Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Faceless Adversary / Case of the Murdered Redhead | 1956 | Richard & Frances Lockridge | Buy |
| 2 | Murder and Blueberry Pie / Call It Coincidence | 1959 | Richard & Frances Lockridge | Buy |
| 3 | The Drill is Death | 1961 | Richard & Frances Lockridge | Buy |
| 4 | Murder for Art’s Sake | 1967 | Richard & Frances Lockridge | Buy |
| 5 | Die Laughing | 1969 | Richard & Frances Lockridge | Buy |
| 6 | Preach No More | 1970 | Richard & Frances Lockridge | Buy |
| 7 | Write Murder Down | 1972 | Richard & Frances Lockridge | Buy |
| 8 | Or Was He Pushed? | 1975 | Richard & Frances Lockridge | Buy |
| 9 | A Streak of Light | 1976 | Richard & Frances Lockridge | Buy |
| 10 | The Old Die Young | 1980 | Richard & Frances Lockridge | Buy |
The Lieutenant Nathan Shapiro series follows a New York City police detective who is convinced he is not very good at his job. Shapiro is gloomy, self-deprecating, and perpetually worried that his cases are beyond him. His superiors and colleagues know better. Shapiro always gets results through dogged, methodical investigation, even as he insists he is out of his depth.
Richard and Frances Lockridge introduced Shapiro in The Faceless Adversary in 1956, while they were still writing both the Mr. and Mrs. North and Captain Heimrich series. The Shapiro books are set in Manhattan and deal with crimes in the art world, theater, publishing, and other New York City settings. Shapiro works with a rotating cast of partners and reports to a precinct that tolerates his pessimism because of his track record.
After Frances died in 1963, Richard continued the Shapiro series on his own. The later books, from Murder for Art’s Sake (1967) through The Old Die Young (1980), kept Shapiro’s distinctive personality intact. The series ran for 10 novels total and is the last of the Lockridge mystery cycles, with the final entry published two years before Richard’s death in 1982.