Ten Dead Comedians: A Murder Mystery

“Original, funny, and - like all great comedians - Van Lente slays the audience”—David Quantick, Emmy award-winning writer of Veep, The Thick of It, Brass Eye , and Harry Hill's TV Burp “Fresh, funny, and entertaining.”— Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine “Van Lente’s strength is in his narrative ability [...] and his sharp, acerbic humor. The mystery is pretty fun too!” —BookRiot “Van Lente’s look at the selfishness and misery of show business is sure to be a hit with mystery lovers who savor unusual setups; the side of snark provided by the bitter islanders adds to the atmosphere.”— Booklist “This book is like if Agatha Christie was funny, which is to say that it is infinitely better than Agatha Christie. If you're in the comedy world you'll feel that you know some of the characters firsthand. Hell, if you're a 21st century human you'll feel you know some of the characters firsthand.”—Jennifer Wright, author of It Ended Badly and Get Well Soon “ Ten Dead Comedians is a funny and nail-biting front row seat to the bloodthirsty world of professional comedy ... and that's BEFORE the murders start.”—Danielxa0Kibblesmith, writerxa0for Thexa0Late Showxa0Withxa0Stephen Colbert “An homage not only to stand-up comedians everywhere but to Agatha Christie’s original mystery, Van Lente’s novel is hilarious and suspenseful—all at once.”— BookTrib “Fred Van Lente takes an old idea and drags it kicking and screaming into the 21st Century.xa0So assured, so fresh and so inventive, it's hard to believe this is his first novel.”—Kevin Wignall, best-selling author of A Death in Sweden and The Hunter’s Prayer “ Spinal Tap meets Agatha Christie. I loved it.”—Martyn Waites, best-selling author of Born Under Punches and the Tania Carver series“Fred Van Lente delivers an Agatha Christie twisty mystery filled with all the cruel, horrible, and violent deaths that only stand-up comedians truly deserve.”—Grady Hendrix, author of Horrorstör , My Best Friend's Exorcism , and Paperbacks from Hell “[This] debut fiction could possibly become, in its own way, as much of a classic as the novel it honors.”— New York Journal of Books“ Ten Dead Comedians is an ingeniously plotted puzzler with classically unanticipated twist ending.” — Midwest Book Review “I flew through this book, anxious to uncover the identity of the killer, and that is perhaps the highest recommendationxa0I can give. I couldn't put it down.” — Geeks of Doom “It’s a bit guiltily we admit that watching a handful or two of hack comedians be slowly picked off is a delight.” — Cool Material “Tense, startling and relentlessly hilarious.”—HiLowBrow “A fantastic debut and a fun ode to Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None that provides plenty of comedy to go along with the rampant murder.”—Four Letter Nerd “This book [is] oddly mesmerizing.” —Mystery Playground “Written with savage wit and skewed humor, Ten Dead Comedians is an uproarious treat. ”— Midwest Book Review Fred Van Lente is the #1 New York Times best-selling writer of the comics Odd Is on Our Side , Archer & Armstrong , and Action Philosophers! He also cowrote the graphic novel Cowboys and Aliens , which was made into a film starring Harrison Ford and Daniel Craig. --This text refers to the hardcover edition. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. A bleep, a boop, a shudder, a swoosh, and there it was, on each of their phones: xa0 xa0 xa0Hey there Funny Person.xa0 xa0 xa0Steve Gordon didn’t see it at first. xa0 xa0 xa0He had a good excuse, though. xa0 xa0 xa0He was dying. xa0 xa0 xa0Steve had died before, of course. He knew how. At the Laugh Shack in Portland, Maine, in front of that bachelorette party. At that open mic in Des Moines, when he was first starting out. At his SNL audition, after his career was basically already over. xa0 xa0 xa0Dying on stage, in the middle of a set, was something every standup experienced. It was as inevitable and unavoidable as bad weather. The pros distinguished themselves from the wannabes by not buckling under the weight of the dead room, of the surly crowd, of their own (hopefully temporary) suckitude. xa0 xa0 xa0But tonight felt different. xa0 xa0 xa0Tonight Steve felt like he was running out of lives. xa0 xa0 xa0“Hey, thanks, everybody, for that great welcome. Are you ready to be the best Finance Department we can be?” xa0 xa0 xa0Bifocals, bad ties, and pantsuits peered at him from the audience of the Chicago Improv Underground. The theater used to be a strip club and still retained the vague air of being somewhat ashamed of itself, with its low ceiling and bad lighting and support beams blocking sight lines from a third of the seats. Like every other performer, Steve had to memorize the location of the ancient lump of blue putty covering the hole in the floor where the stripper pole had been sawed off to avoid tripping or stubbing his toe on it. xa0 xa0 xa0The tumbledown surroundings were part of the act—they helped draw herds of accountants from the Whatever Co. out of the glass tomb of their conference room, down the concrete staircase beneath the Aldi supermarket, for this quarter’s team-building seminar.xa0 xa0 xa0This ritualized descent into the underworld was all part of the initiation process. The staircase was flanked by black-and-white photos of the famous before they were famous, fresh-faced and poor, honing their skills on the Underground stage before their careers began to flourish on Saturday Night Live , Mad TV , and The Daily Show . By the time the audience arrived in the black box theater and took their broken-down seats, they understood they were ensconced in the loam of celebrity: the Improv Underground was the rich, dark soil from which impossible dreams were raised. xa0 xa0 xa0Or, in Steve’s case, the pure earth to which he had returned. xa0 xa0 xa0In the stairwell’ Before pictures, the audience had seen him twenty years younger. Now, as Steve faced them, one eye on the floor to avoid the ex-stripper-pole bump, they were looking at the After. xa0 xa0 xa0“All right, folks. For our first team-building exercise, I’m going to hunt you for sport, so if you could all line up against the far wall and get your panda costumes . . . What? No? C’mon, being hunted builds character! Man is the most dangerous game. xa0 xa0 xa0“No, you can tell I’m joshing. Tonight we’re gonna have fun improvising sketches, just like we used to do on What Just Happened? Teddy, could you come up here on stage? Teddy is the manager of Improv Underground. He’s a professional funnyman like me, which means he’s also an amateur degenerate xa0 xa0 xa0“So we’ll make up a comedy scene right here in front of you. Now somebody give me a place. Any place. Doesn’t matter where. No wrong answers here. The one word you can’t use in improv is ‘no.’” xa0 xa0 xa0“Auschwitz!” blurted out a middle-aged CPA in the back row. xa0 xa0 xa0Steve blinked. xa0 xa0 xa0“Oooo . . . okay? Auschwitz. Sure! Now can somebody give me a profession?” xa0 xa0 xa0“Rodeo clown!” yelled the Executive Senior Vice President of Something in the front. xa0 xa0 xa0Steve swallowed. xa0 xa0 xa0“No,” he said. xa0 xa0 xa0“You said that was the one thing you couldn’t say!” the ESVPoS exclaimed with a near-audible harumph . xa0 xa0 xa0“No, I said that was the one thing you couldn’t say,” Steve said. And looking at Teddy’s face when he said it, and the face of the executive’s assistant sitting next to him when he said it, he knew instantly he shouldn’t have said it, because this guy hadn’t been told no by anybody still with a job since 1998. xa0 xa0 xa0At that moment Steve thought maybe he really was dying. The spark that had animated his existence since he was a kid was sputtering out, that desire to make people laugh, to book that next gig, to not punch an audience member in the face. What was it all for, the bad food and canceled flights? He could go back to law school like his mother always wanted. At his age, it would be a sitcom waiting to happen. Or he could flip burgers. xa0 xa0 xa0Flipping burgers was sounding better and better by the second. xa0 xa0 xa0His phone vibrated again. Steve ignored Teddy’s look, a look that said “Oh no you will not check your damn phone while you’re in the middle of a gig, you pitiful sketch-show has-been” and turned his back on the audience. xa0 xa0 xa0“Just a second,” Steve said. “I’ll be right back.” xa0 xa0 xa0He pulled out the phone out and read: xa0 xa0 xa0You don’t know who I am, but you MIGHT know who I work for. --This text refers to the hardcover edition. Read more