Wednesday, September 06, 2017

Eric Brown's "Murder Take Three," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Murder Take Three: A British Country House mystery by Eric Brown.

The entry begins:
In my recently released crime mystery, Murder Take Three – the fourth book in the Langham and Dupré series, set in the mid-fifties, Donald Langham has just started work at Ralph Ryland’s detective agency, and his first client is the American movie star Suzie Reynard. Reynard and company are shooting a murder mystery film at Marling Hall, a four hundred year old Elizabethan manor house in the depths of the Norfolk countryside. She wants Langham to investigate threats made to the film’s director, Douglas Dennison, and she invites him up for the weekend to investigate. Langham thinks her worries rather nebulous, but relishes a weekend with his fiancée Maria Dupré in an old country house.

However, the break proves rather less relaxing than anticipated. He meets the cast, the director, and the owners of Marling Hall, the crippled war hero Edward Marling and his long-suffering wife Cynthia – along with his old friend the scriptwriter Terrence Ambler. Langham soon discovers that the cast and associates are seething with hatred and jealousy, and a weekend in the country soon turns into a longer stay as Suzie Reynard is found shot dead in the trailer of the director Douglas Rennison.

What follows is a murder mystery replete with intrigue, red herrings, false leads – as well as further murders – as Langham, ably assisted by his fiancée Maria Dupré and the detective Ralph Ryland, work through the convoluted clues to track down the merciless killer.

As to who might play the lead roles in the film of my book… That’s a fascinating question, and one I’ve never really considered until now.

Donald Langham is a mild-mannered, droll, pipe-smoking thriller-writer when he isn’t working part-time as a private detective. He’s tall, dark, and handsome (well, his fiancée Maria thinks so), and I can easily see Simon...[read on]
Visit Eric Brown's website.

My Book, The Movie: Murder Take Three.

--Marshal Zeringue