Richard & Frances Lockridge books

Bernard Simmons Reading Order

Captain Heimrich Reading Order

Lieutenant Nathan Shapiro Reading Order

Mr. and Mrs. North Reading Order

Richard Lockridge (1898-1982) and Frances Lockridge (1896-1963) were a married couple who became one of the most popular mystery-writing teams in mid-twentieth-century America. Richard worked as a drama critic for the New York Sun, while Frances was the primary plotter behind their novels. Together they created several mystery series, starting with the Mr. and Mrs. North books in the late 1930s.

The Lockridges wrote their most famous series, Mr. and Mrs. North, from 1936 through 1963. The books were popular enough to spawn a Broadway play, a film, a radio show, and a television series. They also created the Captain Heimrich series set in rural New York and launched the Nathan Shapiro series featuring a melancholy NYPD detective. Frances handled most of the plotting while Richard did the actual writing.

After Frances died in 1963, Richard continued writing alone, extending the Heimrich and Shapiro series and creating the Bernard Simmons series. He remarried in 1965 to Hildegarde Dolson, herself a mystery writer. Richard kept producing novels at a steady pace until the late 1970s, adding more than 20 books to his bibliography as a solo author.