Newspaper readers across the U.S. last week were invited to follow a mystery serial that was improbable even by whodunit standards. The story, called The Ptomaine Canary, tells how a strapping Met soprano with ambitions as a detective-story writer tries to speed her literary success by drugging such established literary rivals as Erie Stanley Gardner, John Dickson Carr, Agatha Christie and Raymond Chandler: she lures them into accepting dope-soaked birdseed held out to them by her trained canary, Galli-Curci. The soprano gets in trouble when one of her less celebrated victims unexpectedly...
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