Pole Positions:
Stripper Detectives

Okay, okay, most of these characters ARE NOT private eyes. But they do take their clothes off.

I admit it -- I have a definite weakness for stripper/detectives, ever since I read "Angel Face" by Cornell Woolrich, which featured Jerry Wheeler as a stripper who turns gumshoe to save her kid brother from a frame-up in "Face Work," a short story that apeared in the October 1937 issue of Black Mask. It was later filmed as Convicted, starring Rita Hayworth.

And of course, the most famous stripper detective of all has to be Gypsy Rose Lee. Yep, Gypsy Rose Lee, "America's most famous take-it-off artist," wrote a few mystery novels in which she played detective. Or, at least, she claimed to have written them. It's pretty widely suspected that Craig Rice, the creator of sleuthin', drinkin' attorney John J. Malone, actually wrote the books.

• Gypsy Rose Lee by Gypsy Rose Lee
• Jerry Wheeler by Cornell Woolrich
• Velda Bellinghausen by Ron Miller
• Simone Kirsch by Leigh Redhead
• Sierra Lavotini by Nancy Barhtholemew
• Aubrey Lyle by Jenny Scholten
• Tammy Starr by Johnny Gonzales and Floyd Choat
• Kathy O'Connor by Harold Joyce (Sally Rand, ladies and gentlemen, Sally Rand)

And although the protagonists may be be strippers, fans of the fine art of ecdysiastry may also enjoy these crime novels:

• Strip Tease by Carl Hiaasen
• The Moses McGuire books by Josh Stallings

List respectfully compiled by Kevin Burton Smith. And God bless Lilli St. Cyr....