Dead Famous (novel) Dead Famous (novel) Dead Famous (2001) is a comedy/whodunit novel by Ben Elton in which ratings for a reality TV show, very similar to "Big Brother", rocket when a housemate is murdered. Unlike a typical whodunnit, Elton does not reveal the identity of the victim until around halfway into the book. The novel is about a murder that occurs on a reality television programme called "House Arrest", which is very similar to the program Big Brother, and the efforts of three police officers to identify the killer by watching all the video recordings of the ten housemates while the remaining
The Famous Five (novel series) towards the end of the original Famous Five "era" (1942–63) so as to make the point that the books were already becoming outmoded while they were still being written. Both parodies made use of Famous Five set pieces, such as the surrender of the criminals at the end when Julian states "We're the Famous Five!", the arrival of the police just in the nick of time, and the appeal for "some of your home-made ices" at a village shop. Unlike the books, the four children in the Comic Strip parody are all siblings, and none is the child of Aunt