Tue 22 Nov 2022
RICHARD LOCKRIDGE – Dead Run. Inspector Heimrich. Lippincott, hardcover, 1976. No paperback edition.
It’s late December, and an ice storm hits New York’s suburban Putnam County. Ah, that brings back memories of slick roads, downed power lines and stranded travelers. A lawyer friend of Inspector Heimrich is killed by a car in a parking lot, and a witness to the murder is the girl Heimrich’s stepson brought home as an unexpected surprise for the holidays.
Quite comfortable reading, a pleasure to relax with old friends capable of coping with disrupted routine.
Rating: A minus
– Very slightly revised from The MYSTERY FANcier, January 1977 (Vol. 1, No. 1)
November 22nd, 2022 at 12:38 pm
‘Putnam County’ is described extensively in an eponymous song by Tom Waits
November 23rd, 2022 at 10:26 pm
Richard Lockridge, who along with his wife Frances produced over two dozen Mr & Mrs North mysteries, wrote cozies before there were cozies. He (they) are among my favorite and most fun to read mystery writers of all time.
The Fantastic Fiction website says this was #23 of 24 solo cases for Captain Heimrich, but this does not include (I believe) some of the Norths’ adventures in which he happened to be around at the time.
November 24th, 2022 at 12:37 am
Lockridge had an interesting career, the North’s born in some non mystery shorts for THE NEW YORKER discovering he had struck gold when he added murder to the mix.
Like Stuart Palmer and Frank Gruber he did pretty well writing B films which seemed to pay off in his later work, and when Frances died and he tired of the North’s he got a second wind with Capatin Hemrich and later Nathan Shapiro.
While I prefer the Norths, I like Heimrich, particularly the shorts in EQMM,and Shapiro too. Lockridge, who I believe did most of the writing with his wife more inspiration, wrote clean uncluttered prose with solid dialogue and mystery plots and a clear line of suspense along the way.
You knew exactly what you would get with a Lockridge novel, and you almost always got it, and often enough more than that to keep you coming back.