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Overview
One house, ten contestants, thirty cameras, forty microphones, one murder… and no evidence. A Number–One Bestseller in Britain, Dead Famous is a killer of a read from Ben Elton—Reality TV as you’ ve never seen it before. Ben Elton’s television credits include The Young Ones, Blackadder, and The Thin Blue Line. He is also the author of a string of best–selling novels, including Popcorn, which won the Crime Writers’ Association Golden Dagger Award, Blast from the Past, and Inconceivable.Synopsis
From a celebrity performer, bestselling author of Popcorn and Inconceivable, a stunning satire on the modern obsession with fame.
One house. Ten contestants. Thirty cameras. Forty microphones.
Yet again the public gorges its voyeuristic appetite as another group of unknown and unremarkable people submit themselves to the brutal exposure of the televised real-life soap opera, House Arrest.
Everybody knows the rules: total strangers are forced to live together while the rest of the country watches them do it. Who will crack first? Who will have sex with whom? Who will the public love and who will they hate? All the usual questions. And then suddenly, there are some new ones.
Who is the murderer? How did he or she manage to kill under the constant gaze of the thirty cameras? Why did they do it? And who will be next?
Sunday Telegraph
One of the best whodunits I have ever read… a funny, gripping, hugely entertaining thriller.
Editorials
Sunday Telegraph
One of the best whodunits I have ever read… a funny, gripping, hugely entertaining thriller.Times
Wry, fast, and fiendishly clever.A book with pace and wit, real tension… and a big on–screen climax.
A bestseller in the U.K., Dead Famous, by Ben Elton (High Society), combines the traditional whodunit with contemporary reality TV to hilarious result. TV personality Elton may lack brand-name recognition here, but this murderous tale of 10 contestants stuck in a house with 30 cameras and 40 microphones has real appeal, particularly to the young and hip.
The British reality TV series House Arrest- "One house. Ten contestants. Thirty cameras. Forty microphones. One survivor"-goes its American counterpart Big Brother one better in its pandering to voyeurism. Powerhouse producer Geraldine Hennessy has cameras in the showers, mandates semi-clothed activities, and keeps the temperature in the house extra high, the better to stimulate nudity and sex. Enter crusty Inspector Coleridge, who's watching a tape from Day 29 of House Arrest, when one of the housemates was murdered by a blurry figure in a white sheet: an audacious crime completely captured on video. Alternating between Coleridge's investigation and accounts of House Arrest from Day 1 on, Elton (Inconceivable, 2000, etc.) offers three mysteries: the identities of the victim (which he withholds as long as possible), the killer, and the House Arrest winner. The contestant/suspects, who are entertaining enough to sustain a satirical novel sans murder, include Jazz, an aspiring black standup comedian; Sally, a humorless lesbian feminist; David, a handsome "serious" actor with a hidden porn past; Dervla, an Irish waif with soulful eyes; and Woggle, an anarchist who never bathes. Far from dampening audience interest or causing the show's cancellation, the murder turns up the heat and provides the stage for an old-fashioned melodramatic finale. Coleridge, who finds the mystery's solution in the pages of Macbeth and is inspired by a recent amateur theater audition, delivers a rousing, albeit shaggy, "the identity of the killer is" speech in order to ferret out same.
A delicious high-tech twist on the traditional locked-room mystery, and a fast, funny read.
“One of the best whodunits I have ever read…a funny, gripping, hugely entertaining thriller, but also a persuasive, dyspeptic account of the way we live now, with our insane, inane cult of the celebrity.” -- Sunday Telegraph
“A book with pace and wit, real tension, a dark background theme and a big on-screen climax.” -- Independent
From the Paperback edition.