Hack wrote this novel as a companion piece to a mystery board game that he hoped would pay off his massive personal debts but it just resulted in a massive plagiarism lawsuit from Hasbro over their game Clue that put him so deeper in debt that he not only had to declare bankruptcy for the sixth time but spend his free hours as an anti-fluffer in porn films for stars whose Viagra-induced erections wouldn’t go down after four hours requiring Hack to spit on them and curse about how easy the younger generation had it until the stiffies withered.
Fortunately, the book slipped under Hasbro’s radar and while it didn’t sell enough copies to make a dent in Hack’s massive debt, it’s not a bad read.
THE VICTIM
Rothbert X. Vagisil VII, heir to the Vagisil vaginal itching relief, dryness relief, and odor protection empire fortune.
THE SUSPECTS
- Movie star Francine Angler, Vagisil’s longtime fiancée. The couple was infamous for the knock-down, drag-out fights over his refusal to finally commit to marrying her despite their being engaged for over two decades. She was relieved to learn that he was finally tying the knot with her this weekend but only because he was facing financial ruin otherwise.
- Famed operatic baritone Rudolfo Lassparri, whose career had gone into such decline that he was working at Miceli’s Pizzeria, a Los Angeles restaurant famed for its singing waiters although Lassparri failed the audition for that gig and was valet parking cars in back. He was at the mansion because Vagisil had promised to finance his big comeback, an opera based on the H.P. Lovecraft story Re-Animator, not knowing that his benefactor had reconsidered and was planning to inform the singer that he was putting his money into vintage Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Movie Trading Cards instead.
- The Vagisil family’s longtime butler Jeeves, who Rothbert planned to give notice that weekend and replaced by an A.I. generated manservant that plays vintage Three Stooges shorts while it rubs your feet.
- General Salsa, who got Vagisil’s father Bertroth a commission in the Rhode Island National Guard during Vietnam to prevent him from being shipped overseas. He repaid the favor by keeping a detailed log of Salsa’s homosexual trysts and presenting it to the Pentagon, resulting in the General serving twenty years in Leavenworth penitentiary.
- Fifi, Vagisil’s French maid with who he had been having an affair for three years. He had continually promised her that he was breaking it off with Francine and would marry her but Fifi learned that in addition to the weekend being about the rollout of the new board game, he was planning a surprise nuptial ceremony at which he would finally tie the knot with Francine.
- Itzhak Berg, Vagisil’s longtime accountant who had been embezzling from him for decades, resulting in a financial calamity so great that Vagisil was finally forced to marry his rich fiancée in a ceremony performed by the District Attorney, who would be serving Berg with indictments for over fifty felonies at the reception.
- Sister Carmen, the leader of the strange cult that Vagisil belonged to. When she discovered that Vagisil was on the verge of financial ruin, she was forced to cancel construction of the cult’s massive Education Center next to the Ripley’s Believe it or Not Museum on Hollywood Boulevard.
- Mongo, the mentally deficient former circus strongman who Vagisil employed as his bodyguard. The violent giant was desperately in love with Fifi so when the maid learned that Vagisil’s promises to marry her were never serious, she made Mongo promise to kill him before he could say “I do.”
- Lacie Greenspan and Robin Harmon, two fortune hunters who Vagisil thought he was sneaking around with separately, not knowing that they were actually married lesbians who had amassed a fortune bilking rich playboys who had no idea that they were a couple.
- Snow Mercy, an internationally famous dominatrix who had no clue about all this intrigue but she go a flat tire driving by Vagisil’s estate and she just came in to use the phone…or DID she?