Craig Rice

Craig Rice (born Georgiana Ann Randolph Craig; June 5, 1908 – August 28, 1957) was an American writer of mystery novels and short stories, described by book critic Bill Ruehlmann as "the Dorothy Parker of detective fiction, she wrote the binge and lived the hangover."

Early life

In 1908, Mary Randolph Craig reluctantly interrupted her globetrotting to return home to Chicago to give birth to her first child. Mary's husband, Harry Craig, was a Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin native. Soon after Georgiana's birth, Mary returned to her husband overseas, leaving Georgiana to travel from relative to relative. They returned in 1911 to meet their three-year-old daughter but then departed for Europe again, moving on to India when the war broke out. At that time, Georgiana found a permanent home in Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin, where she lived with her paternal aunt and uncle, Mr. and Mrs. Elton Rice, at 607 South Main Street. Elton Rice has been credited with stirring her interest in mysteries by reading her the poems and stories of Edgar Allan Poe.

Writing career

Rice's first steps in publishing were as a writer for The Milwaukee Journal and The Chicago American. In 1930-31, she started working for radio stations, first WCLO and then the Beacon Syndicate in 1931. Her first fictional character, Professor Silvernail, was created for WCLO Syndicate Serials (1933). For a number of years she tried unsuccessfully to write novels, poetry and music, but it was not until her first story of John J. Malone, which she published under her birth surname and adopted surname Craig Rice, that she enjoyed some hard-won success.

Gritty but humorous, Rice's stories uniquely combine the hard-boiled detective tradition with no-holds-barred, screwball comedy. Most of her output features a memorable trio of protagonists: Jake Justus, a handsome but none-too-bright press agent with his heart in the right place; Helene Brand, a rich heiress and hard-drinking party animal par excellence (to become Mrs. Justus in the later novels); and John Joseph Malone, a hard-drinking small-time lawyer (though both his cryptic conversation and sartorial habits are more reminiscent of such official or private detectives). Against the odds and often apparently more by luck than skill, these three manage to solve crimes whose details are often burlesque and surreal, sometimes to the point of Grand Guignol, and all involving the perpetually exasperated Captain Daniel Von Flanagan of the homicide squad. A few stories feature the team of Bingo Riggs and Handsome Kusak, small-time grifters who become involved in criminal situations and have to dig themselves free by solving the mystery.

Rice also ghostwrote for George Sanders. Because of their friendship, many fans assumed that Rice ghostwrote the two wildly popular mysteries by Gypsy Rose Lee. "While the collaboration with Gypsy is often reported", J.F. Norris writes, "in the recently published and thoroughly well researched biography of Gypsy Rose Lee (Stripping Gypsy: The Life of Gypsy Rose Lee, Oxford University Press, 2009) [author Noralee Frankel makes it clear] that Craig Rice did not [emphasis in the original] write either of Lee's comic mystery novels. This is supported with correspondence between Lee and Rice. Rice did, however, help with 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 assumed the role).

She collaborated with fellow mystery writer Stuart Palmer on screenplays and short stories. Ed McBain completed her final novel for which she furnished the principal characters, Bingo Riggs and Handsome Kusak. (The "collaboration" with McBain is a "posthumous collaboration in which McBain completed an unfinished book begun by Rice. In a foreword to at least one edition of the book, McBain wrote that the book was essentially half-finished in first draft, but there were no notes as to how she had intended to continue it, so he had to solve the mystery himself before completing the manuscript.)

Time magazine

On January 28, 1946, Rice appeared on the cover of Time magazine. The cover was created by Boris Artzybasheff.

Personal life

She had three children: two daughters and a son. "Craig Rice kept very few personal records. She was conventionally wed four times with other affairs." One of her husbands was beat poet Lawrence Lipton.

In 1952, she was the plaintiff in a bizarre court case in which she sued a grocer for false imprisonment following a shoplifting accusation over a bar of soap, only to have the case dismissed when she disappeared for several months and could not be located by her own attorney, well-known entertainment lawyer Louis L. Goldman.

Like many of her characters, Rice herself was an alcoholic and made at least two suicide attempts. She also suffered from deteriorating health, including deafness in one ear and blindness in one eye with incipient glaucoma in the other. She died of a barbiturate and alcohol overdose, aged 49.

Novels and short story collections

John J. Malone and Jake and Helene Justus

Eight Faces at Three a.k.a. Death at Three (1939) "John J. Malone, rumpled Chicago lawyer, teams up with press agent Jake Justus and eccentric heiress Helene Brand, to discover who killed a vicious dowager and why the murderer then made up the beds in the victim's house and stopped the clocks at 3:00."

The Corpse Steps Out (1940)

The Wrong Murder (1940)

The Right Murder (1941)

Trial by Fury (1941). The Philadelphia Inquirer, July 25, 1943

The Big Midget Murders (1942). The Philadelphia Inquirer, November 7, 1943

Having Wonderful Crime (1943). The Philadelphia Inquirer, January 30, 1944

The Lucky Stiff (1945)

The Fourth Postman (1948)

Knocked for a Loop (1957)

My Kingdom for a Hearse (1957)

The Name Is Malone (1958) Ten-story collection.

The Pickled Poodles (1960) By Larry M. Harris, a continuation of the John J. Malone series.