What I Tell You Three Times Is False (Felony & Mayhem Mysteries) (Sam Holt) [Paperback]

Donald Westlake (Author)

Book Description

Series: Sam Holt | Publication Date: December 15, 2006

Sam Holt played TV-detective Jack Packard for five years, and he doesn't want to do it again. Not in a movie, not in dinner theater, not even in a commercial for the American Cancer Society. But his tough-minded girlfriend ( It s not about you ) has carried the day, and now he s stuck on an isolated island, hunting clues to a cancer cure alongside Charlie Chan, Miss Marple, and Sherlock Holmes. The script says they re doomed to failure (translation: Donate money to cancer research). And when a genuine murder crops up, their sleuthing isn t likely to my much more successful; after all, these folks are not famous detectives, they just play em on TV. But with the cops cut off by a storm and a killer stalking the island, Holt and Co. must play detective for real.

Editorial Reviews

Review

A suspenseful tale from a mystery novelist who seems to improve with every outing --Booklist

A clever multiple-murder mystery ...readers will have a lot of fun with this one --Buffalo News

Product Details

• Paperback: 201 pages
• Publisher: Felony & Mayhem (December 15, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1933397551
• ISBN-13: 978-1933397559
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 5.6 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,250,579 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I'll Tell You Three Times, Even a Million, The Sam Holt Series Including This Book, Are all Brilliant!, February 22, 2009

By 

James N Simpson (Gold Coast, QLD Australia) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: What I Tell You Three Times Is False (Felony & Mayhem Mysteries) (Sam Holt) (Paperback)

This is the most brilliant, unique and clever story of the entire series. Who else but Westlake could write a murder mystery where Miss Marple, Sherlock Homes and other TV crime solver characters are the suspects, but also where due to the fact those in the isolated island mansion are getting bumped off one by one if Sam Holt doesn't work out which of them is the killer, all but him and the killer will be the only has been TV detectives left alive. Obviously the killer doesn't plan on leaving them both alive either.

So I guess I'll explain the basic plot a bit more. Sam Holt (main character from this series) who once played detective Jack Packard on TV has been asked to film a cancer cure donation appeal on an isolated Caribbean island in the middle of nowhere. The house used to belong to a drug baron and a condition of it being sold to the new owners is it can be used for this type of fund raising. Upon arrival a terrible hurricane develops meaning the crew will be delayed from arriving so it is just the actors who played famous TV detectives. Like Holt who has been typecast as Packard, these actors have also suffered the same fate. However murder is about to change from fiction to reality when the lesbian lover and assistant of the actress who plays Miss Marple is murdered after a huge verbal disagreement with the actress. Soon another victim disappears but no one can find the body, was he another victim or the murderer. Either way where is he. Who killed Miss Marple's lover? It is up to Packard the other actors to use their crime solving skills to solve the case, only problem is they can't trust each other as one is obviously the killer!

Donald E Westlake originally wanted to know if he could be successful if he started in the industry today (today being 1986) so planned on writing a series of six books under the pen name Samuel Holt to see how they would sell. Westlake wrote the first three novels in this series at the same time. Only himself and the publishers knew the secret, unfortunately when the first novel One of Us Is Wrong appeared in the bookstores, Westlake learnt his publishers had betrayed him and posters and displays everywhere told the public Samuel Holt is Donald E Westlake. In fact that was the only book published under the Samuel Holt name without Westlake's on the cover. Westlake saw no further point in continuing the series since the whole point was to see if an unknown pseudonym could make it, so he finished off the fourth book then never brought Sam Holt character to the pages of his typewriter again. And that's a shame, as the Sam Holt character is just as good as Dortmund or Parker (found under his pen name which he revealed to the world after it was successful - Richard Stark).

The other two books in the series are I Know a Trick Worth Two of That and The Fourth Dimension Is Death. If you forget their order remember the number is in each title. Westlake passed away in December 2008 so unfortunately this all we are likely to see.