Whodunit fans awaiting the next mystery might get a charge out of the first-a whotookit.
”The Moonstone,” written in 1868 by Wilkie Collins, is said to be the first English detective novel. It features the ominous but dogged Police Sgt. Cuff, who investigates the disappearance of a magnificent diamond.
Collins, a friend and collaborator of Charles Dickens, used a 24-carat literary device. The story is told from the vantage points of 10 characters, none of whom knows the whole story. Thus, we reach a surprise ending without any of the characters having lied or withheld information.
Telling the story in many voices makes a long audio presentation interesting, as is the case with the recent Recorded Books release (22 hours, $19.50 rental, $94.95 sale). Patrick Tull is wonderful as Betteredge, the lovably flummoxed and irrepressible servant. He`s followed by a prim, supercilious Miss Clack, described as a ”rampaging spinster” and portrayed by Davina Porter. Other readers are Ian Stuart, Neil Hunt, Frank Muller, Al-exander Spencer, Michael Sinclair, Nelson Runger, Norman Dietz and Michael M. Thompson.
”The Moonstone” includes everything you might expect in a Victorian novel. It opens exotically, with a British officer stealing a huge, mystical diamond from a Hindu shrine in India. His conduct results in his being banished from his family, but he bequeaths the gem to his rosebud of a niece, Rachel, the love interest. The night she gets the diamond, it`s stolen again. Everyone thinks the culprits are a mysterious group of Brahmans who have pledged to recover their property, but things are hardly that simple.
Another recent audio mystery release is Simon Brett`s ”A Shock to the System” (12 hours, $24.95), read by Tom Teti for Dercum. This one involves not theft, but murder, and Dercum is right on target with the timing: The movie version, starring Michael Caine and Swoosie Kurtz, is due this spring.
Kurtz has told reporters that the film would be a black comedy or a psychological thriller-it was shot both ways, with three endings, and the final decision was to made in the editing. My vote is for comedy. Brett, a popular British author, specializes in comic mysteries, and ”A Shock to the System,” supposedly an attempt at a more serious thriller, never quite seems to make it over the fence.
For Graham Marshall, the main character, life has meant success after success-Teti punctuates the word with ironic emphasis each time he reads it-until he`s passed over for a promotion. In a drunken fit of fury, Marshall murders a beggar on an otherwise empty street. Inflamed with power when he gets away with it-he now has a new area in which to chalk up ”successes”-
Marshall then targets his wife, his boss and so on.
This is a despicable person, one with neither heart nor soul. In narrating the book, Teti gives the characters a wide berth, reading from a distance and with a raised eyebrow, as if to say, ”You won`t believe what he`s going to do now.”
But no matter how fine the reading, it`s hard to stay interested when you don`t like any of the characters. However, imagining a Graham Marshall transmogrified by Michael Caine into an antihero of comic proportions makes it more palatable.
– Gilda Radner`s reading of her autobiography, ”It`s Always Something”
(Simon & Schuster), won the spoken-word Grammy award two weeks ago. Also nominated were ”I Want to Grow Hair, I Want to Grow Up, I Want to Go to Boise,” read by author Erma Bombeck (Caedmon); ”All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten,” read by author Robert Fulghum (Random House); ”Sir John Gielgud Reads Alice in Wonderland” (a compact disc from Nimbus Records), and ”The War of the Worlds 50th Anniversary Production,” starring Jason Robards, Steve Allen, Douglas Edwards and others (Other World Media).
