Dead Giveaway by Simon Brett is a back-stage game show comedy of errors, jealousies, rivalries, and greed, with a  murder thrown in.  The motive for the murder is a twist: it is a frustrated thrust against hypocrisy and celebrity, a thrust for authenticity that is parried successfully by a mistake.  The fake, the projected, and the image win out once again.  After all, this is a TV game show.

Despite having all the elements of a good time, Dead Giveway spends too much time on setting the stage of murder. The bits of build-up are interesting but far from exciting, and I just waited too long for  the murder to occur (I had even forgotten I was reading a murder mystery).  Although I had fun in the buildup of personalities and the ins and outs of TV programming, I wasn’t given enough background specific to the outcome to warrant holding off the murder and its investigation.  And when investigation phase of the book finally sets in, the story turns quite dull.  I found myself hankering back to the build-up.  But then that is television: a big build up preview of programming and then the fall flat of the actual show.