True Crime from Craig Rice

"People are not murdered by strangers. They are murdered by their friends. And often by their best friend."

"The Murdered Magdalen."
By Craig Rice (real name: Georgiana Ann Randolph Craig, 1908-57).
True life crime account (5 pages).
Found in Mercury Mystery Book-Magazine, October 1955.
Online HERE.

"Craig Rice, best known for such mystery fiction as her 'Home Sweet Homicide,' has also delved often into the realm of true crime. Here, in a tale possibly even stranger than many of her famous fictional stories, Miss Rice tells of a young prostitute whose determination to go straight led her, ironically, into a fiery death . . ."

When Craig Rice took an interest in real life crime, she brought her fiction writing skills with her:

BOOGIE-WOOGIE JAM SESSIONS IN A deserted farmhouse, murder by fire, and a manhunt that rivaled anything ever seen in a movie thriller, combined to pro-vide the police of a dozen cities and the Federal Bureau of Investigation with a neat puzzle in crime detection back in the Fall of 1945.  . . .

"The Air-Tight Alibi."
By Craig Rice (real name: Georgiana Ann Randolph Craig, 1908-57).
True life crime account (5 pages).
Found in Mercury Mystery Book-Magazine, February 1956.
Online HERE.

"If young and beautiful Minnie Tucker had been unfaithful to her husband, you could hardly blame her. Felix Tucker, after all, had been a cruel man. But the fact that he beat his wife was not conclusive evidence that he might also have killed her. Besides, there were two other men in Minnie's life . . ."

Life abounds in ironies—and so does death:

WHEN BEAUTIFUL, YOUNG MINNIE Margaret Tucker finished her washing that May morning in 1942 and poured out the water over the side of the porch, she did not know that she had just set the trap that would catch her murderer.  . . .

Resources:
- If you'd like to read more about Craig Rice, the crime fiction author, go HERE, HERE, and HERE; a list of her shorter writings is HERE.

- Jeffrey Marks's definitive biography of Rice, as both Kindle and discounted paper texts, is HERE.

Category: True crime