Books: A Crime Is a Crime

BLOOD ON THE DINING-ROOM FLOOR (80 pp.)—Gertrude Stein—Banyan Press ($6).

There had been a murder, or had there? She did not die at once, not dying as in death. She lived five days, five days dying, each day a dying but not dying as in death.

Whodunit? Author Gertrude Stein never comes right out and says, and a second reading of her posthumous Blood on the Dining-Room Floor doesn't help much. This curious fling at mystery-story writing by the late expatriate mumbo-jumboist never even admits that a murder is a murder is a murder....