Who Was That Lady? Craig Rice: The Queen of Screwball Mystery (2001; 2021) by Jeffrey Marks

February marks the 30^th anniversary of the small press Crippen & Landru and to celebrate the senior editor, Jeffrey Marks, has given various bloggers a copy of one of their books to review. There was choice over which title it would be, and whilst Brad at Ah Sweet Mystery picked The School of Hard Knox, I went a little left field and chose a nonfiction title, looking at a vintage American mystery novelist, whose work I have got a lot out of over the years.

To date I have read 10 of Craig Rice’s [Georgiana Ann Randolph Craig] novels. Six of these come from her J. John Malone, Jake Justus, and Helene Brand series, 2 are from her Bingo Riggs & Handsome Kusak series, 1 is a non-series titles called Home Sweet Homicide (1944) and finally 1 of her mysteries written under the Michael Venning penname. I have also read a few of her short stories via Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine.

Synopsis

‘Craig Rice, the author of fourteen novels, countless short stories, and a number of true crime pieces, once rivalled 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.’

The edition of the copy I was reading, was the 20^th anniversary edition.

Overall Thoughts

‘If all unhappy families are unhappy in their fashion, then Craig’s family’s lack of parental role models set them apart. To understand Craig’s demons (and canon), her family must be understood as well. The impact is noticeable. While the debate of nature vs. nurture continues in personality development, Craig’s history most definitely played a role in her writings.’

These are the opening lines to this biography, and I think it sets up well the drive of this book, and I think Marks does a good job of unpacking how Craig’s early beginnings influenced her adult life choices and in turn how these shaped and coloured her writing career.

I knew Rice’s life had its fair share of drama, but it wasn’t until I read this book that I realised how unstable and uncertain her childhood was. Rice’s mother (who was raised by a maternal grandmother) left her in the care of her paternal grandmother and extended relations (she would ultimately be adopted by Nancy and Elton Rice; Nancy being the half-sister of Bosco, Craig’s father), as soon as her mother was fit enough to travel back to Europe where Craig’s father was. For the next three years Craig Rice built roots with her paternal family, only for this security to be ripped apart when her parents turned up three years later to reclaim her like a piece of holiday luggage. Even worse, three years after that when she was 6 her parents dumped her again to go back to Europe. There seems to have been an expectation that Craig Rice was something they could drop and pick up whenever they felt like it. It is unsurprising that Jeffrey Marks notes that ‘abandonment […] was the central theme in her fiction.’ When Craig was 11 years old, her mother returned alone to take her back, but this time Craig said no, or rather “Go to hell.” Craig’s mother did not take this well and she looked for ways to hurt her daughter throughout the rest of her life. Marks indicates that this difficult beginning left Rice with separation anxiety and as the rest of his biography shows, this state unfortunately contributed to some of Rice’s self-destructive behaviour patterns, and it also effected the romantic relationships she made.

As well as looking at the problems Rice had or made for herself, this book also explores how her life and lifestyle were perceived by others. This includes Time magazine. Marks mentions that ‘Time Magazine would later refer to Craig’s return to the Chicago area as “a decade of failure and booze”. The title seems excessively harsh for a woman who started a family and learned the basics of her trade in those same ten years.’ Since Marks’ biography begins with Rice’s parents and their own childhoods, it is interesting to see how Rice replicates some of the key failings of her own parents, farming her children out to other relatives. Marks does not whitewash Rice’s mistakes but writes about them compassionately, recognising the factors which influenced them.

When introducing the topic of Rice’s move into detective fiction, Marks considers what she brought to the genre through/with comedy:

‘She helped to level the playing fields between the shores. The Americans stretched the comic side of the detective story in ways that the British hadn’t. Even though John Dickson Carr was born in America, many of his settings and characters closely resemble the British great detectives. The Carr and Carter Dickson books (Carr’s pseudonym) feature larger-than-life characters who sparked unusual developments through their own outlandish personalities. This personality-driven humour was closest in nature to Rice’s brand of hilarity.’

I thought this was an interesting point. There were certainly humorous detective stories published in the UK before Rice began writing, but I wondered: Did we have to wait until the 1940s and the publication of Joan Coggin’s Lady Lupin series and the first Gervase Fen mysteries to get out and out comic crime from British writers? I can’t say I have a definite answer. Pondering this question further I did remember the work of Alan Melville from the 1930s such as Death of Anton (1936), as well as Leo Bruce’s Sergeant Beef mysteries, which also began in 1936 with Case for Three Detectives. I was also wondering about the Leonidas Witherall mysteries, written by the American author Phoebe Atwood Taylor, under the penname of Alice Tilton. This author is mentioned later in Marks’ book, but in such a way that makes it sound like Rice was pioneering the comic crime style first, when that was not the case, as Witherall’s first outing took place in Beginning with a Bash in 1937, two years before Rice’s first J. John Malone novel.

Marks also looks at the rise of the hardboiled novel:

‘[Dashiell] Hammett’s book rose above the plot – the puzzle, as it were, allows the reader to re-read the novel. Many of the Golden Age books would only be read once. The book’s convoluted plot was its entire purpose; the characters and prose could not sustain another glance without the author’s tricky sleight-of-hand.’

This is a point I disagreed with as there is no evidence brought to suggest that ‘Golden Age books would only be read once’ and Hammett’s would not. Moreover, this section, in general, adheres to stereotyped differences between the two subgenres, which do not stand up to scrutiny. I also wonder what others make of this idea, which considers how comic crime was affected by hardboiled crime fiction:

‘With the advent of the hardboiled school, humour was as dead as Sam Spade’s partner. Few chuckles could exist in the violent world of these detectives. Hammett’s books afforded few laughs, although wisecracks did appear in some of Chandler’s work. The situational humour and the comic characters that had been prevalent in the Golden Age books disappeared.’

Would others agree with this? One author which sprang to mind was Norbert Davis and his Doan and Carstairs series, which came a few years after the start of Rice’s Malone series. When it comes to categorising Rice’s mysteries Marks came to this conclusion:

‘Her books would have to be labelled hardboiled in the sense that her protagonist is a criminal lawyer in private practice, hired to investigate crimes for his clients. The people expected in a hardboiled mystery populate the books. Mafia, crooked aldermen, bartenders, and shady dealers. But even if the character was a threat he still had a likable side, a comic twist that made him endearing. Craig also included the upper crust of Chicago’s polite society, people who lived to consume alcohol and party. The novels lacked the violence and gritty feel of the streets. Mostly Rice’s novels defy characterisation, a humorous twist on the murder mystery.’

The madcap comic antics of the Jake, Helene, Malone series perhaps gives it a fairy-tale-for-adults sort of feel:

‘The cheerful can’t-be-beat attitude bounds off the page at the reader, letting them know that everything will work out before the last chapter. They’ll have a fun time getting there, no matter how bad things look for the heroes. These characters come across as children who never grew up, Peter Pan lost on the Windy City’s streets. Without responsibility, the trio’s only task is to have fun, toss back a few ryes, and find the killer.’

As Marks explores Rice’s life and her books, he also comments on how she went about writing her mysteries, which I found interesting. He notes that:

‘Craig’s writing habits were legendary. She wrote without an outline or character sketches or any good idea of where she was going, simply typing away until she’d completed a novel. The manic sessions would sometimes last for days. These focused writing sessions provided the first indication that perhaps Craig didn’t behave like other writers – she was driven to complete a work in a few sittings. No one would see her until she emerged with a finished book.’

He further adds that ‘in retrospect, Craig’s abnormally prodigious output can be attributed to bipolarity, frequently called manic-depressive syndrome.’ I was not aware Rice had this condition.

I enjoyed how Marks was able to highlight the parallels between the books Rice wrote and her own life. Despite having read 10 of her novels I did not notice the common themes that Marks brings up. When he does it seems so obvious that you wonder how you missed them. For example, many of her characters are orphans or have absent parents. In one of her mysteries she gives the villain of the piece the same nickname her mother had, ‘another lingering indication of her antipathy towards her birth mother.’ Furthermore: ‘The theme of the absent father turns up repeatedly in Georgiana’s fiction, showing that this subject remained on her mind at some level.’ Some of the most interesting parallels are drawn between Rice’s life experiences and her two books: The Wrong Murder (1940) and The Right Murder (1941). In the former the money tensions between Jake and Helene Justus reflect Craig Rice and her then husband Larry Lipton. Larry was an unsuccessful “literary” author who publishers showed little interest in, yet he felt resentful towards his wife’s literary success. Meanwhile in The Right Murder the appearance of Helene Brand’s absentee father parallels the reappearance of Craig’s own father in 1941, who she had not seen since the age of 6. Marks writes that:

‘Three characters, all named Gerald Tuesday, bear a striking resemblance to Bosco. While Bosco’s career in the Orient wasn’t as rough as the Tuesday brothers, likenesses exist: cut off for years from their family trading in commodities, and residing in the Orient, the Tuesdays were strangers to their kin, just as Bosco was to Craig.’

In addition, Marks points out that ‘this book also raised an issue that wasn’t spoken of in the 1940s, physical abuse of a spouse.’ Marks further adds that ‘Rice became one of the first mystery authors to moralise over social problems in her books.’ This is another statement which interests me, as it makes me wonder which other authors of the time incorporated social problems into their mysteries. Physical abuse was something Rice unfortunately had firsthand experience of, as Larry was violent towards her, as were several of her future partners. This is one of the aspects of her life which make it sad to read about. You wish someone with that kind of talent had a life which was much kinder.

As the blurb for this book suggests, there are a lot of question marks surrounding Rice’s life and the works she wrote. The facts have often been hard to come by as there are a lot of rumours and hearsay. Marks is good dispelling much of this, examining the evidence and bringing in information from a number of different angles. One such rumour which he addresses and refutes  is the idea that Craig ghostwrote The G String Murders (1941) by Gypsy Rose Lee.

I wasn’t aware that Craig Rice wrote outside of the mystery genre but due to the negative influence of Larry ‘look[ing] down upon the mystery novels that Craig produced even though the royalties paid his bills […] Craig [arguably] fell victim to that same snobbery to some degree. To remedy this situation and gain Larry’s approval, she decided to write serious novels that dealt with themes outside the mystery field.’ Telefair (1942) was the book that resulted. Oh, and if you’re still on the fence about Larry, Marks notes that: ‘Years later, despite her best efforts, Larry would claim to be the sounding board for all Craig’s mystery plots. Later still, he would profess to co-authorship. Despite these claims, Larry felt himself a literary writer worthy of some notice.’ These claims were invariably made so he would receive payouts from the courts during and after their divorce (all the while Rice was having to deal with the consequences of Larry, who had been in charge of the family finances, failing to pay the IRS for two years, for the earnings Rice made during that time.) So yeah, nice guy…

One type of nonfiction that I enjoy reading are collections of reviews for vintage mystery novels written at the time they were released. I like discovering new titles and I enjoy a humorous putdown or sendup. To date I have reviewed collections featuring the reviews of Todd Downing, Anthony Boucher, Charles Williams, and Dorothy L. Sayers. So, I was interested to learn more about Rice’s own critiquing of mystery fiction in her ‘bi-weekly column for The Chicago Daily News entitled, “It’s a Mystery to Me.”’ Marks writes that ‘the column mixed gossip rag with severe criticism to provide insights into the mysterydom of the war years.’ Moreover, he adds that:

‘The newspapers provided Rice with advanced reading copies of mystery novels, which she promptly sold to Ned Guymon for his collection. Her private reviews to Guymon, a word or two scribbled on the book list, gave more insight and honesty than the column. On several occasions, she labelled books by friends or well-known authors as stinkers.’

It also transpires that she used her column to praise Crime on my Hands (1944) by George Sanders, a book she partly ghost wrote. She does not mention her involvement and I say ‘partly ghost wrote’ as Rice’s own ghost writer finished it off. I must admit I was a bit disappointed by Rice’s approach to reviewing crime fiction. Giving us reviewers a bad name! In a way it makes me less inclined to read her reviews, as part of me will be wondering how honest the reviews are (something you never have to worry about with Dorothy L. Sayers!).

This didn’t stop me feeling sad for her, as it is not long into the 1940s that it is evident that her dysfunctional and self-destructive behaviours were beginning to overtly impact her work negatively. Her struggles with alcoholism arguably created a domino effect contributing to her growing health problems and aggravated her difficulties with overspending. The need for money unfortunately led to a thread of unprofessionalism creeping into her work:

‘Craig continued to get advances against books that would not be written, which slowly eroded her credibility. By the end of 1944, she owed three books to three separate publishers, only one of which would ever see print.’

Nevertheless ‘the Time magazine article on January 28^th, 1946, put Craig alone in the world of mystery. No mystery writer before or after her has ever been the subject of a Time cover story.’ This is a considerable achievement. It is just a shame that the accompanying article is not very positive. Rice arguably shot herself in the foot there as when she was being interviewed, she lied and also didn’t correct any misunderstandings the interviewer had, so the magazine understandably got annoyed when other parties refuted the statements Rice made. Marks provides an extract from the piece:

‘The article, entitled “Mulled Murder with Spice,” was re-written, excluding all of the stories that Mary had refuted. Hostility at being duped showed in the piece. The tone of the profile oozed with condescension, even allowing for the attitude towards women in the middle years of this century. “To her the era of peace just ending had meant a dozen years of bohemian life; three bungled attempts at marriage; innumerable failures to write poetry, novels and music’; barely successful efforts to earn a living around newspapers; and some definite progress in helping local bohemians support the distilling industry.” The fact that those dozen years where Craig had tried to earn a living were typically called the Great Depression didn’t appear in the article and to have made any money in journalism was an accomplishment in the 1930s. Her poetry failures had been published in several anthologies and won small press awards.’

Passages like this highlight the importance of a book like Marks’, as it enables readers to have a better sense of the true facts and not just take magazine articles at face value. Marks does not blindly defend Rice’s faults, which I appreciated and one example of her unprofessionalism which caught my attention was when she was reporting on trials and real-life crimes for newspapers during the 1940s. For one particular case she needed an interview with someone who could provide a relevant commentary about ongoing events, and she decided she would have one with Erle Stanley Gardner. Sound choice. The only problem was, as Gardner recalled, was that ‘she explained to me that she didn’t have any opportunity to get in touch with me, so she had an imaginary interview and tried to think of things I would have said if I had been talking at the other end of the line.’ Naturally moves like this made her rather unpopular with the writing community.

I have used the word ‘sad’ more than once when writing this review, and as the biography moves onto Rice’s final ten years of life (she died aged 49), the feeling becomes ever more pertinent. The book ends wondering what Rice’s life and writing would have been like if there had been better medical treatments available at that time. In some ways she was a shooting star. Her work dazzled at the beginning, but by the end was a shadow of its former self (although she did manage to do a number of good short stories in the 1950s). But as Marks says it is ‘difficult to speculate’ as ‘a more balanced Craig over a longer career might have written many more books to make us smile’. But ‘a more stable Craig might not have had the comedic talents that shine in her books.’ So, I think all we can do is enjoy the books she did write, with their zany antics. Marks’ biography really helped me to understand Rice better as a person and as a writer. When I next read some of her work, it will be interesting to see if I can spot the themes.

Rating: 4.25/5

Source: Review Copy (Crippen & Landru)