Rice, Craig - Having Wonderful Crime

Having Wonderful Crime is my first Craig Rice (and probably the last). I thought it read like a movie script, would have taken next to no work to convert it, and it seemed to have been designed to give people witty lines. However, it was completely impractical to one who watches CSI. The murder was a beheading in a hotel room and blood was not mentioned once. Apparently the room remained pristine throughout the investigation with any number of people trooping through. The medical examiners did not realize that the head was from a different individual than the body.

I like comical mysteries but this one stretched too far,

Victoria

Victoria's point is valid: as a real-life account of a murder investigation this book falls at the first hurdle. But it does provide a chance for his three heroes, the married Jake and Helene Justus and the lawyer John J Malone, to go through a murder investigation in the unfamiliar environs of New York. Much alcohol and many hearty meals are consumed as they befriend Dennis Morrison, the just-married man whose wife has been beheaded in the honeymoon suite of the hotel where they are all staying. What seems like an impossible crime slowly unravels as the involvement of other people is revealed. Not one of Rice's best, but worth reading for entertainment value.

Jon.