Who Was That Lady? Craig Rice: The Queen of Screwball Mystery

by Jeffrey Marks

Rice Was on the Cover of Time: Craig Rice, the author of fourteen novels, countless short stories, and a number of true crime pieces, once rivaled Agatha Christie in sales. Rice's popularity with the reading public (FDR was a fan) landed her on the cover of Time in January 1946. While rumors about Rice continue to surface within the mystery community -- i.e. did she really write the Gypsy Rose Lee mysteries? -- the past fifty years have seen her fall into relative obscurity. "Rice was something of a mystery herself", Marks says. "Nearly every identification point about her 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". Following a trail that led from Venice, Italy to Venice Beach, CA, Marks talked to a number of her contemporaries, her family, and her friends to find the answers to those questions. The biography, complete with footnotes, index, and eight pages of photographs (many never before published), covers her life and firmly establishes the oeuvre of Rice's novels and short story works.

Genres: Nonfiction, Biography, Mystery

186 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 2001