Reading her novels chronologically, I’m moved to declare that 1942 was a big year for Craig Rice. Prior to then, she had written five fast-moving, wildly inventive mysteries featuring wisecracking lawyer John J. Malone and Jake and Helene Justus, but 1942 saw Rice diversify with (not necessarily in this order) a Malone novel in The Big Midget Murders (1942) that ramped up plot complexity, The Sunday Pigeon Murders (1942) taking on a new setting with a more dim-bulb presence at its core, atmosphere overwhelming the slow-moving Telefair (1942) and now, with The Man Who Slept All Day (1942), long character-work taking over from plot mechanics so that you really do care about the people involved. That noise you hear is the stretching of some wings.