The Butler Did It Singing (Paperback)

Characters: 5 males, 5 females, optional chorus

This is a delightful, audience pleasing, one-set, musical spoof based on Mr. Kelly's enormously popular hit The Butler Did It. Miss Maple, a flaky society dowager, invites a pack of zany detective writers to a spooky house on an isolated island and forces them to impersonate their fictional sleuths. For entertainment, she arranges some "classic" touches - a hairy face at the window, the threat of an escaped lunatic, no communications with the outside world. What she did not arrange was the body on the sitting room carpet It's up to seedy Chandler Marlowe to solve the bizarre case and he makes a side-splitting mess of it Ultimately, everyone has a guilty secret to confess and the real killer turns out to be the least suspected.

The happy score is dotted with likeable and show-stopping hits: "Murder, Mystery and Mayhem," "The Moth to the Flame," "Cherchez La Femme," "I Know My Stuff," and, of course, "The Butler Did It," among others. Production demands are extremely modest and the cast of ten can be expanded if desired.