{"id":6020,"date":"2021-11-27T14:16:26","date_gmt":"2021-11-27T21:16:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/?p=6020"},"modified":"2025-03-02T12:48:57","modified_gmt":"2025-03-02T19:48:57","slug":"clue-a-novel-by-michael-mcdowell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/?p=6020","title":{"rendered":"Clue: A Novel by Michael McDowell"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>The movie Clue wasn&#8217;t a great hit when it came out &#8211; in fact it was pretty well panned by the critics and it was one of the last movies to use multiple endings. It wasn&#8217;t until much later that the movie became popular with a strong cult following. The initial flop, however, had unfortunate side effects on the other items that came out with the movie &#8211; especially the books which were quickly discontinued and forgotten.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/AJFUF28YMOs?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-US&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><\/span>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Two books that came out with the movie were <em>Clue <\/em>by Michael McDowell, and <a href=\"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/?p=3971\" data-type=\"URL\" data-id=\"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/?p=3971\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><em>Clue: The Storybook<\/em><\/a>.  I got a copy of the storybook via inter-library loan a few years back and <a href=\"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/?p=3971\" data-type=\"URL\" data-id=\"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/?p=3971\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">uploaded a copy here<\/a>. It&#8217;s a fairly short picture book, but does reveal a much-hinted at secret 4th ending that was never filmed. The <em>Clue <\/em>novelization by Michael McDowell, however, is much more of a standard length paperback.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>While I have a lot of nostalgia for the movie, watching and quoting it endlessly, the McDowell book &#8230;. well&#8230;. leaves a lot to be desired. For a die-hard fan like me it&#8217;s worth the read but the writing isn&#8217;t very good and it certainly doesn&#8217;t capture the fun of the movie. You won&#8217;t learn anything new. It does pretty much follows the movie shot-for-shot. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I have a copy of the novelization, but prices have been getting stratospheric lately. Running as much as $200-$400. I have considered scanning my book for posterity, just like I did for <a href=\"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/?p=3971\" data-type=\"URL\" data-id=\"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/?p=3971\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Clue: The Storybook<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But until I get to that stage, you can actually listen to an amature reading of the un-abridged version via the above YouTube video. Read by Austin Curry (sp?), he does mispronounce words on occasion, but it&#8217;s more than good enough to give a listen. You can also <a href=\"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/special\/Clue\/ClueNovel.mp4\" data-type=\"URL\" data-id=\"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/special\/Clue\/ClueNovel.mp4\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">download a mirrored copy of the audiobook version here<\/a> if the YouTube link breaks (again).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>2023 UPDATE!<\/strong>: you can now <a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/clue-michael-mcdowell\/page\/11\/mode\/2up\" data-type=\"URL\" data-id=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/clue-michael-mcdowell\/page\/11\/mode\/2up\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">read and download the McDowell Clue book from the Internet Archive!!<\/a> If you&#8217;d like to download McDowell&#8217;s Clue book, I also put a <a href=\"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/special\/cluebook.pdf\" data-type=\"URL\" data-id=\"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/special\/cluebook.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">PDF copy locally here<\/a> for posterity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Title <\/strong>: Clue<br><strong>Author <\/strong>: Michael McDowell<br><strong>ISBN <\/strong>: 9780449130490&nbsp;<br><strong>ISBN10<\/strong>: 0449130495<br><strong>LCCN :&nbsp;<\/strong>85091213<br><strong>Publisher:&nbsp;<\/strong>New York : Fawcett Gold Medal<br><strong>Publication date: <\/strong>November 12, 1985 by Fawcett<br>188 pages, Mass Market Paperback<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The movie Clue wasn&#8217;t a great hit when it came out &#8211; in fact it was pretty well panned by the critics and it was one of the last movies to use multiple endings. It wasn&#8217;t until much later that the movie became popular with a strong cult following. The initial flop, however, had unfortunate side effects on the other items that came out with the movie &#8211; especially the books which were quickly discontinued and forgotten. Two books that&#8230;<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"><a class=\"btn btn-default\" href=\"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/?p=6020\"> Read More<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">  Read More<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,25,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bookreviews","category-clue","category-cool"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4WECr-1z6","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6020","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6020"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6020\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13635,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6020\/revisions\/13635"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}