Solving Crimes While Drunk

 

Craig Rice's real name was Georgiana Ann Randolph Walker Craig. When she began publishing prose fiction in 1939 (after working as a writer in radio), she began using the pen name.

Her stuff is wonderful--a witty combination of hard-boiled detective stories and screwball comedy. Her most successful character was alcoholic lawyer John J. Malone, who acting more like a P.I. than a lawyer, only took cases with the upmost reluctance, and solved them without ever bothering to sober up.

To quote his entry on the Thrilling Detective website: Despite being billed as “Chicago’s noisiest and most noted criminal lawyer,” Malone acts more like a private eye than a member of the court. And a particularly hard-drinking and frequent drunk private eye at that. Despite a rep for courtroom pyrotechniques, he’s far more likely to be found carousing around the city looking for clues (or a drink), perstering suspects (or witnesses), or holding court at Joe the Angel’s City Hall Bar than in any court of law.

Rice died all too young in 1957. Three years later, in the first issue of the short-lived digest Ed McBain's Mystery Book (1960), one last John J. Malone story appeared. It was ghost-written by Lawrence Block, but I can't find any indication as to whether Block was finishing an incomplete story or writing an original Malone story on his own. Anyway, Block does a great job of emulating Rice's style. If I hadn't done a modicum of research for this post, I would have assumed "Hard Sell" was a Rice story without questioning this.

Malone is hired by the owner of a company that sends out salesmen to peddle magazine subscriptions. Someone has murdered four of those salemen. The first three could have been accidents, but the last guy got a bullet in the head. Malone is tasked with figuring out whodunit.

The investigation proceeds along logical lines, but the story is dripping with humor. Malone does indeed solve the crime, but there's an interesting twist at the end in what he does with that solution. Read it yourself HERE. 

I found out while writing this that Rice teamed up with Stuart Palmer (creater of mystery-solving schoolteacher Hildegard Withers) to write an anthology worth of stories in which Hildegard and Malone team up. I have GOT to read those!