Who Censored Roger Rabbit?
Categories: [ Books/Roger Rabbit ]
Roger Rabbit, a toon, hires private investigator Eddie Valiant to get him out of his contract with the DeGreasy brothers, where he plays second role to Baby Herman in a comic strip shot by photographer Carol Masters. Rocco DeGreasy is soon after found shot dead at his desk and Roger is found shot dead at his home, with evidence pointing at his estranged wife Jessica. Eddie is then hired by Roger's doppelganger (which toons can create at will for a limited time) created just before his death to solve the mystery of his death. The police quickly concludes that Rocco has been killed by Roger and that the latter by Jessica. But as the investigation progresses, DeGreasy's brother Dominick, Jessica and Roger mention a teakettle that all three claim belongs to them. Eddie discovers a parallel plot where Rocco's son has had perfect duplicates of Carol's strips' negatives made, to sell multiple “originals” to various collectors. Carol has witnessed part of Roger's murder, seen the kettle fly out of the rabbit's home and taken it. Tracing the origin of the kettle, through a prop master who bought it for cheap for a set where Roger was acting to Roger stealing it as a souvenir, Eddie discovers that the kettle is in reality a magic lantern containing a genie that grants wishes only to toons. The kettle had first been used by the DeGreasys, originally toons, to turn them human and give them a comic strip syndicate. Eddie leaves Dominick alone with the lantern as the remaining brother needs his third wish to remain a human, but he gets shot by the genie who, embittered by thousand of years of imprisonment has decided to kill the toons that call him. Eddie then talks to the genie who explains that Roger accidentally activated the lantern when wishing that he could marry Jessica, as the required words are part of a song that he sings often. Getting a contract with Rocco was his second wish, twisted by the genie so that he would only ever be a second role and would not be able to get out of the contract. Roger's marriage was also made to last only for a year, explaining why the marriage ended as inexplicably as it had started. Salt water being the genie's weakness, Eddie coerces him to grant him a wish of finding a suicide note from Dominick confessing to both Rocco's and Roger's murders. The detective then drops the lantern in the salt water fish tank. Eddie however concludes that the original Roger has killed Rocco, whom the rabbit believed had stolen Jessica from him, using his doppelganger as an alibi and planning to plant the murder weapon at Valiant's office to make him the fall guy but was shot by the genie after accidentally summoning it. Roger's doppelganger finally disintegrate.