By Patrick F. Cannon

This is a public service message. If you don’t have a last will and testament, you should. Although my former will is still valid, I decided to tidy it up to reflect my wife Jeanette’s death 2-1/2 years ago. Her having a will then made things much simpler than they would otherwise have been. At the same time, I had my trust and power of attorney documents updated.

            My children will get copies of all this stuff, so will be fully informed in the event I ever die (so far, so good). I don’t think there will need to be a public reading of the will, which has been a staple of fiction for many years. Agatha Christie used it in several books, including The Mysterious Affair at Styles. In this and other mysteries, we usually find the local solicitor reading the will at an English country house to a gathering of relatives and old retainers. Greed oozes from most of them, so when they discover that all the dough has been left to some ne’er-do-well, the plot thickens!

            Beginning in the 1920s, Christie’s books became wildly popular. This offended the serious literary critic, Edmund Wilson, who wrote an article in the New Republic (I think) titled: “Who Cares Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?” He argued against wasting valuable time reading this trash when one could be reading James Joyce or other serious writers. Obviously, he shouldn’t have wasted his breath.

            The mystery genre is of course ripe for parody. “Murder by Death” from 1975 manages to gather many of the legendary crime fiction figures in a suitably spooky country house. Agatha Christie is represented by characters based on Miss Marple (Elsa Lancaster) and Hercule Poirot (James Coco). Dashiell  Hammet’s Sam Spade is impersonated by Peter Falk, and his Nick and Nora Charles by David Niven and Maggie Smith. We even, in those less politically correct days, have Earl Bigger’s Charlie Chan, played by the fearless Peter Sellers.

            As if there wasn’t quite enough comedy, we also have laugh out loud turns by Alec Guinness as a blind butler, and Nancy Walker as a deaf housekeeper. To top it all off, none other than Truman Capote hams it up as their host, Lionel Twain (you must be shameless in naming your characters!).

            A more recent parody is 2019s “Knives Out.” Here we do have a will reading. Christpher Plummer in one of his last roles plays a famous mystery writer who dies under mysterious (of course) circumstances. Brought in to solve the riddle is famous detective Benoit Blanc, played with relish by Daniel Craig with an outrageous sort of New Orleans (?) accent. Greedy relatives include Jamie Lee Curtis and Don Johnson. When the bulk of the estate goes to nurse Ana de Armas, the fan is duly hit.

            Both movies are available on streaming services. I would advise you, however, to get your will and other documents in order before you watch them, because you might well die laughing.

Copyright 2024, Patrick F. Cannon