yes, very impractical. I know.

11 comments:

  1. It sounds like a lot of fun. Which is probably quite the wrong thing to say about murder. But true.

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    1. We have a lot of murder in fiction to enjoy if we so choose. It's one of the weird things about make-believe.

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  2. Love that idea! I'd definitely tune in.

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  3. Sort of like an updated "Murder By Death"?
    http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi3809412889/

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    1. Seems so! I didn't know of this movie, but now I want to track it down. Score one for ignorance.

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    2. I saw it many years ago, and we watched it recently. It helps if you are really familiar with Sam Spade, Charlie Chan, Nick & Nora Charles, and Hercule Poirot and their associated quirks/tropes. If not, the jokes fall a bit flat.

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  4. Can't have Cumberbatch without Freeman. Just can't. And yeah, it is all rather Murder by Death, but that was lots of fun, so hey. Wonder who would be Truman Capote?

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    1. I'm happy to have Martin Freeman in anything I make.

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  5. That sounds like it'd be a blast. Can you imagine the twists and turns?

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  6. If you have Emily Deschanel you should also have David Boreanaz!
    PS: Murder By Death was a terrific movie w/a stellar cast. It's on Netflix but only on disc.

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