Wed 11 Jul 2012
Archived Review: RICHARD & FRANCES LOCKRIDGE – Murder Comes First.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[12] Comments
RICHARD & FRANCES LOCKRIDGE – Murder Comes First. Pocket, paperback reprint, July 1982. Originally published by J. B. Lippincott, hardcover, 1951. Also: Avon #434, paperback, 1952.
There is simply no mistaking a Mr. & Mrs. North mystery novel, and it is great to have [some of] them back in print again. Why hasn’t anybody thought of it sooner? The warm, comfortable sounds of their adventures together have been sorely missed.
In this one of two just reprinted by Pocket, three of Pam’s maiden aunts from Cleveland have come to the big city for a visit. Disaster strikes when another friend they are calling on mysteriously dies of poison. While Pam’s Aunt Thelma may be as unlikely a murder suspect as you can imagine, that doesn’t stop Deputy Chief Inspector Artemus O’Malley from thinking he can wrap it up quickly.
The inspector, Bill Wiegand admits to Pam, likes things simple. Sergeant Mullins, of course, knows better. “I should have known,” he says. “It’s begun to go screwy.”
Part of the screwiness is that the FBI eventually gets involved, for reasons somewhat pertinent to the date of the story. (It was first published in 1951.) Even so, in spite of this worn-out bit of misbehavior at the core, this is still as bright and irresistible a work of entertainment as it ever was. More!
Rating: B
Vol. 7, No. 2, March-April 1983.
[UPDATE] 07-11-12. According to my records, which are, I’m afraid, woefully incomplete, Pocket published at least eight of the North’s adventures between 1982 and 1983. There were in total something like 26 of them in all, so they fell way short of doing the complete series. I don’t think many of them, if any, have been in print ever since.
July 12th, 2012 at 10:18 am
Another once popular, but now dead series. I guess I have all of them, but have only read a few. I enjoyed what I read and should go back to them one of these days.
July 13th, 2012 at 1:28 am
I’m with you, Randy. I may have all of the North books, but I wonder if I’ve read any since I wrote this review. I gobbled them up as fast as they came out when I was younger. I’m a little surprised that Rue Morgue hasn’t picked up on them. I don’t believe they have, and I think they’d fit in just right with the rest of their line of reprints.
July 13th, 2012 at 6:20 am
I have only 2 paperbacks of the North-series and both not read. But I think I should read them. The owners of the local mystery bookstore in Frankfurt are very fond of the North-series. Especially they like the North cats. Is it true that Mr. and Mrs. North are used to drink excessively alcohol nearly every night?
July 13th, 2012 at 9:54 am
I had a goodly number of the North books. And, I see them from time to time in thrift stores and library book sales. I’ll have to pick some up and give them a try.
July 13th, 2012 at 10:52 am
#3 I believe you are thinking of Nick and Nora Charles, created by Dashiell Hammett. The Norths never drank to excess, but they did enjoy their cats. So did the creators, Frances and Richard Lockridge. I read a number of them a couple of years ago and found them to be very enjoyable.
July 13th, 2012 at 11:52 am
There was a goodly amount of sophisticated cocktail drinking in the North books, to be sure. And as if to emphasize the point, the names of their three Siamese cats were Gin, Sherry and Martini. Drinking to excess, though? Never. (Keeping in mind that their adventures were fiction.)
Pam was a screwy one who invariably got into trouble by poking her nose into every murder mystery that came the Norths’ way without ever once realizing the dangers involved. The books were detective stories, but minor ones. Even I usually figured out who did it before the Norths and their friends on the force did.
Their adventures were always light-hearted entertainments, rather than thrillers, though, in spite of Pam’s propensity for getting up to her neck in distress. They all could be easily read in a couple of hours, with little more than a smile to show for it when you’re finished.
July 13th, 2012 at 3:47 pm
I see I’ll have to read a couple of them to test my comment about the amount of drinking in the books. Nothing I have just read in the basic mystery encyclopedias (Penzler/Steinbrunner; DeAndrea; Oxford)suggests much real drinking in spite of the cats being named Gin and Sherry and Martini. The series began as a series of sketches in the New Yorker and then became a mystery series. Pam North was based on Frances Lockridge and when she died in 1963 so did the series. The surname was taken from one of the standard positions in bridge.
July 13th, 2012 at 4:07 pm
I always enjoyed the Norths as well as the other characters that the Lockridges created. I felt, true or not, that the books captured the atmosphere of New York City in the early 1950s.
July 13th, 2012 at 4:45 pm
I have several of the Pocket editions, but sadly have yet to read them (the same old story). This reminder makes me want to put one on the nightstand as a Real Soon Now.
July 13th, 2012 at 4:52 pm
I picked up a handful of tbe books a few years ago. I’m afraid that I found them a bit dull. I feel sort of bad for not enjoying them more, and want to give them another chance. Which would you say is the best of the series; the one that I’ll enjoy so much that it will make me a fan?
July 13th, 2012 at 4:53 pm
Have only read a few. Favorite so far: “Voyage into Violence” (1956). This is an irresistible mystery set on a cruise ship. Good fun!
July 13th, 2012 at 6:17 pm
Mike
Your choice of VOYAGE INTO VIOLENCE is as good as any other. I think in the case of the North books, trying only one book might be all you need to tell you if you’d care for any of the others or not.
Bradstreet
I wonder if the general upper-middle class Manhattan life style the North books are set in might not translate well across the Atlantic. They are nearly unique in that regard.