The Woodstock Murders: Or Happiness Is a Naked Policeman

A former stage production manager who has written musicals for children, Froscher delivers this fluff-and-feathers debut with high-camp style. The well-known, sexagenarian stage team of Sam and Wendy Schaeffer and their younger friend and ""keeper,"" gay Buddy Keepman, move to liberal Woodstock, N.Y., little suspecting that bigotry and murder lurk in their new environs. Nor does Buddy expect to find true love after his companion's death two years earlier. But these elements appear on cue. The prying matriarch of a hated local family arrives to help them move in. Shortly afterward, her body is found in the orchard by the Shaeffers' local housecleaner whose screams alert Tom Wilder, a state policeman who lives in another building on the property. Rushing from the shower and wearing only a towel, Tom encounters the Schaeffers and Buddy. Love and the murder investigation begin simultaneously. Soon, the victim's husband is killed with a hatchet. When their loathsome sons are murdered, Tom is left to wonder who had it in for the entire clan. Could it be the black gardener who suffered the group's vociferous racial slurs? Or the lesbian couple who were publicly castigated by them? Or the housekeeper who was repeatedly raped by the sons? The fairly summary ending adequately ties the threads of the plot, but the star of this show is the witty, articulate cast. (July)