"Every silver cane has a grubby end..."- Albert Stroller (Hustle)
Georgiana Ann Randolph was an
accomplished and adulated mystery writer under the nom de plume of "Craig Rice," whose booze fueled, madcap shenanigans centering around John J.
Malone garnered her the moniker of Queen of the Screwball Mystery, but Rice's
standalones and reputedly ghosted novels carved out a reputation for
themselves.
Home Sweet Homicide (1944) stands out in Rice's oeuvre as a rare, but truly original,
standalone novel and essential reading for everyone who enjoys good fiction –
regardless of which genre you prefer. I'm even tempted to say the book
transcended the genre. However, Rice wrote more than just that one book and the
praise I have seen being heaped on To Catch a Thief (1943), written as
if by "Daphne Sanders," secured the title a spot at the top of my wish list. Well, I
wasn't disappointed when I finally got around to reading it.
John Moon doubles as protagonist and
antagonist in To Catch a Thief, shifting between thievery and snooping
around for clues, which makes him ancestor of Lawrence Block's The Burglar Who-series,
but relieving Poppy Hymers of a string of emeralds has top priority at the opening
of the story – before everything becomes progressively worse. The car they're
in crashes and Moon is forced to improvise a kidnapping. Poppy feels isolated
from the world and decides to join Moon in his mission. And it's a mission. The
story moves to the office of Donovan, a private-investigator, who was hired to
investigate a thief targeting a group of seven men and sends them warning notes
– signed by a person referring to himself simply as "N." Yes. This aspect of
the plot vibrates with V for Vendetta-vibes.
The group formed a syndicate and left a
financial massacre in their wake when they crashed the stock market, wiping out
a slew of innocent people in the process, which gives Rice an excuse to slip in a
bit of social commentary on a situation that's (to say the least) still topical
today. Donovan gets to poke around the debris of lives they wrecked, while
Poppy's stepmother, Dorothy Hymers, cooks up a plot with her lover, Leon
Martelli, to steal her own bracelet and blame it on the mysterious "N" – who's
well aware of the plot and stages a double-cross. The double-cross turns into a
triple-cross when someone strangles an unconscious Mrs. Hymers after Moon left
the house. Like Arsène Lupin in Maurice Leblanc's 813 (1910), Moon spearheads the murder
inquiry in which he's one of the suspects and knows his way around a disguise.
He even poses as a keen amateur detective to bother and drug the policeman
guarding the scene of the crime!
This all makes To Catch a Thief
very different in structure from every other Rice novel I have read to date,
but you can still identify it as one of her stories because it's covered with
one tell-tale marking: her detectives operate as a team. There's Poppy
playing Evey to Moon's "V" and Donovan has close ties with Tom Clark of The Gazette
and Inspector Garrity of the Homicide Squad. Moon also has semi-official team
mates in a former prizefighter and a forger/fixer. There's a Leverage
reference hidden in there somewhere.
Moon and Donovan agree on a truce in
order to find the murderer of Mrs. Hymers, while suspects go missing and the
body count keeps rising, however, the actual question of the book is the
identity of John Moon – who could be anyone from a figure in the background
story of the financial raiders or even maintaining a third identity.
I love a good roguish tale as much as a
well crafted mystery and Rice skillfully guided the plot through the gray area
separating the genres, but, surprisingly, the zaniness was toned down quite a
bit and you could say this was Rice at her most sober. To Catch a Thief
is not an overly serious or drab book, far from it, it's not written in the
tipsy, punch-drunk style of the Malone novels. Despite the typical Ricean plot elements,
there's a serious, but human, touch to the story and there were a few very well
drawn scenes. I liked the book is what I'm trying to say. But then again, Rice
seldom disappoints.
Love Craig Rice. I'll add this to my "must find" list.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of Rice's ghosting, Wiki has this to say:
"Craig Rice also ghostwrote for a number of celebrities, including Gypsy Rose Lee and George Sanders.[3] "While the collaboration with Gypsy is often reported, Mike Grost writes, "In the recently published and throroughly well researched biography of Gypsy Rose Lee (Stripping Gypsy: The Life of Gypsy Rose Lee, Oxford University Press, 2009) [author Noralee Frankelit makes it clear] that Craig Rice DID NOT write either of Lee's comic mystery novels. This is supported with correspondence between Lee and Rice. Rice did, however, help craft the screenplay for The G String Murders which became the Barbara Stanwyck vehicle Lady of Burlesque." Her association with Sanders came about as a result of her work on the screenplays of two of The Falcon movies, The Falcon's Brother (1942, Sanders's final outing as The Falcon) and The Falcon in Danger (1943, when Sanders's brother Tom Conway had taken over the role)."
I wrote that about Gypsy Rose Lee's biography, not Mike Grost. That quote is taken from Mike Grost's article on Craig Rice at the Golden Age of Detection Wiki, but I added the quoted portion as an amended update to his article. I even signed and dated it. Wouldn't be the first time someone else received credit for something I wrote. See this page as proof.
DeleteThe subject of the Rice/Rose authorship was touched upon in my review of Mother Finds a Body. Rose wrote the to two books, no doubt about that, but the one I read looked at Rice's mystery
Deletestories for inspiration.
It's one of Rice's most difficult books to get. It's often confused with the Dodge book that formed the basis for Hitchcock's film of the same name.
ReplyDeleteI spoke with the 2 authors of the Gypsy bios. Neither found any word of Rice writing the novels. Hopefully, we can lay that rumor to rest finally.
Not to nitpick, it was Georgiana Randolph Craig. :) Rice was her adopted name.
My humble apologies. I copy-paste info on the writers, such as full names, from the GAD Wiki. Lazy, I know.
DeleteGreat stuff TC (and well done on sourcing a copy) - I love there is confusion even over the attribution of the writing about her work (or not) as a ghost - then again, I can;t imagine getting Jogn and Mike mixed up ...
ReplyDeleteYou're right and fits the zanines of her stories. There's also confusion over the co-authorship of George Sanders' Crime On My Hands. Rice was a professional creator of mysteries far beyond the end.
DeleteSo weird that I am reading HOME SWEET HOMICIDE right now.
ReplyDeleteWe always blame the ghost of Harry Stephen Keeler around here whenever there's a coincidence.
DeleteHOME SWEET HOMICIDE is the only book I've ever read that I didn't want to end--and that's because she never wrote a sequel.
ReplyDeleteI'm actually glad Rice never wrote a sequel. It would've been difficult to live up to Home Sweet Homicide and that it stands on its own is part of the story's strength.
Delete