Tag: Sleuth
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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: Sleuth (1972)
With a week to go before Prime Stage Theatre lifts the curtain on my new mystery series A Knavish Piece of Mystery, I thought it might be fun to look back at the plays, films, and stories that first got me interested in mysteries. I don’t intend this to be a definitive list of the…