Yesterdays' book "review"

OK, sorry, I had to finish the thing last night before I felt I could really comment. And it's not much of a comment, because it's really not much of a book. Years ago I discovered the 1940's "madcap mysteries" lady, Craig Rice, and started collecting her books as I could find them. I don't have all of them yet and probably won't. Thing is, the poor lady was a raging alcoholic and single mom and her life was not that great, and cut short by the drinking when she was only like, 47. She wrote "comic" mysteries, most featuring a hard-drinking (surprise) Chicago lawyer named John Malone. His cohorts were likewise more or less hard-drinking (a LOT of drinking goes on in these books - I mean a LOT) musicians, guys, dolls, PR flaks, grainy and more-or-less competent or incompetent cops... Anyway, the one I read this time is 8 Faces at 3.  An old lady is murdered in a house where every clock (8 of them) has stopped at 3:00 a.m. It was no surprise to me when I read on a mystery reviewer's blog that she started with that premise with no idea at all why it happened that way, and just pantsed it all the way through. The explanation for the clocks is, frankly, a dud. But she probably owed her publisher the manuscript so she wrapped it up in dud-wrap and sent it in, and her books were apparently popular enough that nobody cared that the very premise of the title was stupid.

Sorry, maybe I wasn't in the mood to read Craig Rice this week.