Title: MURDER AT CHANNEL 5
full-length murder/comedy
Author: Les Golden
Address: 934 Forest Avenue, Oak Park, Illinois 60302
Phone: (708) 848-6677
SYNOPSIS
The cast members of the murder mystery "Till Death Us Do Part" arrive at their dressing room in the Nouveau Theater. After the performance, Bernard Oliver, a founder of the theater and its current president, presents an after-curtain speech to the audience announcing that Deborah Elwood, the beautiful star of the show, will present a one-woman performance for the theater's next production. In the weeks that follow, Roberta Sorinson, the current show's costume designer, rehearses Deborah for the show, well aware that Deborah and Joseph Sherman, Roberta's sarcastic boyfriend and a bit-part actor, are displaying mutual interest.
The final performance of "Till Death Us Do Part" goes smoothly until the curtain call. The two members of the cast who are murdered in the final scene, Brad Jordan, an independently wealthy benefactor of the theatre, and Jon Jeffreys, his lover, remain on the floor. Thinking at first that this is simply a final-performance prank, the cast is shocked when a doctor in the audience examines them and exclaims, "These actors are dead."
The stage knife and stage gun had been replaced with the real items.
Oliver enlists the service of Harold Plickington, an eccentric private investigator with a seasoned dislike for the police and a seasoned liking for the game of darts. To minimize damage to the theater, Oliver wants Plickington to conclude that the murders were a double suicide or murder-suicide. Meanwhile, Roberta and Arlene Plummer, an older, once distinguished actress now reduced to semi-professional stage roles, prevail upon Oliver to not cancel Deborah's one-woman show.
