Murder Can Be Fun [Paperback]

Fredric Brown (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1989

Brown's novel about an ex-reporter who, disenchanted with his career writing a radio soap opera, looks to create a new show, dubbed "Murder Can Be Fun," and change genres. Things get dicey when killings happen, using our heroe's unpublished scripts as a template. With its chess-playing and references to Alice in Wonderland, one suspects a Spanish admirer for Mr. Brown, as the great Arturo Perez-Reverte also wrote a book about chess-playing, before taking it to new heights with a Dumas-inspired mystery. This book was also published as "A Plot for Murder."

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

This book was also published as A Plot For Murder. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Carroll & Graf Pub (November 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0881845043
• ISBN-13: 978-0881845044
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,719,191 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great book, October 16, 2008

By 

Nicolas "The Cinephile" (Manhattan, NYC) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Murder Can Be Fun (Paperback)

Those familiar with Brown's work will know what to expect. The story centers around Bill Tracy, an ex journalist from the Blade, who now writes a radio soap opera called Millie's Millions. He is working on writing a humorous radio show called Murder Can be Fun when he realizes murders are occurring that follow his scripts and involve people he knows. Problem is, he never showed the scripts to anyone.

The character Bill Tracy is almost identical to Bill Sweeney from Brown's Book The Screaming Mimi. Which might why I enjoyed this so much because it seemed like it could of worked as a sequel or Prequel to that book(although this one is set in New York, not Chicago).

The only downside is not the fault of the material, but the publishing company. And it seems all their books have this problem: words are spelled wrong on almost every page, sometimes a letter is thrown in the middle of a sentence for no reason(I'm guessing the typist slipped and didn't realize it) and certain parts have the punctuation wrong or just placed wrongly in the middle of a sentence. Very poor publishing company.

However, It doesn't make the book difficult to read. once you catch on that sometimes they are replacing words that start with a 'h' with a 'b', you can easily figure it out and its more of an annoyance then making the book unintelligable.

So i still recommend this book and anything done by Fredric Brown.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars The book: 5 Stars; this edition: 1 Star..., March 14, 2009

By 

Weedwacker "I'd like to confuse bok choy with... (Satellite of Love, CA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Murder Can Be Fun (Paperback)

This is the first book by Fredric Brown that I have ever read. And I loved the story and found the author's style so appealing that I am determined to read anything and everything of his I can get my hands on--which will be no easy feat as it turns out.

This is a great little mystery about a man who writes a series for a radio show and soon finds himself caught up in a string of murders that are basically his stories brought to life. The trouble is that the stories have not been shown to anyone or aired yet!

There is nothing overly complicated here, to be honest. This novel was not all that long and not overly intricate but the author's writing style was very natural and the dialogue was witty and humorous. I loved the quirky characters and found myself sucked in; I couldn't put it down.

So, why did I give it 3 Stars? Because this edition (published by someplace called Blackmask.com) is ATROCIOUS. While my understanding is that Blackmask has put a lot of much loved and long out of print books back in print, and they should be thanked for that, I cannot ignore how horrible the transfer of text is (if that is the correct term--please leave a comment and let me know if I am phrasing it incorrectly). Just about every book has an error here and there, that is fine, but this is absolutely not the case here.

There are grammatical errors, spelling errors and random numbers and symbols riddling the text multiple times on just about every single page of the book. And I am absolutely not exaggerating. The first reviewer of this book also comments on this and while he was able to brush the issue off (wish I could, too) it was truly a major distraction to me and it did take away from my enjoyment of the book, overall. Would it be THAT hard to have just one person read the book and fix the errors prior to publishing it? Apparently so!

If you plan to read this, do yourself a favor and seek out a used copy of an older edition--they are cheaper and do not have the inexcusable errors that this edition does. Shameful!