Thanks to a tip from friends who were there last week, I visited the Renwick Gallery Saturday to catch the exhibition Murder Is Her Hobby: Frances Glessner Lee and The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death. (It runs through January 28, 2018, so there’s still time for you to catch it, too.)

It features 18 miniature dioramas of crime scenes which have been used since the ’40s to train investigators. They were created by “mother of forensic science” Frances Glessner Lee, and are extremely detailed, with little bullet holes and blood spatter, tiny tobacco-filled cigarettes, working mouse traps, and more … but the detail which attracted my eye the most was on the floor of what’s known as the Blue Bedroom, in which the body of a box factory employee was found by his wife.

Old magazines!

I suspect these magazines, less than an inch high, are based on actual issues. I would expect nothing less from a woman who rejected a miniature rocking chair because it failed to rock the same number of times per minute as the full-sized rocking chair found at a crime scene.

I tried (and failed) to track down the cover dates for these issues based on what art was visible, but hope that somewhere out there is an expert in ’40s magazines who can succeed where I did not. Is that person you?

Can you ID these miniature murder magazines?