Word: whodunitism
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...money, and he was living well. The defendant was well aware of what he would get if his wife died." The prosecution's first witness was Mrs. Von Bulow's maid of 23 years, Maria Schrallhammer, an overwrought, slightly bowed woman who could have stepped out of a whodunit. Schrallhammer recounted how her mistress had slipped into a coma while Von Bulow, sitting unperturbed on the bed reading in his bathrobe and pajamas, resisted calling a doctor for nearly five hours. "I picked her up and was holding her in my arms until the doctor came," said Schrallhammer, tears brimming...
...detectives should mind their manners. Rough, tough crime fighters like NBC's Hunter won relatively few fans last fall, while CBS's civilized whodunit Murder, She Wrote, with Angela Lansbury as a sleuthing mystery writer, was a hit. Presto! CBS has given that show a Sunday-night partner in crime, Crazy Like a Fox. The surprise of Murder, She Wrote is that, for all the echoes of Agatha Christie, Lansbury is not playing Miss Marple; the irony of Crazy Like a Fox is that Jack Warden is. As a gruffly eccentric middle-aged private eye, he delights in getting...
Consider two of this month's releases. One is a science-fiction comedy with more than its share of gags, chills and good feelings. The other is an electrifying whodunit from a veteran director whose films have received 31 Oscar nominations. In a simpler world these two movies-John Sayles' The Brother from Another Planet and Norman Jewison's A Soldier's Story-would pass through the theaters with the usual benediction or indifference from critics and the public. But because the films have casts composed almost entirely of blacks, because Sayles' comedy...
...dealing in parody, self-or otherwise. Tough Guys Don't Dance is, for openers, an engaging murder mystery, vividly set in a locale (Provincetown, Mass.) that Mailer, a sometime homeowner there, knows as well as the back of his fist. The book also raises questions besides whodunit. Among them: What, if anything, does being male or female mean at this late date in the 20th century? Can the American dream survive , money and luxury? Are the outlaws t or the good guys on the side of immutable law? Mailer has, of course, discussed all of these matters before...
...meant to transform a mystery story into serious fiction, if not high art. But Moore's tricky turn leads to a conclusion of ineffable silliness, involving the improbable apparition of the Virgin Mary in California. It gives nothing essential in the plot away to disclose that in this whodunit the perpetrator...