McNally's Folly

by Lawrence Sanders

Published 17 July 2000
For poor Archy McNally, there's more drama backstage than onstage and plenty of confusion everywhere as the Palm Beach Community Theatre puts on Arsenic and Old Lace. Lured into the director's chair by the prospect of rubbing shoulders with Hollywood legend Desdemona Darling, Archy finds himself in a real-life murder story when someone takes a sip of prop wine and drops dead.

In a play filled with murderers, only Archy can separate the actors from the genuine article, and bring down the curtain on the latest and most enjoyable of McNally's follies.

Claudia Lester is a blonde with a problem: she needs someone to give a blackmailer fifty thousand dollars. But when Archy wakes up with a bump on his head both Claudia and the money have disappeared. The other person who wants to find Claudia is Decimus Fortesque, an eccentric Palm Beach character known for his even more eccentric collecting habits. The fifty thousand dollars turned out to be his - and he thinks that Claudia may be in possession of both his money and a long-lost work by Truman Capote. When Fortesque offers to hire him to find Claudia, Archy can't resist - and falls over the first corpse in the case.