A review by ssejig
The Puzzle of the Happy Hooligan by Stuart Palmer, Otto Penzler

3.0

The story opens with two screenplay writers setting up a fire underneath the chair of a napping third. The two, Stafford and Dobie, are well known at Mammoth Studios for being merry pranksters, though few others find their jokes funny. And then, one day, Stafford is found dead in his office. Who finds him? Why, none other than retired schoolteacher Hildegarde Withers. She was hired on by the studio as a technical adviser for a screen adaptation of the Lizzie Borden murders. She stirs up trouble by insisting that this was a murder, even when the cops around her insist even harder that that was an accident. Two more murders and ties to an even older murder that help bring Otis Piper onto the scene and Miss Withers is desperately trying to figure out what is going on before she herself is killed as well.