Simon, meanwhile, is not a mystery writer and does not use any of the tools: instead, he displays them for us. A good mystery writer has the skill to work the algorithm in a unique way, without losing the functionality of the tools of genre.
The detective genre, as all genres, is a big, magnificent toy box of narrative, where variations and repetition make stories recognizable and surprising at the same time. Neil Simon understands what makes these mystery genres work, and he plays them off against each other, and in conversation with the audience, letting them ultimately in on the joke. Simon’s final series of revelations, uncovering (twice) the culprit, is similarly partially based on the famous plot of And Then There Were None, before he finally pulls the rug on the whole structure of logic and inference. During the movie, each detective offers a solution, and each solution comes with its own logic, inherent to that specific writer’s preferred way of structuring surprises and revelations. The greatest strength of Simon’s parodies is not in the characters themselves, though their foibles and habits allow us to identify them immediately, it is the metafictional way Simon mocks the basic act of solving mysteries.
An old country manor, and a series of attempted murders vaguely in the style of Christie’s And then there were none. In the end, Simon has to settle on one specific tone, and he picks the perceived comfort of a Miss Marple setting. Or rather: genres, plural, because while Sam Spade, from Raymond Chandler’s dour oeuvre, and Miss Marple, from Christie’s sharp pen, are both in the business of dealing with the aftermath of violent murder, the books in question are very different. Murder by Death, Neil Simon’s brilliant (though dated) cinematic parody on the whodunit, featuring parodies of various well-known detectives, from Hammett’s Nick and Nora to Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot, is successful both as a parody and a pastiche of the genre.
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