TEN STAND UPS, NINE MURDERS, ONE SOLUTION (2017)
By Fred Van Lente
Quirk Books/Penguin
Random House, 289 pages
★★★
Is there a worse kept secret in the entire entertainment
world than the fact that a lot of comedians are seriously screwed up
individuals? The world of comedy is littered with self-inflicted corpses, but
what if someone decided to pick out nine stand up comics and do the job for
them? That's the premise of Fred Van Lente's debut mystery novel Ten Stand Ups, Nine Murders, One Solution. Van Lente has hitherto been known for
writing zombie comics and the occasional graphic novel, including Cowboys and Aliens, which was made
into a film that bombed critically and at the box office.
One suspects that some of Van Lente's experience got
exorcised in his novel, as its pivotal character, Dustin Walker, was once a big
late night TV star who fell from grace after making a trashy but surprise hit film,
I Married a Cat. It spawned a series
of ludicrous sequels that ultimately exiled its creator to a fate worse than
death: celebrity irrelevance. That is, unless you're an insider and still think
guys like Walker have pull. When his personal assistant, Meredith, invites nine
individuals to come to Walker's private island to discuss a future
"project," the allure proves too great to resist. To be sure, their
motives are less than lofty—vanity, flagging careers, seeking to bask in
reflected glory, perchance to brag…. They come, but Walker is
nowhere in evidence, the Wi-Fi code doesn't work, groundskeeper Dave is
missing, Meredith seems clueless about everything, and there's no way off the
island until the boat that brought them returns. In short, they are left their
own devices, a tool chest that mostly contains professional jealousy,
one-upmanship, and mutual loathing. And then things really go wrong: a video showing Walker's apparent suicide is
prelude to stand ups meeting grisly ends.
Comedy fans will entertain themselves by matching egos and
biographies to the imperiled islanders. The washed-up TV host Walker has many
parallels—among them, Joey Bishop, Chevy Chase, Jerry Lewis, and David
Brenner—and his character is probably a composite, but how about Janet Kahn,
the Real Queen of Mean? Joan Rivers, anyone? Or Margaret Cho as the inspiration
for lesbian comic Ruby Ng, who blew her career by uttering something unutterable.
It's pretty hard not to think of Sarah Silverman as a template for Zoe
Schwartz, the gagster who delights in talking about her vagina to the point where
she becomes—if I might mix body parts—the butt of her own routine. How can we
not imagine Sam Kinison as a stand-in for William Griffith, aka/ "Billy
the Contractor," a rich jerk who pretends to represent "Real America?"
Is Dante Dupree part Richard Pryor? Who is Oliver Rees, aka "Orange Baby
Man," a decidedly unfunny person who portrays a grown infant and has a
knack for trade marking associated kitsch? (Andy Kaufman?) Or T J Martinez, who
fancies himself a revolutionary Latino—as long as it doesn't crimp his comfortable
lifestyle? And then there's improv teacher Steve Gordon, whom TJ pretends not
to know, though they once worked together.
The structure and content of the book is pretty much that of
Agatha Christie's And Then There Were
None. This is, depending on your point of view, either homage or
intellectual pilfering. I'm willing to give Van Lente the benefit of the doubt
and call it a Christie update. Let's face it, we don't read many mysteries
because they are literary masterpieces; we consume them for cheap thrills and
as respites from that denser genre we label "literature." Van Lente
is not a great stylist, but he enlivens his text with excerpted monologues from
his comedians and demonstrates, if nothing else, that he knows his way around
comedy clubs. His debut novel is entertaining. It's summertime. That's enough.
Rob Weir
#fredvanlente
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