Death of a Tall Man (1946) by Frances and Richard Lockridge

Richard and Frances Lockridge were a mystery writing couple who, more or less, accidentally created one of the most endearing American detective series when Richard decided to combine his comedic characters from his short stories with the detective plot Frances had cooked up – mixing them together as The Norths Meet Murder (1940). Pam and Jerry North originally appeared in a series of vignettes in the New York Sun and were later revived for The New Yorker (collected in Mr. and Mrs. North, 1936), but the characters achieved as the bantering, martini sipping New York society sleuths in twenty-six mystery novels. A series that ended with the passing of Frances Lockridge in 1963.

I wanted to return to the series for a while and there were two titles on the shortlist, Death of a Tall Man (1946) and Murder Within Murder (1946). Someone particularly recommended Murder Within Murder to me a long time ago, but can't remember who or why. Synopsis of the Mysterious Press promised an impossible murder in a watched room. So guess which one I picked? 

Death of a Tall Man opens in the offices of a well-known, well regarded oculist, Dr. Andrew Gordon, in the Medical Chambers, East Fifty-Third Street, on compensation day. Two days a week, mornings and afternoons, groups of five or six men who were referred to Dr. Gordon by insurance company physicians came to the offices, which resembles a rabbit warren of doors and examination rooms – easily confusing everyone unfamiliar with the building. Fortunately, the story includes a floor plan as the movement of the various characters through the building is relevant to the plot.

Dr. Gordon is found slumped over his desk with "a deep depression" in the back of his head following the examination of Monday's last group of compensation cases. Lieutenant William Weigand, of the New York Homicide Squad, has no shortages of suspects to pick from. Daniel "Dan" Gordon is Dr. Gordon's stepson who learned from his uncle, Nickerson Smith, that his stepfather squandered the lion's share of his mother's inheritance, but is it an explanation for his unusual behavior? Behavior that everyone around him try to excuse to the police. Debbie Brooks used to be the "female nuisance" who lived next door to the Gordons when she was child, but, when her parents passed away, she was welcomed into the family. She's now engaged to Dan and works for Dr. Gordon as his receptionist. Miss Grace Spencer is Dr. Gordon's nurse and has her desk in the corridor with the six examination rooms at her left and Dr. Gordon's office at the end, which means she could have possible seen something without realizing. She might have been in love with her employer. Mrs. Evelyn Gordon is Dr. Gordon's second, much younger wife and people are talking about her spending "a good deal" of time with a neighbor, Lawrence Westcott. A classic case of a wife and lover getting rid of a pesky husband? Not to mention the six compensation cases.

Understandably, Lieutenant Weigand is happy when Pam North turns up out of nowhere. She was out and about when she spotted a growing crowd of disaster tourists and the Homicide Squad car from Centre Street, which she knew spelled "a certain kind of trouble." Pam North really is the shining star of this novel as both a detective and comedic character. She has the best scenes and lines of the story. Such as her describing the nature of New York taxicabs and drivers as if they're the subject of a wildlife documentary or her telephone call to Jerry to explain she got caught up ("it isn't fair to say I look for them") in another murder ("it would be silly to tell a taxicab man to drive straight to the nearest murder"). I thought this was very reminiscent of the best by Kelley Roos, but, unfortunately, the same can't be said about the plot. 

Death of a Tall Man has a plot riddled with botched and missed opportunities or good, but poorly, executed ideas. I hardly know where to begin!

Firstly, the plot-threads not directly tied to the solution were only there to pad out an already very short novel, like the "combat fatigue" (PTSD) thread, which felt out-of-place and only served to make an obvious innocent person look guilty. You have a murder of an eye doctor in a practice full of people with damaged or failing eyesight. So why not play around with unreliable eyewitness trope instead of this side distraction? The circumstances of the murder and solution would certainly have allowed for a damaged, unreliable eyewitnesses to be a focal point of the investigation. The tall man of the title is not Dr. Gordon, but who and why that dead man is relevant to the solution is the cleverest idea of the whole story and there was some satisfaction in the murderer crying "that god-damned freak," but comes not into play until the last stretch of the story and, by then, it has lost most of its effect – because the solution is so painfully obvious. Lockridges made the murderer very conspicuous and left very little to the imagination as to the possible motive, which also distracted heavily from the how-was-it-done aspect. When you know who, you can make a pretty educated guess how it was done. So the rabbit warren of watched corridors, examination rooms and doors became less of an obstacle than if the murderer had been better hidden from the reader. Oh, and no, this is not an impossible crime in any shape or form. No idea why it has been advertised as one.

So, on a whole, I'm sure loyal, long-time fans of the series will love Death of a Tall Man from start to finish, but, purely as a detective story, it's nothing more than goodnatured, lighthearted fluff with a paper thin plot. Well, it was worth a shot.