Richard Lockridge was born in Missouri in 1898 and became a journalist and drama critic for the New York Sun. In 1922, he married his wife Frances, a reporter and music critic for the Kansas City Post, and the duo eventually developed two comedic characters from newspaper vignettes and radio comedy that they modeled on themselves—the amateur detectives Mr. and Mrs. North. That particular series was so popular, it ultimately inspired 40 books in the North series, a movie starring George Burns and Gracie Allen, a long-running play on Broadway, a radio drama and a TV show with Richard Demming and Barbara Britton.
The prolific husband-and-wife writing team also created another mystery series featuring the sleepy-eyed Captain Merton Heimrich of the New York State Police Bureau of Criminal Identification. In 1962's First Come, First Kill, a shabby, elderly man is shot on the driveway of the house where Heimrich and his wife Susan live, managing to say only one word before he dies: "well." As Heimrich digs into the background of the victim, "Old Tom"—an eccentric but harmless itinerant gardener—it quickly becomes evident that the case of the murdered man is linked to an unsolved disappearance of a New York Supreme Court Justice who'd vanished years before. The trail leads even farther afield to London and Mexico, until Heimrich realizes the murderer is uncomfortably closer to home.
Of the Richard and Frances authorial collaboration, Richard once noted, "We had story conferences and wrote a summary. As we both insisted, the writing was entirely mine." Frances was primarily a force in the plotting stage, which Richard would then turn into a 200-page manuscript. This was especially true with the Lt. Merton Heimrich books; the authors were billed as "Frances and Richard" for the North novels and "Richard and Frances" for the Heimrich series. In fact, after Frances died in 1963 (First Come, First Kill was their last book together), Richard continued the Heimlich line on his own with eight more books and penned several other series, as well.
A few trivia notes: The Lockridges served as co-presidents of the Mystery Writers of America in 1960 and received a special Edgar Award in 1962. Francis Richards was a pseudonym for the Richard & Francis Lockridge books used exclusively in the UK.
I hadn't realized that this was their last book together. This is one I recently reread and enjoyed even more the second time around. Though I guessed who the killer was (first time I read it) simply because I followed the Christie rule of making the least likely person the killer. I also have read and enjoyed several of the Mr. and Mrs. North books. Though admittedly, they can be 'iffy'. Still, I wish more were readily available.
Posted by: Yvette | September 23, 2016 at 02:09 PM
Me, too, Yvette! Kudos to MysteriousPress / Open Road for reissuing several of the Mr. and Mrs. North series. I should have mentioned that on the blog!
Posted by: BV Lawson | September 23, 2016 at 06:18 PM
Thanks for the post. I will have to catch up with the Mr. and Mrs. North series.
Posted by: Elgin Bleecker | September 24, 2016 at 10:35 AM
It's a lot easier now, thanks to Mysterious Press and Open Road. But I actually came across my copies at our local public library.
Posted by: BV Lawson | September 24, 2016 at 05:43 PM