Big Midget Murders

In Jake Justus's downtown nightclub, the headline act is the Big Midget, a performer so famous that crowds pack the joint just to watch him dance. When the little man turns up strangled with a noose made from eleven mismatched silk stockings, the case takes on a surreal quality that only deepens as the bodies start piling up. Attorney John J. Malone finds himself dragged into the investigation by his irrepressibly energetic friend Jake and Helene, whose beauty is matched only by her talent for landing them both in mortal peril. The police are stumped, the killer remains elusive, and somehow these three amateur sleuths must untangle a web of show business jealousy, stolen goods, and old grudges before someone else ends up dead. Craig Rice writes with the snap and timing of a born wisecracker, delivering a mystery where the jokes land as hard as the reveals. This is champagne mystery: bright, fizzy, and deceptively dangerous.