Customer Reviews

The Lady in the Morgue

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I read this book in college as part of a course on Detective Fiction. The professor (I believe) offered it along w/ Chandler and Dashiell Hammett as the quintescential anti-hero of the era. What I remember most was that while attempting to solve the case, the shamus seizes every opportunity to "party" for lack of a better word. Very funny, very well written.

This is one of the great B mystery paperbacks that came out during the early forties. William Crane, an alcoholic private detective, gets involved in his first big case.
Highlights include the body of nude blonde found hanging from her own bathroom door, the subsequent disappearance of a body, a morgue attendant dies, and so does a left-handed undertaker.
It's up to wise-cracking William Crane to solve this amusing mystery.

In the Cook County, IL morgue there is the body of a beautiful
girl no one knows who it is. This is the 1930's Chicago and
William Crane, a private Detective down on his luck decides he
is going to find out who she is; after all there could be money
in it for him and sure enough a wealthy NY family hears of the
body and decides it could be their daughter who spends alot of
time wandering around the country then of course Crane is more
interested than ever.William Reuhlmann, Ph.D writes the
forward and compares the story to many detective stories written
in the 40' and Dashiell Hammett. I really do not agree. I see,
Mickey Spillane written all over this book. To his fans, you will
probably very much enjoy this book. Just not my favorite type of
mystery.