Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Squire of Death | 1965 | Richard & Frances Lockridge | Buy |
| 2 | Plate of Red Herrings | 1968 | Richard & Frances Lockridge | Buy |
| 3 | Twice Retired | 1971 | Richard & Frances Lockridge | Buy |
| 4 | Something Up a Sleeve | 1972 | Richard & Frances Lockridge | Buy |
| 5 | Death on the Hour | 1974 | Richard & Frances Lockridge | Buy |
The Bernard Simmons series is a five-book mystery sequence written by Richard Lockridge after the death of his wife and writing partner Frances. Simmons is an assistant district attorney in a small Connecticut town who gets pulled into murder investigations that cross his desk. The books began with Squire of Death in 1965 and ended with Death on the Hour in 1974.
Simmons is a quieter, more reserved protagonist than the Lockridges’ earlier characters. The Connecticut setting gives these books a New England small-town feel, with murders rooted in local grudges, family secrets, and small-community politics. Like the Captain Heimrich novels, the pace is measured and the emphasis is on careful deduction rather than action.
Richard Lockridge wrote the Simmons books during the same period he was continuing the Heimrich and Shapiro series as a solo author. While the series is the shortest of his mystery cycles, it has the same readable prose and fair-play plotting that made the Lockridge name a fixture of mid-century American mystery fiction.