Tag: detective fiction

Briefly Noted: ‘Mother Finds a Body,’ by Gypsy Rose Lee

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn books2 Comments
Original

This novel, published in 1942, was considered a sequel to Lee’s 1941 novel The G-String Murders which had been made into a “cleaned-up” film starring Barbara Stanwyck called “Lady of Burlesque.” A read The G-String Murders when I was in junior high school and thought it was a hoot.  It suddenly appeared on the family’s bookshelves and then disappeared after I read it and put it back. I never asked questions about why books came and went because that would have diluted our cases of plausible deniability.

From the Publisher

“This encore performance by the author of The G-String Murders is simply “one of the greatest mysteries ever written” (Philadelphia Daily News).

Current

“It’s supposed to be a quiet honeymoon getaway for celebrated stripper Gypsy Rose Lee and Biff Brannigan, ex-comic and ex-Casanova of the Burly Q circuit, settled as they are in a cozy trailer built for two. If you don’t count Gypsy’s overbearing mother, a monkey act, and Gee Gee, a.k.a. the Platinum Panic. Not to mention the best man found shot to death in the bathtub. Strippers are used to ballyhoo, but this time it’s murder.

“Leave it to Gypsy and her latest scandal to draw a crowd: Biff’s burnt-out ex-flame, a sleazy dive owner with a Ziegfeld complex, a bus-and-truck circus troupe, and a local Texas sheriff randy for celebrities. But when another corpse turns up with a knife in his back, Gypsy fears that some rube is dead set on pulling the curtain on her bump and grind. She’s been in the biz long enough to know this ghastly mess is just a tease of things to come.”

Questions were asked whether Lee really wrote the novels or used the ghost writer Craig Rice (aka Georgiana Ann Randolph Craig called the “Dorothy Parker of detective fiction”) Rice said she did not write either of Lee’s novels.

Mother Finds a Body gets off to a quick start:

“A temperature of one hundred and ten at night isn’t exactly the climate for murder, and mother was suffering from a chronic case of both. She pushed the damp, tight curls off her forehead and tapped her foot impatiently on the trailer doorstep.

“‘You either bury that body in the woods tonight, or you finish your honeymoon without your mother.'”

Don’t ask why mother came along on a honeymoon because that seems more sordid than a dead guy in the bathtub.

—Malcolm

Discovering ‘The G-String Murders’ by Gypsy Rose Lee

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn authors, writing2 Comments

The tall bookshelf on the righthand side of our living room fireplace was either magic or was monitored by my parents who put books there–from some hidden trove–during my junior high and high school years when I was deemed ready to read them.

One of these was a small book in a plain brown dustjacket written for young men who were old enough to learn how sex was accomplished. I read it in my bedroom and then put it back on the tall bookshelf from which it soon disappeared until it was time for the middle brother to read it. I have no idea what the book was called or when it was published. In general, the words and illustrations were more accurate and of higher literary quality (less profane, too) than the information written on the restroom stalls in the men’s bathrooms at school.

I still have the second book that appeared about the time the movie “Gypsy” was released in 1962. When I didn’t return it to the tall shelf, nobody mentioned it. It appeared after the book about how to have sex, though I didn’t need a set of instructions to enjoy Gypsy Rose Lee’s 1941 detective novel The G-String Murders. I liked the book. I still do. And I think she wrote it or wrote most of it in spite of the fact various people think somebody else wrote it.

It’s set in a burlesque theater with a narrator named Gypsy. According to teacher and scholar Maria DiBattista, “The book is still readable today for its brisk, sometimes witty, and unapologetically randy account of the personal and professional jealousies, the routines and props (the grouch bags, pickle persuaders, and, of course, G-strings), even the substandard plumbing common to a life in burlesque.” 

Letters that Lee sent to Simon and Schuster while she was writing the novel tend to prove that she wrote it rather than W. H. Auden, Craig Rice, and other suspects. The book is still in print.

Amazon Description

Lee – Wikipedia Photo

“Narrating the twisted tale of a backstage double murder, Gypsy Rose Lee, the queen of the striptease, provides a tantalizing glimpse into the underworld of burlesque theatre in 1940s America. When one performer is found strangled with a G-string, no one is above suspicion. A host of clueless coppers face off against the theatre’s tough-talking guys and dolls, and when a second murder occurs, it’s clear that Gypsy and her cohorts will have to crack the case themselves. A dazzling and wisecracking murder mystery noir that was the basis of the 1943 film Lady of Burlesque, starring Barbara Stanwyck.”

In part, I think it’s the movie (inspired by her memoir Gypsy: A Memoir) “Gypsy” with Natalie Wood and this novel that keep Gypsy Rose Lee’s name from fading out of the public’s consciousness. After all, burlesque is long gone. She lived between 1911 and 1970. In her later years, she appeared here and there including “Hollywood Squares.” In 2010, novelist Karen Abbott released the novel “American Rose: A Nation Laid Bare: The Life and Times of Gypsy Rose Lee” to high acclaim.

So, Gypsy is still here one way or another, and that first edition copy isn’t leaving my shelf.

–Malcolm

Malcolm R. Campbell

Publisher: Thomas-Jacob Publishing

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