Die Laughing [Hardcover]

Steve Allen (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 1998

TV's Renaissance man Steve Allen is back on the boards, once again playing host to an all-star comedy line-up. The funeral for Benny Whipple, the 93-year-old veteran of vaudeville, radio, stage, and screen, has attracted every comedy superstar in Hollywood. But just as Benny is being laid to rest, Steve Allen and Jayne Meadows discover slapstick king Terry Parker stabbed in the back in a mausoleum Print publicity.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Shortly after the funeral of a 93-year-old comedy veteran, Steve Allen and wife Jayne Meadows discover another comedy giant stabbed to death in a mausoleum. So begins a breezy new Hollywood "investigation." For most collections.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

The indefatigable Allen presents his forty-sixth book, and remarkably, the fresh and funny tale shows no signs that the author might be slipping a bit. Starring Allen himself and wife Jayne as amateur sleuths, the tale begins with octogenarian comic Benny Hartman making a deathbed request to Steve--organize an awards ceremony to honor the funniest person in the world, with a million dollars from Benny as the ultimate prize. Then Benny dies, and at his funeral, another comic is killed--but not before delivering a mysterious clue to Steve. Of course, Steve and Jayne can't leave the mystery alone. More murders, a resurrection, a fire, a kidnapping, a scam, and a scandal keep the sleuthing duo on their toes as they try to discover how all the pieces fit together. Allen has deftly crafted an original, intelligent, charming, lively, and suspenseful mystery. The story will fill Hollywood buffs with nostalgia and keep even the cleverest reader guessing. Emily Melton

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 300 pages
• Publisher: Kensington (January 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1575662418
• ISBN-13: 978-1575662411
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.8 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,691,373 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Steve Allen Delights Again As A Real Sleuth, July 26, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Die Laughing (Paperback)

Steve Allen is an extraordinary man. His achievements in television comedy, educational tv, and songwriting have made him a hou sehold name and presence to millions. His mystery series, the latest being "Die Laughing", revolve around himself,or at least the conceit that the real Steverino, his wife Jayne Meadows and other real people are involved in solving murders which just happen to take place when he's around. In "Die Laughing", Steve is called to the bedside of a dying comic great who makes Steve promise to emcee a one-time awards ceremony with the "funniest Person Alive" to receive $1 million to be paid from the dying comedian's estate. The elderly comic dies and before a few pages have passed several famous comedians are found stabbed to death . All the knives used turn out to have come from an expensive set of cutlery given to the now dead comic great by,surprise, Mr. and Mrs. Steve Allen many years earlier. The denouement, as in all Allen's novels turns out to be both complicated and fascinating. The charm of this and the other books is not really the mystery. It's Steve's comments on society and culture,fame,politics,food and just about anything else that gets into the story.

Having been a Steve Allen fan for many years, I find these mysteries a charming way to meet Mr. and Mrs. Allen and share some time with them and their friends, if only on the printed page. "Die Laughing" and all the other mysteries are fun to read and well above the ordinary.

2.0 out of 5 stars Slow Ride to a Secretive Ending, December 7, 2007

By 

Tristan MacAvery "Author/Actor/Director" (Syracuse, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Die Laughing (Paperback)

I've always respected Steve Allen's intelligence and his use of language; it follows that I would believe that he would write a good mystery novel. I am genuinely sorry that this isn't the case, at least with this particular novel. Allen's first-hand knowledge of the Hollywood industry and the physical environs provide wholly believable background; less believable is the overall presentation.

Allen, and his wife Jayne Meadows, are the principle characters in the novel, which is told through Allen's first person narrative. A mystery presented in first-person can offer the writer the means to ponder over clues, circumstances, etc., in ways that third-person narratives must resort to dialog to accomplish (e.g., Holmes explaining to Watson, and therefore to the reader). Unfortunately, Allen is too present in his narrative; he frequently pauses to ponder not the story but some few paragraphs of pedantry. The goal appears not to provide education to the reader for the purpose of solving the puzzle, but rather to show Allen's intellect and steadfast belief in his own infallible opinion-as-fact. It's a tempting trap that good writers of fiction do all they can to avoid.

This same tendency to be "overly thorough" creates a stilted narrative that uses far too much verbiage to describe the action. (To my more astute readers: Yes, I'm probably doing the same thing now! My apologies.) The final page of this paperback edition far over-tells the action of someone slipping on a banana peel, with Allen mentally groaning over the event: "No, I thought, this would be too impossibly ironic an ending, ever for an ill-fated comedy show!" Yes, Steverino, it is -- or for an ill-fated mystery novel, for that matter.

For a man who wrote comedy, as well as writing so much about comedy, Allen has a terrible sense of timing when describing certain scenes in the book, such as this one at the end. The reader knows far too much about the upcoming joke, so that when the "snapper" (punch line) occurs, it's no longer funny. Even worse, Allen does precisely the opposite with his clues to the mystery. It's one thing to focus on red herrings to distract a good sleuth; it's another to withhold information until the last 30 pages of the book in order to surprise us all with whodunit.

This is the first Steve Allen mystery that I've read; perhaps his others will be better.

5.0 out of 5 stars funny people make for light murder mysteries, December 27, 2004

By 

Paul Skinner (Manassas, Virginia United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Die Laughing (Hardcover)

This is another excellent entry in Mr Allen's light murder mystery series, where Steve and real life wife Jayne Meadows get entangled in another murder among their show biz friends. Steve is asked by dieing friend Benny Hartmann to host an awards show in his honor, giving out a collection of comedy awards including a million dollar prize for "funniest person alive". Meanwhile, some old time comedians are lining up to win the money, and some end up with knives in their backs. Complicating matters, the knives originated from a purchase by Mr Allen himself! And is Benny really dead or not? Why are people seeing glimpses of him around Beverly Hills?

As with most of Mr Allen's mysteries, he explains the whole thing in the end in a dramatic stage presentation.