Simon Shaw is an actor turned author and journalist. After a dozen or so years in theater, he released his first book about Philip Fletcher, an aging thespian convinced of his consummate acting prowess and disgusted with producers that overlook him. He helped his career along with a spot of murder and learned that crime does indeed pay. With this new skill at his disposal, he feels ever more ready to tackle the world.
In his third book Dead for a Ducat (St. Martins Press, 1996) Fletcher is scraping the bottom of the proverbial barrel. His reliance on alcohol has gotten out of hand and no one wants to employ a drunk. His agent calls about a film by a producer neither of them have heard of but Fletcher is desperate for work and he signs up for an outrageous amount of money.
The script is unworkable, the director pops pills indiscriminately, the headliner of the film is the latest pop star, and the leading lady brought her insanely jealous husband with her. Fletcher’s experienced nose smells disaster but he needs the money so he is his most professional self on the film site every day.
He’s prepared to cope with it all until a series of accidents occurs on the set, and he narrowly escapes serious injury each time. He can accept one accident but not more than that and he begins to look more closely at the people around him with surprising and informative results.
This series cropped up in a Facebook discussion thread about funny mysteries, and it most definitely is. It is savagely, darkly comic about the acting world and its residents. Somehow I feel that Shaw is paying off old scores when he describes the lunacy of the director and the incompetence of the scriptwriter. It’s no wonder he gave up acting, people were probably afraid they would appear in one of his books if they worked with him.
On the other hand, it was quite charming of him to point out that the success of productions generally rests on the backs of those behind the scenes, the assistant this and the deputy that. It is so very true.
While the initial chapters were no doubt meant to be as funny as the rest of the book, I did not find them so, as they dealt largely with the results of his drunken sprees. Drunks are not amusing to me. They did introduce a key character, a budding juvenile delinquent who decides he wants to be an actor. His scenes with Fletcher are among the best in the book.
I do not know why I have not heard about this series before. It is not especially old and certainly should have been nominated for a Lefty award at Left Coast Crime at least. At any rate I am hurrying to make up for this deficiency in my reading. I strongly recommend that fans of theatrical mysteries and of hilariously funny mysteries and of well-plotted mysteries do the same.