People VS. Withers & Malone collects the screwball comedy/mysteries of Stuart Palmer and Craig Rice. Ellery Queen’s “Introduction” gives the details of Palmer’s and Rice’s friendship over the decades.
This collection of stories features the collaboration of two sleuths, John J. Malone, alcoholic and womanizing lawyer of Craig Rice’s mystery books, and the canny schoolteacher, Hildegarde Withers, created by Stuart Palmer. These stories were written by Stuart Palmer, with Ms. Rice contributing an idea or plot point, but otherwise apparently not involved in writing process.
I really liked the title story, “People VS. Withers & Malone,” where Withers and Malone hunt for a missing witness in the murder trial of a Malone client and wind up pulling off some courtroom pyrotechnics in Perry Mason style.
In “Cherchez la Frame,” the two sleuths travel to Hollywood to look for the missing wife of a Chicago gangster and find her strangled with Malone’s tie in his hotel bathroom. As usual, Withers has to crack the case to save Malone.
The first Withers and Malone collaboration, “Once Upon a Train” (original title: “Loco Motive” and published in 1950) sets the pattern for the rest of the series. This spoof of the Murder-on-the-Orient-Express genre takes place on the Super-Century train traveling from Chicago to New York. A naked dead man is found in Withers’s compartment while the murder weapon was conveniently planted in Malone’s adjoining compartment. A clever combination of quick thinking by Malone and a revealing dream by Withers solves the murder.
If you’re in the mood for some screw-ball mayhem with a dollop of humor thrown in, I recommend People VS. Withers & Malone. GRADE: B+
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
AN INFORMAL INTRODUCTION BY Ellery Queen — 7
PREFACE BY SUART PALMER — 13
Once Upon a Train — 17
Cherchez La Frame — 49
Autopsy and Eva — 81
Rift in the Loot — 115
People VS. Withers & Malone — 151
Withers and Malone, Brain-Stormers — 203
