Unoccupied
and unsupervised while mother is working, the children of widowed crime
writer Marion Carstairs find diversion wherever they can. So when the
kids hear gunshots at the house next door, they jump at the chance to
launch their own amateur investigation—and after all, why shouldn’t
they? They know everything the cops do about crime scenes, having read
about them in mother’s novels. They know what her literary detectives
would do in such a situation, how they would interpret the clues and
handle witnesses. Plus, if the children solve the puzzle before the
cops, it will do wonders for the sales of mother’s novels. But this
crime scene isn’t a game at all; the murder is real, and when its
details prove more twisted than anything in mother’s fiction, they’ll
have to enlist Marion’s help to sort them out. Or is that just part of
their plan to hook her up with the lead detective on the case?

The basis for the 1946 film with the same name,Home Sweet Homicide
is the novel that launched Craig Rice to literary fame. The book, a
comedic crime story that pokes fun at the conventions of the genre,
finds “the Dorothy Parker of detective fiction” at her most
entertaining.