What Rhymes with Murder?

 What Rhymes with Murder? (1950) by Jack Iams

Stanley "Rocky" Rockwell, city editor for the Record, has problems. His fiancee, Jane Hewes, and the ladies of the Tuesday Ladies' Club have invited the notorious British poet, Ariel Banks, to come to town and speak at their club. Banks is a hot poet both politically and morally and the menfolk belonging to the ladies are not happy to have the Great Lover speaking to their wives, intendeds, and girlfriends. The friction caused by the intended visit causes misunderstandings left, right, and center as well as between Rocky & Jane. Then, there's the rival newspaper, a scandal sheet that is feeding directly into the discord. The Eagle has brought in some heavy-hitters to take down the Record in way they can, fair play or foul. They try to poach Rocky for their own paper and when that doesn't work, they prepare to play dirty.

Meanwhile, Ariel Banks arrives in town and barely has time to get settled  before someone decides the world would be a whole lot better off without him and then the Record's mobster strongman is also killed. And, somehow, the police get the idea that Rocky is the culprit. Rocky and Jane find themselves in danger, but the irrepressible and sometimes prickly society editor, Mrs. Pickett lands on their side and the three of them manage to get to the bottom of the mystery. 

Mrs. Pickett, know to newspaper subscribers as Debbie Mayfair, is by far the standout character in this particular mystery. I didn't find Rocky and Jane nearly as engaging as I did in Do Not Murder Before Christmas and I'm at a point where I'm not terribly enamored with the whole "main character is suspected in a murder they obviously didn't commit and must spend the rest of the book proving that" trope. That's where the tension is supposed be in the story, but it's obvious that the police don't seriously believe Rocky did it. So why not just go about the business of finding out who really did rather than putting our hero and his girl in danger? I wasn't really sold on the culprit and the motive either. I don't want to spoil things, but I don't see how I (and readers in general) was supposed to figure that out. All the star points go to Mrs. Pickett, who is really quite delightful. ★★★

First line: The news that a British poet was going to lecture before the Tuesday Ladies' Club would normally have caused something less than a ripple among the ninety-nine percent of our city's eight-odd thousand inhabitants who did not belong to, or give a hoot about, the Tuesday Ladies' Club.

Last lines: "It was nothing, dear. Nothing's too good for you."
***********************

Deaths = 2 (one hit on head; one shot)