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For Better or Hearse

by Laura Durham

Laura Durham is a fairly new author in the murder-mystery field, blessed with a rich and varied well of experience from which to draw. Ms. Durham happens to have the top wedding planning business in Washington D.C., where she's met every possible type of individual. Fortunately for Laura Durham, instead of actually committing worst client murder herself (which I'm sure she's often tempted to do) she uses her sense of fun to write about them, devising murder on paper instead of real life. For Better or Hearse is only Ms. Durham's second foray into the murder-mystery novelist realm, and with only one exception, it's a fine story with clever telling:

Annabelle Archer runs Wedding Belles, a wedding planning firm in Washington D.C. The opening pages of For Better or Hearse deal with her phone call to friend Richard Gerard – also a wedding planner – in Georgetown, where his crew is just setting up, while she's at the Fairmont Hotel in Washington with the guests due to arrive any minute. Annabelle's call for help has to do with the hated Chef Henri's refusal to serve the Peking Duck as a hors d'oeuvre rather than as part of the main meal. This bride's wedding has a Chinese theme, including two monstrous ice sculptures, a rabbit and rearing tiger, representing the bride and groom's Chinese birth signs.

Completing her futile phone call, then sending her photographer to capture pictures before the guests arrive from the ceremony, Annie goes to argue with Chef Henri once more; but he's gone. Then Annie finds him – dead and impaled on the claws of the tiger ice sculpture. And this is the exception I mentioned earlier.

To begin with, an extended tiger's claws aren't long enough to be fatally impaled upon; A tiger doesn't use his claws to kill, he uses his teeth. Then regardless of how huge the beast is, it would have to be almost as tall as a skyscraper to possess claws long enough to reach any human organ fatally. Next, even if it were possible to die on the animal's claws, take into consideration the fact that to be that far away from the base keeping it cold (whether it be dry ice or a big block of ice itself) the claws would have melted at least some. Being so small in relation to the rest of the body, the tips would have been rounded by then, making it impossible to even break human skin. Finally, it would take more than one individual to kill the chef that way – since it would take someone to hold the sculpture while someone else pushed the victim onto the claws or Annie would have found both sculpture and victim on the ground. Sure – it turns out later that more than one person actually did the deed – so why isn't this mentioned right away, since it's so obvious? The other deaths mentioned are at least more plausible, although we're not informed as to how the electrocution of another chef is done, for instance, nor are the other murders given much attention at all.

A little more research or a little common sense would boost For Better or Hearse into a first class murder novel. As it is, the book depends on humor to cover up a reader's suspension of belief – a sure way to disaffect any true mystery fan. Laura Durham, the author, has real talent. She also writes with comic wit, wonderful, real, often campy characters, and a good plot. Now if she'd add more realism or research to the way a murder is accomplished, Ms. Durham might look forward to becoming one of the better known mystery novelists…

Alan Paul Curtis

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