About book The Perfect Murder: Five Great Mystery Writers Create The Perfect Crime (1992)
This extremely gimmicky book has Hitt query five famous crime authors on how to commit the perfect murder, with the conceit being that this isn't just an intellectual exercise -- Hitt supposedly aims to carry out the murder for real. The correspondence between Hitt and the authors, all of whom are playing along with the premise, forms the 'story'.The whole thing fairly quickly devolves into a game of who can out-clever who. It was probably enormous fun for the writers involved -- they all faux-lovingly point out the flaws in their fellow writers' murder plans, while keeping on their toes as they find their own 'perfect' schemes being critiqued (and sometimes outright mocked) by their peers. Unfortunately, not all of the fun translates directly to the reader. The murder plans are the work of clever entertainers working to entertain themselves and each other, but they're not really worried about how Hitt's book will end up playing on paper. And Hitt, the central 'character', is simply not up to the level of the writers he's invited along, which leaves this very slight story pretty much hollow at its core. Still, fans of the five invited authors will probably get a kick out of the one-upmanship on display, and Donald Westlake fans will be particularly pleased to see that he maintains his reputation as the professional's professional, trumping everyone's contribution in the end.
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