The Name is Malone (1958) by Craig Rice

Craig Rice's The Name is Malone (1958) is together with The People vs. Withers and Malone (1963) and Murder, Mystery and Malone (2002) three, posthumously published short story collections starring the hard drinking, shop soiled Chicago criminal attorney, John J. Malone – who has to do without the company of Jake Justus and Helene Brand in his short story outings. Stuart Palmer's Miss Hildegarde Withers replaced Malone's troublesome friends in the above mentioned collection of crossover stories, but most of the short stories tend to be solo cases for the Chicago attorney. So they also tend to be less screwbally than the novels and the stories collected in The Name in Malone, while having comedic elements, are more in line with the hardboiled, alcohol fueled private eye fiction of those days with plots.

The first story from The Name is Malone is the curiously and tantalizingly-titled "The Murder of Mr. Malone," which appeared to have been originally published in 1952 or '53, but have been unable to find out in which magazine publication. But it was first collected here. It has that odd touch of surrealism that runs through a lot of Rice's detective fiction. Malone is hired by Ed Cable to investigate the death of his aunt, Eva Cable, who died from natural causes and left behind one of those "screwy wills." Eva left her entire fortune to the daughter of an old friend, Mici Faulkner, which left the young woman "a decidedly astonished heiress." Ed Cable ordered Malone to investigate the will and the cause of death, but his investigation showed Eva died of natural causes and the will to be genuine. But when Malone is stuck at a Los Angeles airport ("...still fogged down"), the case begins to twist and turn in unexpected ways. Malone's luggage and ticket gets mixed up with those of the "friendly stranger" he met at the airport cocktail bar and unknowingly travels under the stranger's name, J.J. McNabb. When he finally lands, Malone is greeted by newspaper headlines screaming, "JOHN J. MALONE, CHICAGO ATTORNEY, FOUND MURDERED ON PLANE." So he continues digging into the problem under the dead man's name, which turns out to have an interesting variation on murder hinging on a motive that's not a motive.

So good, tangled and sometimes humorous opening story showing Rice belonged to that small, select group of mystery writers who could write comedic mysteries that can be genuinely funny. For example, Malone arranges for the body of "Malone" to be be transported to funeral parlor of his friend, Rico di Angelo, who tells Malone that "ever since your body arrived, I have been expecting to hear from you" – "tell me, Malone, is it for your life insurance?" Yes, Malone enjoys quite a prestine reputation in Chicago. Lastly, I should note the story has a slightly bigger role for Malone's secretary, Maggie, who even gets herself arrested off-page for her employer's murder. It sometimes felt like Rice was nodding and winking towards Erle Stanley Gardner's Perry Mason and Della Street.

There is, however, nothing to laugh about in the second story, "The Tears of Evil," culled from the March, 1953, issue of Manhunt. A dark, grim tale of crime rather than a detective story where the question is not so much whodunit but why. Malone attends the wedding anniversary of two close friends, George and Kathy Weston, whom, of all the people he knew, they "were two of the ones he'd liked the best." During the party, George staggers towards Malone with the expression of "a punch-drunk prize-fighter" and tells him Kathy is dead. Murdered. George found her naked lying on the bedroom floor with a broken neck. There were about seven other people in the house and one of them, curiously enough, served time for "assault and rape" and is currently out on parole. Not a character you often find in the works of Golden Age mystery writers. But this is not a whodunit. The real murderer is pretty obvious and the question becomes why it was done, which is where the story falls to pieces. Firstly, this is one of the shortest stories in the collection and can only tell you these people are important to Malone ("If Kathy was dead, then a little part of him had died too"). Not show you. So the story completely misses the emotion punch it tried to deliver. Secondly, there's not a single clue to the motive and leaves a not unimportant detail unexplained. I can see why it was included, but surely, there must have been better, uncollected stories in the series?

The third story is a locked room mystery, of sorts, but already discussed "His Heart Could Break" (1943) not so long ago as part of the anthology Golden Age Locked Room Mysteries (2022). So I'll be skipping that one here. 

"Goodbye Forever," originally published in the December, 1951, issue Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, which is a virtually unknown impossible crime story in the tradition of G.K. Chesterton, John Dickson Carr and Edward D. Hoch – neither listed in Robert Adey's Locked Room Murders (1991) nor Brian Skupin's Locked Room Murders: Supplement (2019). Larry Lee, "handsome young orchestra leader" and "America's Number One glamor boy," who has a new song to feature on that night's radio broadcast. Lee worked up a special, last-minute arrangement using the first four notes from a cursed song, Tosti's Good-bye Forever. A prevailing, stupid superstition among musicians that any part of the song can never be played or broadcast without some terrible disaster happening immediately. Since it was a last-minute arrangement, it was impossible to rehearse and now Lee is worried about the nervous, highly superstitious clarinet players, Art Sample, because those four notes were "so skillfully hidden in the orchestration that no one would know what he was playing," until he had played it. So he asks Malone to come along to the radio studio as legal insurance in case something would happen.

Malone agrees to come along to the radio studio, but wonders whether it's a gag or publicity stunt cooked up by Lee's press-agent. But when the band played the four notes, Art Sample slowly crumpled to the floor in front of Malone's eyes. A medical examination reveals he had been killed with a quick acting poison, aconite, but "he didn't eat or drink anything, or even smoke, just before he died." No, the poison was not on the reed of his clarinet. So an impossible poisoning and the seasoned, borderline obsessed impossible crime fans will likely spot the method and murderer, before the vital clue is given. But normal people have a shot at solving it by spotting that tell-all clue. A very decent, very conventional impossible crime story that as Mike Grost observes "fits into the paradigms of John Dickson Carr's Locked Room Lecture" and reads like an ancestor of Hoch's locked room stories. This could just as easily have been the plot for a Simon Ark or Dr. Hawthorne story. Sure, "Goodbye Forever" is not a blistering original impossible crime mystery, but quite enjoyed it as a whole and really deserves to be a bit better known. 

"And the Birds Still Sing" was first published in the December, 1952, issue of EQMM and is best described as an imaginative flight of fancy with Rice's take on the multiple, false-solutions. Malone has a client dropped into his lap out of nowhere. Mona Trent, an ex-showgirl, needs his help and asks the lawyer to come to her apartment the next morning to discuss the matter in detail. But when he arrives the next morning, Malone finds Mona Trent sitting in a big chair near the window with "a neat little bullet hole in her forehead." She had been killed with a rifle shot. What follows is a carousal ride as Malone goes from client to client as he goes through multiple, different solutions involving the victim's jealous ex-boss, an even more jealous admirer and a woman who took a shot at the chirping morning birds. A fantastic story reminiscent of the best from Ellery Queen with its multiple, false-solutions and the real solution hinging on space, time and bits of seemingly trivial information ("Maggie, where can I find an Almanac?"). A highlight from this collection! 

"He Never Went Home," originally published in the March, 1957, issue Manhunt, is another unusually structured, mostly well-done detective story opening with Susie Snyder waking up in her apartment and finding the body of a stranger sprawled on her davenport – a knife sticking out of his chest. Whoever tried to frame Susie counted on her "flying into fits" and "coming unglued generally," but she kept calm and called Malone. Malone immediately goes to work on covering up anything that could get her into trouble, but first arranges a fake alibi before tampering with the evidence inside the apartment. But then he finds himself in a sticky situation when an anonymous tip to the police brings Captain Dan von Flanagan and Detective Lieutenent Klutchetsky, of the Homicide Squad, to the apartment. The strength of this story is definitely in how far Malone is willing to go to protect a client and the brilliantly posed, slightly surrealistic problem posed by the murder weapon later on in the investigation. It also provides a clue to the murderer's identity, which is not nearly as good or inventive as other elements. Great storytelling with a somewhat uneven plot that has moments of inspiration. 

"Life Can Be Horrible" comes from the September, 1953, issue of Manhunt and is possibly unique in the history of the genre as well as occupying a special in the series, but both for vastly different reasons. Firstly, the story gives a bigger role to a family of recurring characters headed by Joe the Angel, of Joe the Angel's City Hall Bar, where Malone usually celebrates his victories in court, drowns his sorrows or tries to pry a quick hundred-buck loan from Joe. Joe the Angel sends his two young nephews, Eddie and Frankie di Angelo, to Malone as they themselves in potentially a lot of trouble. Eddie and Frankie were approached by a big, pretty lady who told them her ex-husband was holding onto ten thousand dollars in thousand dollar bills that belonged to her. She offered the boys a cut of the money, if they agreed to get it and provided them with instructions ("sap him"). But what they find was a body and no money! Secondly, Malone is receives another client, "a king-sized Amazon," named Nadine Sapphire who's "a lady wrestler." Nadine Sapphire tells Malone the same story about a husband holding on to ten thousand dollars and Malone accompanies her to the secluded house expecting to help discover the body, but "now the body was gone and the money was here." And then Rico di Angelo calls Malone to tell that somebody had left a body in his funeral parlor! A pity you really can't solve what actually happened as some of the relevant information does not surface until Malone attends a wrestling event to watch Nadine Sapphire wrestle Daphne Flowers ("a combination of ballet and sheer mayhem"). That brings us to what this story a rarity and possibly one-of-a-kind.

First of all, I'm not American. So might have missed something culturally, but professional wrestling always struck me as more American than Teddy Roosevelt, MacDonalds and Bald Eagles mating to a gunfire rendition of the Star-Spangled Banner. You would think the world of professional wrestling with its loud, colorful and clashing personalities, real and fake, would have provided fertile ground for mystery and thriller writer alike for the past 100 years, but appears to be practically untouched – only example being Rice's "Life Can Be Horrible." Sports mysteries have a long history to the point where you can call it a sub-genre or sub-category of the genre with its own fans and collectors. You can find sports mysteries incorporating murder in almost every sport imaginable, but not professional wrestler and their absence in the American detective story and pulps is simply baffling. I always understood it was pretty big in America and quite important during the early days of television, but, whenever a ring is involved in a sports mystery, it usually is a boxing ring (e.g. John V. Turner's Death Must Have Laughed, 1932). So why did it never, in all those decades, provided a backdrop or character for more than one detective story or novel? It seems like an untapped reservoir of potential for creative mystery writers to play around in. Just think of all the bizarre motives and potential tricks that could spring forth from that strange, back then closed world of wrestling. Anyway, moving on!

Regrettably, the last three stories are not anywhere near as good as the previous seven stories and partly mired in the territory of the pulp-thriller, which was not for the best here. 

"Good-bye, Good-bye" (1946) started captivating with a very well-done, dizzying scene in which a young woman is clinging to the ledge twenty-two stories above the pavement. Malone manages to get her inside and learns she has a history of attempted suicides, but she claims someone tried to kill her. The story definitely has its moments, but the ending turned on a curious, complicated will and inheritance that felt a little trite. "The Bad Luck Murders" (1943) is another story that began very promising as Malone tries to help a client find her criminal, no good brother among the lost youth and homeless men who roam the city shelters and two-bit flop houses. Only thing that adds any interest to the story as Malone uncovers a ridiculous, needlessly complicated and risky murder plot. That's coming from the mouth of someone who fanboys all over impossible crime, dying messages and unbreakable alibis! "The End of Fear' (1953) begins as a chase thriller as a rich heiress apparently killed two men and went on the run "carrying a briefcase full of narcotics," but the echoing gunshot immediately clues you which direction the story is heading once Malone enters the picture halfway through. Not one of Rice's best or most inspired detective stories and only notable for Helene making an appearance.

It's a pity the last three stories dragged down the overall quality of The Name is Malone, because the seven stories preceding them were great examples of Rice's ability to combine complex plot patterns with vivid, borderline surrealistic storytelling to create her own unique brand of detective fiction. Some worked slightly better than others and personally liked the more tightly-plotted, fairly-clued stories like "His Heart Could Break," "Goodbye Forever" and "And the Birds Still Sing," but, on a whole, the collection was a pleasant reminder why John J. Malone is my favorite dodgy lawyer-detective. Definitely recommended with the only caveat being that fans who know Malone primarily from his novel-length outings will miss the all-out, boozy madcap antics, screwball comedy and the general pell-mell. There's still some of that in the short stories, but done with a bit of restraint... except for the excessive drinking.