JACK RITCHIE “The Many-Flavored Crime.” Unnamd PI. First published in MD’s Companion, December 1975. Reprinted in Best Detective Stories of the Year—1976, edited by Edward D. Hoch (Dutton, hardcover, 1976).

   Sometimes in writing a review you can do no better that starting off with the first paragraph of the book or story itself:

   “There it is,” Gerald Vanderveer said. Ah, yes. There it was. A bathtub full of Jello. Basically red, but with occasional streaks of green, yellow, and orange.

   
   Not the first instance of the prank – or crime, as Gerald persists in calling it – but the private eye who is called in on it is perhaps is hard up for employment. He doesn’t say. But he is a pretty good detective. He solves the case in only ten pages.

   And that includes finding the killer of the butler in the household, a man who was wearing his master’s smoking jacket, a fact that complicates things. There is a light touch that permeates the whole matter, as you can tell from the Jello connection, but the murder itself is totally serious.

   As for finding a copy of the magazine that first published the story, well, Good Luck with that.