It sounds like a sure-fire recipe for the theatrical fun we like to indulge in during the holiday season, or any season -- a clutch of literate murder mysteries by witty Jeffrey Hatcher.

And I must say the audience in City Theatre's intimate Hamburg Studio received "Murderers" with considerable pleasure. I had fun, too, occasioned as much by some sprightly solo acting as by the script. But my inner Grinch, which is usually under tight restraint, kept popping up to note how very inconsequential it all is.

Hatcher's fictional Riddle Key Luxury Senior Retirement Living Center in Florida never seems real, and I never felt the characters described were very real, either. Indeed, "Murderers" feels like an arch exercise tossed off without much work, leaving some loose ends, more like Hatcher's 2002 City Theatre premiere, "Mercy of a Storm," than of the more substantial and impressive works ("Compleat Female Stage Beauty," "Worksong") by this fluent and prolific City favorite.

But fluent, literate and witty Hatcher certainly is, and the lack of the deeper satisfactions of place and character doesn't negate his constant stream of knowing allusions and funny inventions -- a "sort of writing very like tickling," as Alexander Pope once defined wit.

"Murderers" is three separate monologues linked by their common setting. They aren't really murder mysteries -- not whodunits, anyway -- because each monologue is a confessional about why each murder was done, how and to whom. The pleasures are in the details and in whatever sense of distinctive personality the three actors can create.

Each 30- to 35-minute solo has a title that advances the exposition: "The Man Who Married His Mother-in-Law," "Margaret Faydle Comes to Town" and "Match Wits With Minka Lupino."

In the first, Daniel Krell plays Gerald Halverson, a charming parasite who, with the connivance of his longtime lover and her terminally ill mother, marries the latter as a way of circumventing estate taxes. Their plans go awry, of course, but in ways we cannot foresee, which gives the plot surprise interest.

In the second monologue, Jennifer Harmon plays Lucy Stickler, a senior Southern belle who wages frank and funny war against a husband-snatching femme fatale who moves into Riddle Key. Here, the primary joke is the salty language that comes from this seemingly delicate beauty. We are on her side all the way, although it is rather odd that she has stayed with her jerk of a husband so long.

Finally, we meet Sheila McKenna as Minka Lupino, secretary in the Riddle Key membership office. Her murders have all been motivated by outrage over the greed she sees all around. They are also the funniest, since she has a sharp eye for unusual opportunities. As you can imagine, ambulances rush daily up and down the streets of Riddle Key.

Tony Ferrieri provides a unit set that suggests many things, as it must in the first playlet, especially. Robert C.T. Steele contributes character with his costumes, most for Lucy. And director Michael Bush contrives to give the evening as much variety as three monologues can afford.

All three monologues are rich in the details of retirement, AARP-hood, old age and the South -- Bob Barker, dinner at 5 p.m., blue hair, Winn-Dixie, "Marcus Welby," Viagra, etc. -- which certainly fuel the audience's enjoyment.

You'll also catch a few snarky references to our own Tri-State area, which Hatcher comes by honestly, since he's originally from Steubenville, Ohio -- but only in the way Clifton Webb and Cole Porter were from Indiana, i.e., as places to escape. "Murderers" is a sort of escapism, too.