Who Was That Lady? Craig Rice: The Queen of Screwball Mystery - Hardcover

Marks, Jeffrey

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0966339711 ISBN 13: 9780966339710

Publisher: Delphi Books, 2001

Synopsis

Craig Rice, the author of fourteen novels, countless short stories, and a number of true crime pieces, once rivaled Agatha Christie in sales. She was on the cover of Time Magazine in 1946. However, the past fifty years have seen her fall into relative obscurity. Rice made for an interesting subject for a biography because nearly every identification point about the author was in dispute: her birth, her real name, her number of marriages, number of children, her canon of fiction, and the cause of her early death. Marks had to wade through years of research to come up with the answers to those questions. Following a trail that went from Venice, Italy to Venice Beach, CA, he talked to a number of her contemporaries, her family, and friends to come up with an engaging book that reminds readers why Rice remains the undisputed queen of the comedic mystery.

About this title

From the Back Cover

"Craig Rice was one of a kind and her comic mysteries still delight readers. All who loved her books will appreciate this careful, thorough and fascinating biography. Who Was That Lady? is a deserved tribute to a woman who gave much laughter and suffered much sorrow."

-- Carolyn Hart, author of Death on Demand and Henrie O. mysteries.

From the Inside Flap

In his superb biography of Craig Rice, Jeffrey Marks combines scholarship and compassion as he traces the life and works of a supremely gifted and sadly troubled writer. Craig Rice was one of a kind and her comic mysteries still delight readers. All who loved her books will appreciate this careful, thorough and fascinating biography. Who Was That Lady? is a deserved tribute to a woman who gave much laughter and suffered much sorrow."

--Carolyn Hart, author of Death on Demand and Henrie O. mysteries.

"I doubt that any mystery writer since Poe led a sadder -- or more interesting -- life than Craig Rice. Jeffrey Marks tells of it with poignancy and insight. Who Was That Lady? is eminently readable and an important addition to the literature about crime fiction."

--Marv Lachman, reviewer, and author of A Reader's Guide to the American Novel of Detection

"Craig Rice the mystery writer has been almost as mysterious as her books; the circumstances of her birth, the number of her marriages, even her real name have all been the subject of debate. Now Jeffrey Marks comes along and, with impeccable scholarship and contagious enthusiasm, pulls back the veil, answers the questions, and reveals an extraordinary woman -- talented, lively, troubled, and fascinating. Who Was That Lady? belongs on the shelves of every mystery fan."

--Douglas G Greene, publisher, Crippen and Landru, and author of John Dickson Carr; The Man Who Explained Miracles

Jeff Marks has meticulously researched mystery writer Craig Rice s life and work in a book that s like a really good soap opera. Craig was prolific and zany in her writing, but lived a bizarre private life. Marks always plays fair. He celebrates her victories, but doesn t downplay her writing flaws or mistakes in personal judgments. A thoroughly delightful biography.

--Jill Churchill, author of Groom with a View and Mulch Ado About Nothing

Reviews

In 1946, Time selected mystery writer Craig Rice for its first cover feature on that genre a classic case of poor judgment. Today, almost none of Georgiana Craig Rice's lightweight writing (Home Sweet Homicide, The Thursday Turkey Murders, etc.) is in print (whereas Raymond Chandler, passed over by Time, is a standard). Rice's life story does not accord with her superficial reputation as a lightly comedic author. Abandoned by her parents, Rice used this theme casually in almost all her fiction, but never dug deeper. A long slide into alcoholism and a series of abusive marriages (including one to the fringe Beat writer Larry Lipton, author of The Holy Barbarians, and another to a lunatic she met in a psychiatric hospital) mark the way to her early death at age 49 in 1959. Most striking, she neglected her own children (her 12-year-old daughter had to have Rice pointed out at a funeral because she "hadn't visited her family in so long"). Marks (Canine Crimes, etc.) captures these incidents in a serviceable narrative, though he is at his weakest when offering na‹ve critical perspectives (regarding the rumors that Rice or possibly W.H. Auden ghosted Gypsy Rose Lee's The G-String Murders, he notes, "While very enjoyable, G-String doesn't reach to an Auden... level"). Every writer may deserve such a dedicated biographer, and Rice's life is interesting (especially for hardcore mystery fans), but her saga proves to be less madcap than simply depressing.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Just after the end of World War II, after years of battles and body-counts, a war weary Time magazine decided to interview a major American mystery writer for a cover story to give the country a change of pace.

Although the mystery genre began in America with Edgar Allan Poe, Americans had come late into the whodunit. The field had long been dominated by the British writers such as Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, and G.K. Chesterton.

Dashiell Hammett, the American author of five mysteries and the creator of hardboiled Sam Spade and dashing Nick and Nora Charles, hadn't published a novel since 1934, a dozen years earlier. His leftist political leanings made him less than an attractive choice for the interview.

Nor was Raymond Chandler-- the writer behind Philip Marlowe-- any better. By 1946, he had only published four books in the Marlowe series, but he was already getting a reputation for being hard to deal with.

Eventually, by process of elimination the Time editors decided on a female publishing phenomenon of the 1940s, Craig Rice.

On paper, Craig looked like the perfect cover copy: she was young (37), attractive brunette who wrote the madcap murder mysteries that sold like black market nylons. The tongue-in-cheek adventures of Jake and Helene Justus and John J. Malone, the boozy Windy City lawyer who never lost a client, brought smiles to a nation fighting a war overseas. As a tabloid reporter covering Midwest murder trials, she had learned to meet deadlines and routinely turned out two or three novels a year, along with numerous short stories and screenplays.

Even FDR professed being a fan of Rice and a recent novel, Home Sweet Homicide, was being converted to a movie starring western hero Randolph Scott as Lieutenant Bill Smith. The novel was a semi-autobiographical mystery featuring a struggling crime writer's three children who solve a murder next door. Rice was a successful writer with three children

Edition details

• Publisher: Delphi Books
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0966339711
• ISBN 13: 9780966339710
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 186