Everyone knows that on Halloween weekend in 1938, Orson Welles and his Mercury Theater players scared the bejeezus out of millions with their radio adaptation of H.G. Wells’ THE WAR OF THE WORLDS, recasting it as a live news broadcast that had listeners believe Earth was being invaded by Mars. But did you know minutes prior to that broadcast, a young woman was murdered in the studio, and Welles himself was the prime suspect?
At least that’s the idea put forth by THE WAR OF THE WORLDS MURDER, a rather nifty entry in Max Allan Collins’ series of historical murder mysteries, each of which involve a famous writer investigating a homicide occuring simultaneously with a textbook-worthy disaster. In this one, it’s pulp scribe Walter Gibson, creator of The Shadow, who’s called to New York by Welles to discuss collaborating on a Shadow screenplay. With all of Welles’ excesses – food, drink, women, himself – very little work gets done, but Gibson gets to spend the weekend on the man’s dime.
While patiently playing the waiting game, Gibson gets to witness the Mercury Theater players rehearse and fine-tune what would be their most historic broadcast. Unfortunately, he also gets to witness to discovery of a dead body, a mistress of Welles lying dead in a pool of blood, next to a knife signed by the future CITIZEN KANE director himself. But the show must go on; besides, the time will leave Gibson to do some sleuthing.
Meanwhile, Orson & Co. enact their WAR, oblivious to its reception outside the studio walls. In the book’s only deviation from Gibson’s point of view, we see the various effects it had on listeners, and the telling is fascinating. With real-life characters such as John Houseman and Bernard Hermann, the line between fact and fiction is expertly blurred, just as it was with Welles’ WAR hoax. Furthermore, the novel’s events are framed as a story Gibson told to Collins himself at a mystery convention in the 1970s, so half the fun is letting your mind sort the truth from the tugs on your leg. “Nothing in my research confirmed what Walter said,” Collins teasingly writes in the prologue, “but nothing contradicted it, either.”
If I had the mystery part figured out well in advance, who cares? Despite the title, that aspect is really secondary in the scheme of things. THE WAR OF THE WORLDS MURDER is less of a whodunit than a howdunit – well-researched, immersed in the period and simply a metallic tripod creature’s worth of fun. It’s the first of Collins’ series that I’ve read, but by no means the last.
Buy it at Amazon.
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