Upcoming Grolier Club exhibition: "Key Books in Detective Fiction."

Feminist Press ed.
of The G-String Murders

New York's Grolier Club will open the exhibition "Whodunit? Key Books in Detective Fiction" in November 2023, which will feature significant and unusual mystery works from the collection of Grolier Club member Jeffrey Johnson. Items will include The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens,  The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle, The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie, and The G-String Murders by Gypsy Rose Lee (often thought to be ghosted by Craig Rice).

Lady of burlesque (and mystery).

Feminist Press notes that a number of independent bookstores are participating in giveaways this month of some of its mystery titles: Gypsy Rose Lee's recently reissued Mother Finds a Body (with a foreword by her son, Erik Lee Preminger) and its predecessor, The G-String Murders; Dorothy B. Hughes's In a Lonely Place; and Vera Caspary's Laura.

Here is Barbara Stanwyck jitterbugging and performing Russian splits in Lady of Burlesque (film adaptation of The G-String Murders).

Let me entertain you.

Susan Elkin reviews Noralee Frankel's Stripping Gypsy, a new biography of stripper Gypsy Rose Lee, in the Independent; there are brief mentions of Lee's sister, actress June Havoc, and Lee's writing of "two thrillers." However, the role of mystery author Craig Rice in the creation of the first one, The G-String Murders (1941), is still debated today.

About the image: Barbara Stanwyck in Lady of Burlesque, film adaptation of The G-String Murders (1943, dir. William Wellman). To see Stanwyck perform one of the best song-and-dance numbers in the film, including some amazing front splits, go here.