Murder Can Be Fun

Brown's novel about an ex-reporter who, disenchanted with his career writing a radio soap opera, looks to create a new show, dubbed "Murder Can Be Fun," and change genres. Things get dicey when killings happen, using our heroe's unpublished scripts as a template. With its chess-playing and references to Alice in Wonderland, one suspects a Spanish admirer for Mr. Brown, as the great Arturo Perez-Reverte also wrote a book about chess-playing, before taking it to new heights with a Dumas-inspired mystery. This book was also published as "A Plot for Murder."