FORGOTTEN BOOK: THE WOMAN IN THE CASE

The Woman in the Case by "Ellery Queen" (Manfred B. Leer) (1967)

In 1964, the pseudonymous Ellery Queen published a small Dell paperback of true crime stories, Ellery Queen's International Case Book.  Three years later, another paperbound volume of true crime was puiblished, The Woman in the Case, this time from Bantam Books.  The stories in both books were first published in The American Weekly; the author was Manfred Lee, one of the two cousins behind the Ellery Queen name.  As far as I can tell, neither book has been reprinted.

The back cover copy for The Woman in the Case is a bit misleading:  "Here is a hair-raising collection of stories about women who killed...who killed for money...who killed out of jealousy...who killed out of sheer love for killing.  Mothers.  Daughters. Wives.  Girl friends.  Schoolgirls.  Hardened gun molls.  MURDERERS ALL!  Read about:  The mother who murdered her own son's wife.  The beautioful pistol-packing hillbilly who made Dillinger look like Casper Milquetoast.  The schoolgirl killers who even went Leopold and Loeb one better.  And dozens of other horrifying tales in The Woman in the Case."

First of all there are not "dozens" of other tales; the book contains just nineteen stories in its 122 pages.  And despite the over-hyped description, not every story is about women who kill; a number of them are about women who have been killed, and one is about a woman who solved a murder.  No matter what place a woman had in each tale, all of them are well-written and highly readable; some are ironic -- one woman managed to be declared innocent and left on an ocean voyage -- on the Titanic.  The most famous case covered is the Parker/Hulme murder; this story was first published four years after the killing, so the fact that one of the schoolgirl killers would grow up to be the late best-selling mystery author Anne Perry was not known.

  

All nineteen stories were first published in The American Weekly, 1958-1959: 

• "Trail of the Lonesome Hearts"  (as "The Trail of the Lonely Hearts")  The case of Martha Jule Beck
• "Witness for the Prosecution"  (as "Mother Against Son")  The case of Nina J. Miles
• "Detained at Her Majesty's Pleasure"  (as "Death Keeps a Diary")  The case of Pauline Parker and Juliet Hulme
• "The Secret of Irene Schroeder"  (as "Iron Irene")  The case of Irene Schroeder
• "The Beautiful Latvian"  (as "The Forgetful Blonde")  The case of Gita Kadegs
• "The Mystery of the Yellow Thread"  (as "Caught by a Thread")  The murder of Mrs. Amelia Appleby
• "The Strange Case of Elaine Soule"  (as "The Killer Who Wanted to Be Caught")   The case of Suzanne Elaine Soule
• "The Dream Detective"  (as "She Dreams of Murder")  The detections of Mrs. Myrtle Hughes
• "Death in the Tea Leaves"  The murder of Irene Shawsky
• "The Man with the Jug Ears"  (as "Album of Death")  The murders of Judy Dull, Shirley Bridgeford, and Ruth Mercado
• "The Girl in the Snowbank"  (as "The Boomerang Murder")  The case of Marie-Paule Langlais
• "The Poisoned Whiskey Case"  (as "A Tiny Bottle Full of Death")  The murder of Delores Myerly
• "The Amazing Mrs. Patterson"  (as "Mrs. Patterson's Past")  The case of Gertrude Patterson
• "The Silk Stocking Girl"  (as "Death in Silk Stockings')  The murder of Grace Roberts
• "The Hanging Woman"  The case of Mathilda Cassidy
• "The Murder Without a Body"  (as "Case of the Experimental Corpse")  The murder of Rose Michaelis
• "The Beautiful Killer of Hampstead"  (as "Death of a Part-Time Lover")  The case of Ruth Ellis
• "The Temple of Love"  (as "Death in the Temple of Love")  The murder of Jacky Richardson
• "The Mystery of Rhonda Bell Martin"  (as "Mrs. Martin's Murder Spree")  The case of Rhonda Bell Martin

A fascinating volume.  I wonder why it has never been reprinted.