J.J. Murphy (1)Rezensionen

Okay.as a huge fan of Houdini, I was a little disappointed in the characterization in this book. My equally beloved harpo came through unscathed . Plot was ok, would have expected more wit from a book featuring Benchley & Parker

It’s New Year’s Eve and a big party is planned in one of the penthouse suites by Douglas Fairbank and Mary Pickford. Dorothy Parker and Alexander Wollcott and Robert Benchley, two of Dorothy’s friends from the Algonquin Table group, are planning to attend.

Shortly before the party is to begin, a guest and his family is diagnosed with smallpox and the hotel is put on lockdown – Quarantine. No one in or out! But just before the doors are locked, the young Broadway star, Bibi Bibelot, makers her “grand entrance.” Needless to say, she steals the lime light.

Being that no one can leave, Fairbanks invites any and all to come up and enjoy the party. The penthouse is really jumping, and among the guests are Harpo Marx and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

To add to the celebration, Woolcott proposes a friendly game of Murder. A game where all players draw strips of paper and the one with the strip marked Murderer pretends to kill one of the other players. The victim has to stay where the murder happens while all the others figure out who-dunnit. What a surprise when one of the guests is found dead in a bathtub full of champagne! Looks like the game became real!

Parker, Benchley and Doyle wind up tracing down leads and find there is more than murder going on; theft, deception, nuns who are aren’t who they act they are, jealousy and more. It’s the Roaring 20s and this New Year’s is roaring!

Good period piece mystery based on real New yorkers in the 20s and pro hibition

Good period piece mystery based on real New yorkers in the 20s and pro hibition

Dorothy Parker and crew are back! This time they get mixed up in the nutty world of art as a friend of their kills himself jumping of the Brooklyn Bridge, only to see his so/so art jump up in price! Their quest to find out what happened to him takes them to the den of Mickey Finn and Harry Houdini performances at the Hippodrome. A fun adventure with Parker and Benchely coming to the rescue yet again!

A nice start and good use of period details in introducing us to the various members of the Angonquin Round Table. You understand where the term "Vicious Circle" come from but you also understand that this group did support each other, somewhat. It all starts when a critic is killed and found under the famous round table at the Algonquin with a pen sticking out of his chest. Along the way we meet notables and criminals in order to get to the truth.

Dorothy Parker makes a great detective, in this case solving the murder of a Bibi Biolet who dies in a bathtub. Add Sir Author Conan Doyle to the story and you have a fun story set on New Year's Eve

Dorothy Parker is one of my favourite people. I've read a biography on her (What Fresh Hell Is This?) and enjoyed reading of her crazy, and not always happy, life and the people in her world. Seeing this on the shelf, I thought it might be a fun read.

There is a touch of the screwball in this murder mystery. The corpse is a fellow writer who is found dead under the Round Table at the Algonquin. The weapon? What else? A fountain pen. The top suspect is the newly arrived Mr. Dachshund from Mississippi, whose real name is William Faulkner.

This is a madcap mystery, with Alexander Woolcott, Robert Sherwood, Robert Benchley and his quips, and other well know Algonquin Round Table members contributing in keeping just a step ahead of the police in keeping Mr. Dachshund free, finding clues and keeping their tea cups filled with their favourite, if not illegal, beverage. It isn't a super serious read, but it is fun and entertaining.

BTW - murder your darlings is a phrase from the world of writing and editing it seems...

The Algonquin Round Table was a literary salon that met in the Algonquin Hotel in New York in the 1920s, bringing together some of the great writers in that time and place, more specifically, Dorothy Parker and Peter Benchley, but also including Harold Ross, Robert Sherwood and Alexander Woollcott. The conceit here is that Parker and Benchley become amateur detectives in the Thin Man tradition solving crimes of an artistic bent. These writers were wits of the highest order and the author tries to inject some of that bon mots humour into the novel, with some, but not complete, success.

Murphy describes the 1920s New York world well and squeezes in several references to historical people, places and events. What is missing here, I think, is the acid burn of the original writers. They were funny with their puns and speedy retorts, but the real laughs came with an edge of maliciousness and Murphy does not deliver on that.

The plot is fairly standard with a nice twist half way through, but peters out after that as too much of the book is concerned with tying up loose ends and the sub-plots do not compensate for that.

This second volume in the series was OK, a very light read. Naming a main character in a mystery Ernie McGuffin made one part of it very easy to guess. At least the mystery took another turn after that, though not an unexpected one, that was harder to solve.

Fun period mystery. Lots of name dropping, but that goes with the book's concept - making famous historical figures the mystery solvers. Reasonable attempts at using the styles of the authors involved, but got to be too cute after a while. One glaring error threw me right out of the setting each time it happened - no one in the 1920's (or any time before the 1970s) would be addressed as Ms.

Best of the series so far, though I picked up one obvious clue early on that characters from that time period really would have understood and they actively talked about not knowing what it meant.

A very short story that's one of the mysteries that really isn't - who took the veal? Suddenly solved by our intrepid, clever protagonist Ms. Dorothy Parker. It's a fun, short read but it isn't in any way taxing as there really isn't any point trying to solve the mystery - no clues, no real suspects. Still worth a read if you can get it for free.

I was really looking forward to this one, but I didn't enjoy it as much as I thought I would. The writing seemed a bit manic to me, as if it were more important to the author to pack in the witticisms (which were really good, btw) than it was to write a thoughtful story. The result felt a bit shallow to me - more shallow than the time/place called for. I didn't hate the book, but I found myself skimming over enough of it that I'm not sure if I'll read the next one or not. Will depend on the size of my TBR pile I suppose. :)

I wasn't sure about picking this book up, since I thought the first one was only so-so, and You Might as Well Die languished on my TBR for some months before desperation for something to read forced me to pick it up. I'm glad I did. I won't say I loved it, but it was a much stronger effort and I enjoyed the story quite a bit. The book held my attention, it had a nice pace, not an overabundance of introspection, and engaging characters (the croquet was cracking me up!).

All in all a good story and I'll definitely keep my eye out for the third book.

Such a fun book to read. The banter between the famous authors makes it almost worth the read by itself. The plot is a good one. For a very, very "serious" mystery reader - this may not be the book for you.

This is the second book in the punny and funny An Algonquin Round Table Mystery series. Many of the characters and the Algonquin room are real, but the story itself is fiction. Not a page goes by that there isn't a pun or the reader won't chuckle.

Dorothy Parker has the dubious honor of being selected by Ernie MacGuffin, an artist of covers for pulp magazines, to what turns out to be his suicide note. Parker and and Benchley, shortly before midnight, are leaving their favorite speakeasy when Parker remembers the note. She reads the note, only to find out that Ernie is going to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge at midnight. They make a dash for the bridge, but arrive there to find Ernie's shoes and a painting of the bridge. But a body is never found.

Trying to find out more about the life of Ernie to write a story, Dorothy comes a former stripper who claims to have had contact with Ernie from the other side. The Great Houdini is in town and he is talked into attending a seance with Dorothy. Of course they find that Ernie is not really dead, but only working a scam to make his paintings valuable. In the meantime, it is also learned that Ernie's widow is seeing someone from her hometown. Then Ernie's body is found, but he has been murdered.

So, Dorothy and Benchley need to learn whether it was the wife, the shady lawyer who was running his own scam with Ernie's paintings after the apparent suicide,or possibly the new boyfriend.

A thoroughly enjoyable story with very interesting characters.

Looking forward to the next punny one.

A Friendly Game Of Murder is the third book in the An Algonquin Round Table Mystery series.

I'll admit that when I started the first book it took me a little while to appreciate all the one liners and double meanings that go on, for the most part, between Dorothy Parker and Robert Benchley. This series will give you a chuckle or laugh on just about every page.

It's New Years Eve at the Algonquin Hotel and Alexander Woollcott is trying to get everyone interested in the game of Murder that they usually play. Before they can get started Dr. Hurst, a guest, announces that there is a case of smallpox at the Algonquin and the hotel is put under quarantine. Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford then invite all the guest to their penthouse to party hearty until the end of the quarantine. As the party is beginning to get underway, Bibi Bibelot, sheds her silver fox coat and doesn't have stitch on. She heads for the bathroom and order for champagne to be brought so she could take a bath and invited everyone to watch. The one thing she did have on was a silver locket, which Dorothy saw Dr. Hurst hand to Fairbanks when they first got to the penthouse. Then Dorothy hears a heated argument between Dr. Hurst and Bibi. Soon after Dorothy goes to check on Bibi and finds her dead in the bathtub with no real apparent injuries. And it is a locked room mystery, as the door is locked and a bath towel is up against the door on the inside. It is also a locked hotel mystery, too. And the "valuable" silver locket is missing also.

With the help of friends from "The Table", Woollcott thinks of him self as a detective, but this time they Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to help. Dorothy adoringly calls him Artie. Only Dorothy would do that.

If you are looking for a lot of quick one liners and a few come backs, this the series to check out. Never a dull moment when you are sitting around the Algonquin Round Table.

One example of the humor: Dorothy and Benchley are riding in the elevator with Sir Arthur and Benchley asks Dorothy what school she attended, she quips back--Elementary, my dear Benchley, Elementary.

Love the humor in this series and certainly looking forward to the next book.

"Fresh Meat" by Katrina Niidas Holm for Criminal Element

I confess – after I’ve closed the cover on a book, the details don’t stay with me for all that long. After a month or so has passed, I’ve probably forgotten all but the broadest strokes of the plot, and I likely couldn’t tell you who died or whodunit if you put a gun to my head.

One thing I do tend to remember, however, is a strong sense of atmosphere. For me, there are some books that take place in a world so fully realized that I actually grow nostalgic for it when I’m away; I find myself hankering to be surrounded by its sights, scents, sounds, and people.

Author J.J. Murphy created such a place when he wrote his first Algonquin Round Table Mystery, Murder Your Darlings, and I’ve been itching for a return visit ever since. And now, thanks to the December release of Murphy’s latest, You Might as Well Die, I finally have my wish.

(Read the rest at http://www.criminalelement.com/blogs/2011/12/fresh-meat-jj-murphys-you-might-as-... )

The first book in a new series starring Dorothy Parker–when a rival theater critic is found dead under the Algonquin Round Table right before lunch, all of the members of the Vicious Circle become suspects while Parker and her close friend try to solve the mystery. Tone and voice close to Parker with puns and repartee.

Dorothy Parker is famous for her elegant quips, biting wit, and copious consumption of alcohol, but this novel also imagines her as an amateur sleuth. When Dorothy shows up at the Algonquin for lunch with her fellow literati, she sees a man's feet sticking out from under the Round Table. But he's not dead drunk, as Dorothy first assumes -- just dead. Dorothy and her friends soon learn that the corpse is Leland Mayflower, a famous critic with many professional rivals. The police are intent on arresting a shy young Mississippi writer named Billy Faulkner, but Dorothy thinks they've got the wrong man. Along with Robert Benchley and the rest of the Algonquin's "vicious circle," Dorothy sets out to find the real killer, tossing off jokes and martinis with equal speed along the way.

I don't know too terribly much about Dorothy Parker, but when I saw the premise of this book, I knew I had to check it out. It's an extremely fun read, mostly because of the rapid-fire dialogue between Dorothy and her literary friends. I especially loved Robert Benchley's character, whom I pictured as a slightly more intelligent Bertie Wooster. The mystery itself is definitely secondary to the setting and all of the famous characters, but it's still well-plotted. My only complaint is that the ending dragged on for too long. After the guilty party's identity is revealed, there are several more chapters in which Dorothy, the police, and a mob boss all chase the murderer around New York City. It got a bit tedious for me; I don't enjoy a long denouement once the villain is unmasked. But overall I enjoyed this book a lot, and it's inspired me to finally read some Dorothy Parker!

Absolute fun! A series that Parker would be happy to be in.½