Laverne Rice (1890-1966) was a schoolteacher in New York, who also wrote short stories. Indexing is spotty for the years she was active, but the following complete citations were found with tantalizing suggestions of others:
- “Haze.” NEW COPY. Columbia University Press, 1930?
- “Just One Great Love.” Saturday Evening Post, February 7, 1931: 33–105.
- “Wings for Janie.” NEW COPY: 1931. Columbia University Press, 1931.
- “Those Things Don’t Change.” Harper’s Bazaar, August 1933: 54.
She published one novel, a mystery titled Well Dressed for Murder (Doubleday, 1938). It was reprinted by Coachwhip Press in paperback in 2019 and ebook in 2020. The paperback version has an informative introduction by historian Curtis Evans.
Set in the historic 18th-century family home of Marian and Hamilton Shephard somewhere in the suburbs of New York City, the story could have taken place any time in the middle of the 20th century. I was surprised by the modernity of the tone and writing. It is told in first person by Nancy Sherwin, a young cousin of the Shepherds, living in the house with her mother Helen, who served as housekeeper while the two Shephard siblings travelled and organized their parties when they were home.
It was while Hamilton Shephard was visiting Europe that he met and suddenly married an actress half his age named Jocelyn King. Nancy relates the dissonance that occurred when the Shephard’s old money mores collided with Jocelyn’s theater world values. The covert unease of everyone bubbled over eventually in an outburst from Jocelyn that indicated she thought it was time for Helen and Nancy to leave. Later that day Jocelyn is found murdered in an upstairs room. She’d lain there as her dinner guests wondered why she missed the meal. With at least eighteen people in the house, the police struggle to establish who was where at any relevant time. Then the second murder occurs.
This book put me in mind of an early Lieutenant Heimrich mystery from Richard and Frances Lockridge. The style is similar and both series are set in suburban New York. The conflict between established families and brash newcomers is a common one in the Lockridge series, which started in 1941. The plot also reminds me of Christie’s There Is a Tide (Dodd, Mead, 1948), with the unexpected marriage of a wealthy man to a much younger woman marginalizing his family who’d always expected to inherit.
Regretfully, there seems to be little known about this promising author. Rice received enough critical acclaim for her work at the time it was published to make me wonder why there isn’t more of it. “Wings for Janie” was an O. Henry Memorial Award prize story for 1931, for instance. The mystery reviewer for the New York Times Isaac Anderson praised the book highly in his column for October 23, 1938. Anderson reviewed mysteries for the Times for 25 years. His opinion was so valued by his contemporaries that he contributed a chapter to Howard Haycraft’s The Art of the Mystery Story: A Collection of Critical Essays (Simon and Schuster, 1946). When pandemic research restrictions ease, I hope to look a little more in some of the esoteric serials databases for traces of her writing. In the meantime, fans of the traditional mystery have her engaging detective story that is smoothly paced, well written, and carefully plotted to entertain them.