The G-String Murders

It's a killer bump and grind for Gypsy Rose Lee, the Queen of Burlesque, in this "rich and lusty" bestselling mystery (Life).

Strippers gotta have a gimmick, but being strangled to death is a pretty short-lived stunt. Ask class-A headliner Gypsy Rose Lee. The ecdysiast extraordinaire has just found sewer-mouthed Burly Q tart Lolita La Verne in the dressing room with a rhinestone G-string wrapped tight around her freshly powdered neck. It's enough to give a decent dame the shakes.

It's also casting a hot-pink spotlight on a roster of suspects including Dynamic Dolly, notorious for her backstage brawls. Not to mention the loitering thugs, oily managers, frustrated sugar daddies, and any number of low-end Times Square artistes looking for a bump up on the bill. But when La Verne is only the first runway quiver-girl to get wrung out, it's up Gypsy to put the moves on the killer—and fast. She's feeling pretty exposed herself right now.

Adapted into Lady of Burlesque, the 1943 film starring Barbara Stanwyck, The G-String Murders remains "a lurid, witty, and highly competent detective story . . . that builds up to a hair-raising climax" (Time).