The Sunday Pigeon Murders

Bingo Riggs and Handsome Kusak #1

by Craig Rice

Bingo and Handsome are trying to make money with their photography they photograph people in Central Park, then hand over their business cards and offer to sell the photographs to the subjects themselves. Thanks to Handsome's photographic memory, they realize that they have a picture of a man who has been missing for almost seven years and is about to be declared dead. The missing man, S.S. Pigeon, leaves behind an insurance policy that is worth $500,000 to his former business partner, Harkness Penneyth. Bingo and Handsome cook up a plan to kidnap Mr. Pigeon just long enough for his death to be declared, hoping that the heir will kindly split his wealth with them. Before long, things go wrong. First of all, they decide that they like their kidnap victim. This is not too big a problem, because Mr. Pigeon is willing to be held, and Bingo and Handsome don't think that they are committing a serious crime by holding him. However, when other players in the game start turning up dead all around them, Bingo and Handsome have to solve the crime in order to save themselves and Mr. Pigeon from the same fate. Beautiful women, gangsters, a missing butler and a dramatic Latin American revolutionary poet all enter the story.

Genres: Mystery, Fiction, Crime, Historical Fiction, American, Humor

244 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1942

About the author

Pseudonym for Georgiana Ann Randolph Craig aka Daphne Sanders and Michael Venning.

Known for her hard-boiled mystery plots combined with screwball comedy, Georgiana 'Craig' Rice was the author of twenty-three novels, six of them posthumous, numerous short stories, and some true crime pieces. In the 1940s she rivaled Agatha Christie in sales and was featured on the cover of Time Magazine in 1946. However, over the past sixty years she has fallen into relative obscurity.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craig_Ri...

Reviews

[Leslie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Silly but fun. Bingo Riggs, a man who wants to get rich quick, and his partner 'Handsome' Kusak, a photographer with a phenomenal memory and slow wits, were a hoot - a bit like Abbot and Costello, stumbling into situations that get progressively more complicated (in this case by the fact that people they are trying to do a deal with keep ending up murdered). Not as good as Home Sweet Homicide, the only other Rice book I have read, but good enough I will try another.

[Barbararose · Rating 5 out of 5]

Didn’t know kidnapping could be fun!

Bingo and Handsome took photos of prospects around Central Park. Gave out cards to send back with 25 cents for a copy of the picture.
Then one day they noticed a man in one of the pictures who had been missing for almost seven years..
The begins a comedy of errors and some dead bodies.
A fun read!

[Christian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this on the recommendation of a late friend, the great Josh Lukin, and boy, oh, boy, was this a treat. Bingo and Handsome are basically if you put the Ralph Kramden/Ed Norton characters in a Nick and Nora mystery. Absolutely entertaining.

[Barbara Walker · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love Bingo and Handsome!

Good mystery. Kindle edition could have used better editing. Overall, I was still guessing by the last two chapters. A fun read.

[Michael Reilly · Rating 3 out of 5]

This 1942 novel features Bingo Ring and Handsome Kuzak. They are a couple of hustlers. Their current gig is trying to sell street photographs that they take of people strolling in the park. It is a tough way to make a living.

They stumble into a scheme involving kidnapping an old man, insurance fraud, several gorgeous dames, a Latin American soldier-poet, assorted gangsters, a greedy land lady with a cute daughter and four people murdered, one of whom spends most of the book as a corpse in an oversize kitchen freezer.

Bingo is the brains of the operation. He is a small sneaky looking kind of guy. Handsome is, as expected, very handsome, but not that bright. One of the running gags is that they are always broke. They eke by on the quarters they make selling pictures.

This is a madcap 1940s adventure. We get a new plot twist, often a body, every couple of pages. There is a bit too many scenes where Bingo is reviewing to himself all of the things that have happened and what his plans are. Those scenes feel like filler.

This is a fun adventure. Rice wrote a few more Bingo and Handsome stories. I will probably read them when I am in the mood for madcap.

[Fred · Rating 1 out of 5]

unreadable. Just fluff. Erased it from my kindle.

[Mare · Rating 4 out of 5]

I truly enjoyed meeting Bingo and Handsome. Very vivid characters.

[Stacy · Rating 2 out of 5]

eh

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

I got a kick out of this 1942 novel, written in the style of the era. The characters were fun.

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

For my full review click on the link below:
https://crossexaminingcrime.wordpress...