Author: Craig Rice

The Right Murder was my last read of 2025, which worked well, since the book starts on New Years Eve. Defense lawyer John J. Malone is getting drunk in a bar - no surprise - and missing Jake Justus and Helene Brand, who are on their honeymoon. This is a direct follow-up to The Wrong Murder, in which Mona McClane bets Jake her Casino that she can murder someone in a public places and get away with it. In that book a murder is solved, but Mona was not the killer and she states that they had ‘followed the wrong corpse," so the question of who she killed is still hanging out there. Then a man staggers into the bar, calls for Malone, and falls down dead, stabbed - and we're off. I don't think I'm giving away anything the title doesn't by saying this time the murder is connected to Mona. Before Malone and Chicago Police Captain von Flanagan have...

The Wrong Murder is another one that I finished at the end of December. I actually wanted to read #4 in the series, The Right Murder, which opens on New Year's Eve, but all the reviews said to read #3 first, which was the right choice. The Wrong Murder has a self-contained mystery, but it is also the set-up for The Right Murder - and I love those titles. This is also the first of Rice's book I've read. I don't know how I missed her. Jake Justus and Helene Brand have just gotten married and they are at a reception hosted by her father. Everyone is drinking - everyone is always drinking in these books. Jake runs into socialite Mona McClane and she ends up making what seems to be an absurd bet, but both she and Jake take it quite seriously. Mona bets that she can commit a murder in broad daylight with lots of witnesses and get...