Tag: A Knavish Piece of Mystery
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Countdown to Mystery: Locked Doors
A woman enters a room. Closes the door. Then, from inside, a voice cries “Murder!” When her father breaks down the door, he finds her bleeding on the floor. She is alone. The windows are barred. There is no other exit. Yet the perpetrator is gone! And so begins The Mystery of the Yellow Room…
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Countdown to Mystery: Zero Effect
Some of the greatest detectives don’t work alone. Think of Holmes and Watson, Cagney and Lacey, Batman and Robin. You get the idea. Among the most interesting pairings are Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin, from the series that the members of Bouchercon (the World Mystery Convention) nominated as the “Best Mystery Series of…
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Countdown to Mystery: The Last of Shelia
One strategy for writing an effective mystery: plot backward. Determine the ending, build from there. I’ve heard that’s the strategy employed by actor Anthony Perkins (Murder in the Orient Express, Psycho) and Broadway composer Stephen Sondheim (A Little Night Music, West Side Story) in writing their only produced screenplay – the intricately plotted who-done-it The…
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Countdown to Mystery:
Murder on the Orient ExpressWe’re counting down to Prime Stage Theatre’s release of A Knavish Piece of Mystery, the first installment in a roster of virtual programming running this fall on Prime Online. The series has been generating good press in the past few days, with preview stories appearing on Local Pittsburgh and Trib Live. And I understand there…
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Countdown to Mystery: Deathtrap
In our previous installment, I mentioned the meta-aspects of Anthony Shaffer’s Sleuth – a cat-and-mouse thriller about a writer who turns his estate into an interactive mystery in an effort to ensnare the man who’s been sleeping with his wife. Today’s recommendation is Deathtrap (1982), and this time the story centers on playwright Sidney Bruhl…
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Upcoming Events at Prime Stage Theatre:
Mystery, Monsters, and More …This site has been quiet for a while. Things have been busy, what with dodging the microscopic shrapnel of World War C. Through it all, I’ve been doing my best to learn from the examples set by writers who lived through past epidemics – Sherwood Anderson, Beatrix Potter, and W.E.B. Du Bois (all of whom…