Tough Crowd

Description

He thinks life is the ultimate joke and everybody’s the punchline. He’s killing the people whose job is to make you laugh, and he’s staging each one like a bit that bombed — because to him, that’s the truest comedy there is.

The open-mic regular found in the spotlight, miked, posed mid-set. The laughter therapist drowned in the foam pit of the children’s gym where she ran her sessions. A headliner left in his dressing room arranged like a curtain call for an audience of nobody. Booker Dani Quinn has run the same comedy club for fifteen years and knows every comic on the circuit, which is exactly why the detectives keep showing up at her bar with photos she’d give anything to un-see.

Whoever this is loves comedy the way an arsonist loves houses. He knows the rooms, the timing, the cruel anatomy of a joke that dies. And he’s working his way up the bill toward the names that headline — the ones Dani put on stage, the ones who drink at her bar, the ones who’d trust her if she called and told them to lie low. She makes a list of who to warn. Her own name is on it, in handwriting that isn’t hers.

Horror-comedy with a blade behind the grin, this one finds the dread inside the setup-punchline rhythm and never lets the laugh land clean. Funny until it isn’t. Then funny again, which is worse.

Grab a seat at the back. He saves the best material for last.