John J. Malone #01: Eight Faces at Three

- Blurb -

John J. Malone, defender of the guilty, is notorious for getting his culpable clients off. It' s the innocent ones who are problems. Like Holly Inglehart, accused of piercing the black heart of her well-heeled and tyrannical aunt Alexandria with a lovely Florentine paper cutter. No one who knew the old battle-axe liked her, but Holly' s prints were found on the murder weapon. Plus, she had a motive: She was about to be disinherited for marrying a common bandleader. With each new lurid headline, Holly' s friends and supporters start to rally. There' s North Shore debutante Helene Brand; Holly' s groom' s press agent, Jake Justus; the madam of a local brothel and Alexandria' s hand-wringing servants. But not one of them can explain the queerest bent to the crime: At the time of the murder, every clock in the Inglehart mansion stopped dead. And that' s only the first twist in a baffling case of "aunty-cide"-because Alexandria won' t be the last to die. The first novel in Rice' s John J. Malone series, Eight Faces at Three introduces the hard-drinking Chicago-based attorney that made the author a household name. Comic, witty and lush, the Malone books are a throwback to a time when alcoholism was commonplace and murder (or, reading about murder) was fun. Fans of Dashiell Hammett' s The Thin Man series and Richard and Frances Lockridge' s Mr. and Mrs. North will find much to enjoy in the witty banter of Malone and his constant companions, Brand and Justus.