45 Murderers

A Collection of True Crime Stories

De: Craig Rice

Narrado por: Johnny Heller, Jo Anna Perrin

From Hollywood’s Black Dahlia to the Arkansas Bluebeard: an anthology of true-crime profiles by “the grand dame of mystery” (Ed Gorman)

Whether venturing into a blood-spattered farm in Texas, down a lonely mountain road in Alabama, or into the deceptively sunny Ohio suburbs, acclaimed mystery writer Craig Rice lends her hard-boiled style and a wicked irony to this gallery of real-life murders. Among them...

A saintly middle-aged widow bludgeoned to death in her New Jersey home; the headless torsos of two women found floating in the Lake of the Ozarks; a New Year’s fire in Pennsylvania set to cover the traces of a more ghastly crime; a traveling evangelist on a divine mission blown to bits in Berkley; an aspiring starlet tortured, bisected, and dumped in a vacant LA lot; and a New York couple poisoned to death by the mysterious “Veiled Murderess”, a convicted killer who never revealed her motives - or her true identity.

Culled from Rice’s work as a crime reporter, “the stories in 45 Murderers have withstood time” as a century-spanning, cross-country tour of the sinister underbelly of the American Dream (Jeffrey Marks, author of Who Was That Lady?).

©1952 Craig Rice (P)2021 Blackstone Publishing

retro

How interesting. it seems Craig Rice was a pen name for mystery writer Georgiana Craig, who wrote mostly in the 1940s to 50s. She was noted for her sharp wit. I can't think of a better narrator for a period piece like this than Johnny Heller.

patronizing

The stories are bizarre, only pre ww2, and misogynistic. it's not even a good crime book for the 50s, it's like young adult with graphic murder details and garbage puns.

The worst

Possibly the worst book on Audible. I’m not even sure it’s actually ABOUT murder. It’s just a Sherlock memoir, if Sherlock was a simple country Paw Paw sitting on the porch of the general store telling you how smart he is.