Recommended reading - Rope: A play

 

Rope: A play

Rope: A play
by Patrick Hamilton.

First published 1929.
a.k.a. Rope’s End.

Filmed as Rope (1948), directed by Alfred Hitchcock.
Published by Constable.
Paperback.

ISBN-10: 0094508607
ISBN-13: 978-0094508606

Description:

Genre: Drama.

Characters: 6 males, 2 females.

Scenery: Interior.

For the mere sake of adventure, danger, and the "fun of the thing," Wyndham Brandon persuades his weak-minded friend, Charles Granillo, to assist him in the murder of a fellow undergraduate, a perfectly harmless man named Ronald Raglan. They place the body in a wooden chest, and to add spice to their handiwork, invite a few acquaintances, including the dead youth's father, to a party, the chest with its gruesome contents serving as a supper table. The horror and tension are worked up gradually; thunder grows outside, the guests leave, and we see the reactions of the two murderers, watched closely by the suspecting lame poet, Rupert Cadell. Finally, they break down under the strain and confess their guilt.