Richard Lockridge

Richard Orson Lockridge (September 26, 1898 in St. Joseph, Missouri - June 19, 1982 in Tryon, North Carolina) was an American writer of detective fiction. Richard Lockridge with his wife Frances created one of the most famous American mystery series, Mr. and Mrs. North.

Lockridge was born in St. Joseph, Missouri, and was educated at the University of Missouri. After serving in the United States Navy, he returned to Missouri, working as a reporter on the Kansas City Kansan and the Kansas City Star. In 1922, he married fellow reporter Frances Louise Davis. The couple soon moved to New York, where Lockridge joined the old New York Sun. In 1932, Lockridge published his first book, Darling of Misfortune: Edwin Booth: 1833-1893.

In 1937, Frances Lockridge conceived the plot for a detective novel, but had problems with her characters. Richard Lockridge collaborated with his wife, using her plot and the characters he had created earlier for a series of comic sketches in The New Yorker, Mr. and Mrs. North (named for the "stupid people who played the north hand in bridge problems," according to Lockridge). The book was published in 1940 as The Norths Meet Murder, launching a series of twenty-six novels, which was adapted for the stage, film, radio, and television.

In the second Mr. and Mrs. North novel, Murder Out of Turn (1941), the couple and their New York City homicide detective friend, Lt. Bill Weigand, encounter murder out of town, near Brewster, New York. There they meet an officer of the New York State Bureau of Criminal Identification (referred to in some later books as the Bureau of Criminal Investigation), Lt. Heimrich (in later books given the first name Merton, and achieving promotion to Captain). Heimrich also guest-starred in a 1946 Mr. and Mrs. North book, Death of a Tall Man, before becoming the star of his own series of twenty-two novels, beginning in Think of Death (1947).

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