Gerald’s Party is the fourth full-length novel written by Robert Coover, published in 1986. The book encompasses a single night at a party given by the title character and narrator, Gerald. Though the murder of a beautiful actress is central to the plot, Coover's text has little in common with a traditional murder mystery. He appears to be approaching the murder mystery genre with the goal of subverting/exhausting its possibilities. A comparable strategy can be seen in his retellings of fairy tales (see Briar Rose, Pricksongs), and his reframing of movie conventions (Ghost Town, A Night at the Movies). Like Coover's other later works, this is experimental fiction. The text regularly returns to themes of sex, violence, and a blurred boundary between theatre and reality.