The real Inspector Hound : a play (original 1976; edition 1973)

does anybody know how i can read this book?

An amusing send-up of the detective genre, particularly Agatha Christie's locked-room country-house mysteries. I chuckled out loud at some points, notably whenever Mrs. Drudge gave an exposition-heavy speech. The play also does a good job of skewering theatre critics. Overall worth a read if you like absurdist theatre and murder mysteries. ( )

A bouquet of allusions: Tom Stoppard loves multilayered writing and drama, creating comedy or even farce.This play is an allusion to An Inspector Calls. It uses travesties, double or triple identities like Shakespeare in his comedies. It is a direct descendant of Samuel Beckett's absurd drama. It is an allusion to Murder by Death. It is thus a parody of many models and even a parody of a parody. But it is also built with a mirror projecting the audience onto the stage, then projecting this projected audience into the play, and the actors into this projected audience of critics. This is again a multifaceted mirror. Finally no one is true, no one is false, no truth is true, and no truth is false. All theories are purely abstract, absurd and abscond fantasies. The last layer of parody and criticism is directed at the police of course as for the plot of the play, and the critics as for the performance of the play and the play itself. Stoppard is a hard hitting satirist cast loose onto the public, the critics and society. Catch out of it what you can. And nothing if you can't catch anything. Too bad for you. Stoppard will not cry. Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

I picked this up a little while ago in anticipation of my participation in The Real Inspector Hound in September. I was a bit disappointed with it, to tell you the truth, but the other plays in the collection were considerably better. This almost made up for it. The other plays included After Magritte, Dirty Linen, New-Found-Land, Dogg's Hamlet, and Cahoot's Macbeth. I particularly enjoyed Dirty Linen. ( )

Gotta love this show. I knew someone doing "The Mousetrap" somewhere and was going to tell me about rehearsals but she didn't want to spoil the surprise ending if I'd never seen it. No, I'd never seen "The Mousetrap," but I had been in "The Real Inspector Hound," so I pretty much knew how it all turned out.
Stoppard takes on pre-existing material and turns it on its head. I'd love to actually see this show, see some other Mrs. Drudge answer the phone: "Good morning, the drawing room of Lady Muldoon's country residence one morning in early spring." Derivative? But quite sound. And a sweet revenge on critics. Puckeridge! You cunning bastard!