Word: whodunitism
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...Whodunit? Who cares...
Even Even before before reporting reporting began for this week's cover story on television's whodunit hit Dallas, two TIME staff members knew the show intimately. Correspondent James Willwerth prepared for his interviews with Dallas producers, writers and actors - including Larry Hagman, who plays Star Villain J.R. Ewing - by sitting through hours of screenings. "I attempted to list which of the seven deadly sins, Ten Commandments and miscellaneous Freudian nightmares were depicted," says Will werth, "but I bogged down after anger, envy, lust, avarice, adultery, coveting thy neighbor's wife and worshiping false idols." Associate Editor...
...hardly matters. The Dallas phenomenon stems from something more complex than an interest in whodunit. If J.R. Ewing had not committed himself to a life of stylish wickedness-and if the part did not fit Hagman like an iron whip in a velvet glove-few viewers would care that he was near death or trouble themselves to ponder the assailant's identity. If the scheming scion of Ewing Oil were not surrounded by a nest of relatives, all pursuing their venal and venereal desires through a plot delirious in its complexity, he would be perceived as a cartoon villain...
...cowboy lover, Dusty, a 6 to 4 favorite even though he is presumed dead in a plane crash. With six other likely suspects, Dallas' producers are filming different versions of the attack. The world must wait until about next season's third episode to learn whodunit...
This is the stuff that sells for seven figures in paperback. But the book's commercial value is an added bonus, not something for "serious readers" to turn up their noses at. Thompsons' latest work is psychobiography, whodunit and courtroom drama tied into one, and fused by the enigmatic Sobhraj. The author says he is now at work on his first novel. One can only hope his imagination yields a subject as gripping as the real world...