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.

Heading the Way of the Dinosaur

"But don't you turn your back, you'll become a snack
'Cuz some Tyrannosaurus could be hungry for us..."
- Opening theme from Land of the Lost (1991)

Dr. Orpheus Preson is a mammologist, attached to the Broadly Institute of Paleontology, whose books guide the general public through the pre-history of this planet and is working on the second volume of The Days Before Man, but a series of newspaper advertisements in his name has disturbed his peace of mind. The advertisements are requests for unusual employers to appear for a job interview and someone even ransacked Dr. Preson's office to remove the labels from the bones he was working on. Unfortunately, the police can do little to remove this pest from Dr. Preson's life and driven to desperation, appears to have mixed a lethal dose of Phenobarbital with his morning milk, and evidence has surfaced that suggests that Preson has been persecuting himself. But was it really a botched cry for attention?

This is the premise of Frances and Richard Lockridge's Dead As a Dinosaur (1953), in which Pam and Jerry North are lured yet again into a murder case, however, they are somewhat innocent this time – as it was North Books Ltd. that published The Days Before Man and Preson did ask Jerry's help in this matter. And there’s more than enough to work on. Orpheus Preson has left everything he possessed in life to the institute, but his family plans to contest the will, because Orpheus was evidently of unsound mind when it was drawn up.

Dr. Jesse Landcraft, a retired scientist, is the second person to die and his death leaves no questions whether it was murder or suicide, and casts a new light on the poisoning of Preson. The body of Dr. Landcraft was, more or less, put on display in an exhibit enclosure at the Broadly Institute, showing a recreation of a prehistoric cave with a man, and the murder weapon was an ancient stone hammer – placing this one firmly in the Van Dine-Queen tradition. Bizarre murders? Check! Specialized background? Check! Family names with literary allusions? Check (Orpheus has a brother named Homer)! Buddy cop(s)? Check! Ingenious solution? Eh... 50/50? 

In my opinion, the persecution plot and subsequent poisoning of Dr. Preson was the most impressive part of the story, simple but clever enough to satisfy, while the only real point of interest in the murder of Dr. Landcraft were the circumstances in which his body was found and the newspaper headlines that followed in the wake of his death. 

I also felt that this was point that the story had run its course and that made all the moving around towards the end a bit tiresome, but overall, a decent enough detective story from a couple who are still being read today – and I can see why. Frances and Richard Lockridge may not always have been on the top of their game, but Pam and Jerry North (and the characters orbiting around them) are nice, intelligent and sophisticated characters and there's an affinity for our feline friends running through the books, which must appeal to today's readers of cozies.

Before ending this post, I want to direct your attention to my review of Voyage into Violence (1956), which I thought was a class-act mystery from the Lockridges.

The Private Eyes' Requiem

"The captain, to see me? It's not about my wife, is it? I mean... she likes to have a good time, sometimes she gets carried away..."

- Lt. Columbo (Troubled Waters)

It's a common misconception among layman and even some adepts that the toughies and cozies were domestic products, stories that were typical of either American or British pop-culture, but the alcohol-guzzling, wise-cracking mystery solving husband-and-wife teams, who attract stiffs like they run a funeral parlor, are almost exclusively an American speciality – and not just the case-hardened ones that Dashiell Hammett introduced. The ones I have read were well written, often tightly plotted and whimsical in tone, which could be offered to explain why they're all but forgotten in this day and age: they're fun and don't fit a preconceived notion.

Undeterred by its hardboiled sounding title, Voyage into Violence (1956), a team effort from the spousal tandem of Frances and Richard Lockridge, has everything you expect from a sophisticated British drawing room mystery, from a pair of upper class sleuths, Mr. and Mrs. North, to the closed-circle of suspects, except that two Americans wrote this book.

Pam and Jerry North, alongside police Capt. Bill Weigand and his wife, Dorian, take a well deserved holiday aboard the S.S. Carib Queen, plotting a course for Havana, and their fellow passengers are a motley collection of holidaymakers and soon picture frames hanging in their gallery of suspects. 

There's the Ancient and Respectable Riflemen, founded during the War of 1812 (and Patrick perks up), led by respectable Captain Folsom, the frumpy Hilda Macklin and her bullyrag of a mother, Olivia, a professional dancer named Jules Barron, among others, but the most important one is perhaps J. Orville Marsh – a retired private-eye, or so he says. However, when Marsh is run through with a ceremonial sword, belonging to the Ancient and Respectable Riflemen, evidence pulled from his luggage, like correspondence and photographs of expensive looking jewelry, indicates that he was on a case and may have come too close to closing it. Bill Weigand is put in charge, who, in turn, drags in his socialite buddies, to begin a covert investigation, but soon rumors, like a discrete waiter quietly enquiring if Sir or Madam wants a refill, are whispered from deck chair to deck chair, and before long, they sweep the deck like a tidal wave.

Voyage into Violence is a fine example of the pleasure you can derive from a Busman's Holiday-mystery, when you have writers who can weave patterns with multiple plot threads without getting tied up in it themselves, demonstrating that an extra set of hands at the typewriter can come in handy has its advantages when writing a mystery novel, as well as vividly describing the setting that gives the reader the idea that they are there with them as the Van Dine to Pam and Jerry's Philo Vance. I do fear I might have over praised this book and admit that it's not in the same league as, oh let's say, Agatha Christie's Death on the Nile (1937) or Christianna Brand's Tour de Force (1955), but making a distinction that one is merely “clever” while the others are absolutely "brilliant" is simply arguing semantics. Voyage into Violence is a vividly written mystery with a busy, logical plot and interesting characters, but, more importantly, it was a nice, leisurely summer read.

I want to leave you with this excerpt, from chapter IV, page 59, which I thought was interesting from a modern point of view. I could not imagine a problem like that in this day and age:

"If the Carib Queen were equipped for the dispatch of radio photographs-but that was absurd. (...) It was absurd. The Carib Queen was equipped for many things, some rather more complex than picture transmission. She could look through the darkness, farther than the eye could reach. Electronically, when near the coast-as she was now-the Carib Queen could tell precisely where she was. But she could not dispatch the convoluted signature on note and check to Worcester, Massachusetts, where it would mean something."

Oh, one more thing, I have to make obligatory recommendations when discussing husband-and-wife detective teams: read Kelley Roos' The Frightened Stiff (1942; reprinted by the Rue Morgue Press) and Herbert Resnicow's Alexander and Norma Gold series.