Readers thought Ernest Hemingway was pushing the envelope on novel titles with “Across the River and Into the Trees,” presumably Stonewall Jackson’s last utterance: seven words. Catherine Mack’s previous novel in this series was “Every Time I Go on Vacation Somebody Dies”: eight words. This novel, “No One Was Supposed To Die at This Wedding”: 9 words. What next?
Like her previous, this novel is a combination murder mystery and comedy. The set-up is reminiscent of Agatha Christie’s “And Then There Were None.” There is to be a wedding on Santa Catalina, the “island of romance,” about 29 miles off the California coast. Once all are on the island, a powerful storm comes in, so they are cut off from the mainland with only one police officer, a rookie. I suspected her, having seen “The Mouse Trap.”
The happy couple are Fred West and Emma Wood, big-time Hollywood movie stars. The movie they are completing, “When in Rome,” is based on a novel by Eleanor Dash, about her adventures in Italy solving crimes. So, this book about a movie from a book is a comic variety of meta-fiction, but not in the brainy way John Barth would have done it.
Catherine Mack, through Eleanor Dash, goes all the way through clever to hysterically confusing. The wedding itself might or might not be a part of the movie. It might be a con, the couple passing their wedding expenses on to the production company. Why would they do this? Isn’t the groom a rich movie star? Maybe, maybe not.
Eleanor, as narrator, speculates on what is happening, who is probably guilty, and why the victims are chosen. She is a Christie fan, so we are reminded that the murderer might be the least likely suspect, some low-level assistant, or a handyman, or more than one person, as in “Murder on the Orient Express.” Or, as in “The Murder of Roger Ackroyd,” the narrator Eleanor might herself be the killer. One wedding schedule reads: “A Midnight Murder Will Be Served.” Thus “A Murder Is Announced.”
There are murders, lots of them, but the motives are numerous, varied, and not clear. It seems, no surprise, that many of these people have had love affairs that either ended badly or are still being conducted in secret. Some exes are present. Forgiveness was not universal. The stars have look-alike stand ins, so it is unclear who was really the intended victim and who collateral damage. In any case, all men look alike in a tuxedo.
Eleanor not only narrates, but comments on the action as she goes along, sometimes in footnotes which are actually pretty clever. This over-the-top novel is engaging, smart about how the murder mystery works, and very funny, all at the same time.
