Show Business is Murder

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“THE PLAY’S THE thing wherein we’ll catch the conscience of the king.”

Hamlet was playing detective and using show business, a troupe of traveling players, in an attempt to get the killer to give himself away. Hamlet, being Hamlet, can’t resist the urge to step in and tell the actors how to do their job.

Shakespeare was not the first to use a show business/mystery tie-in. Hamlet wasn’t the first would-be show business detective.

But he may have been the first truly famous one created by a major author. Excuse me, the major author in the English language, if we ignore George Bernard Shaw’s somewhat disingenuous dismissal of the bard.

But I digress.

The icons of mystery fiction have always been drawn to show business. An actress took in Sherlock. Poirot was constantly running into theater people. Dorothy Sayers wrote a novel about murder in a publishing house.

It’s hard to think of a mystery novelist who wrote more than five books who wasn’t drawn to show business.

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