Acting Up

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

A COMEDIAN DIES by Simon Brett Scribners; 160 pages; $7.95

There have been lawyer-detectives and priest-detectives and even jockey-detectives, but perhaps the most intriguing blend of workaday occupation and avocational sleuthing is Charles Paris, an invention of English Writer Simon Brett. Charles is an actor-detective, perhaps the first and last of his breed. Performers are generally too self-absorbed to be much use in searching other people's motives.

It may be that Charles is so hooked on ratiocination because he is so bad at acting. On the funny side of 50, Charles is the kind of thespian whose career has been confined to small parts in the big time and big parts in the small time. When he needs a disguise, Charles usually borrows a look or an accent from one of his flops, and Brett wickedly runs in a quote from one of his provincial reviews ("Had I not known it to be a good play, this production would not have convinced me of its merit"). Charles' personal life is no improvement on his professional one. There is a wife he has not lived with in years, and the odd one-night stands with preoccupied actresses; but Paris' routine is as hollow as Philip Marlowe's: the dismal bedsitter, the bottle of whisky, the nagging creditors. What distinguishes his adventures, of which A Comedian Dies is the fifth, is the author's wry observations of Britain's entertainment milieu. Brett has a farceur's eye for crooked agents and egomaniac stars, for performers elbowing their way up or trying to take the slide back down gracefully, for network nitwits, for creative geniuses unsung by anyone but themselves.

In his latest case, Charles, on a reconciliatory week at the seaside with his estranged wife, is present at a variety show when a stand-up comedian literally turns into a live wire: a booby-trapped guitar electrocutes him when he grabs a microphone in the other hand. The hunt for the killer gives Brett a chance to do those set pieces that distinguish his books, notably one in which a domineering talk show host is reduced to helpless blithering by a deftly counterpunching old comic (who is an admirably wise and well-developed character) and another satirizing those ghastly award shows that blight English telly as depressingly as they do our own.

The juiced comedian turns out to have been a nasty little sod, so there are plenty of interesting people with good reason to do him ill. As usual, Charles, who can never keep a good deduction to himself, wrongly accuses several people of the crime. This makes good fun, since doggedness rather than courage is his forte.

It is Brett's insider's knowledge of high-intensity show business -- he is a scriptwriter and former BBC radio producer -- that makes his witty mysteries go. It looks as if Charles Paris is finally working in a long run. So it's not Oedipus Rex.

It's honest work and, for the reader, solid entertainment.

-- Richard Schickel

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