I discovered Richard Lockridge’s work one summer in high school, when I was reading my way through the public library’s collection. I started with a book he had written about cats; then proceeded to One Woman, Two Cats, a book he had written about wooing his second wife at age 69. I didn’t realize until years later that he had also written a few (60+) mysteries, many with his first wife.

This one is part of the Inspector Heimrich series, about a detective inspector who lives up the Hudson Valley just south of Cold Spring, with his wife (a designer), her son (her first husband was killed in WWII), and their very large Great Dane. Many of these mysteries are set there, in the small town that they live in; however this one is set on a cruise ship.

It is March and Heimrich’s wife has had a rough winter. It’s been particularly cold – it sometimes get so cold in that area of Hudson Valley that the river freezes – and she picked up a flu that was going around and ended up in the hospital, in an oxygen tent, with pneumonia for over a month after saying she was fine, really fine, for a month before that; just a little run down and chilly but who isn’t in January in the Hudson Valley. She’s been out of the hospital for almost a month and still a little tired and depressed in a February sort of way, when their doctor prescribes sun and warmth, and less worry about her husband who is constantly called out in the middle of dark, stormy nights to investigate murders. She has stumbled into his cases before, has been shot at – their dog has also been shot – and she knows first hand how dangerous his job is. At first Heimrich thinks, as we all do, yes, wouldn’t it be nice to take a vacation but who can really make that work. Then he looks at her again, recognizes that he’s got quite a bit of accumulated leave – apparently their kid is in college now and they’ve never taken a honeymoon, much less a vacation – and springs for a cruise to southern Spain.

And that does the trick: as soon as they board the ship, his wife begins to perk up. As the days grow longer, they take long naps, make small talk with other passengers, drink martini’s throughout the day and wine with dinner,* and go to bed early. It isn’t until Chapter 5 that a retired diplomat disappears. Then – unfortunately their travel agent registered them as Inspector and Mrs. instead of Mr. and Mrs. as Heimrich had requested – the captain calls on Heimrich to help, since the ship is in the middle of the ocean and the only other policeman on board has been murdered. Mrs. Heimrich, feeling much better, takes this interruption to their vacation with grace, and Heimrich sets out to discover what happened. More murders ensue, providing the final clue, and you will be happy to hear that eventually the Heimrich’s get to go back on vacation. The weather turns cold and rainy again as the ship docks in England to drop off all the dead bodies and the murderer, and continues depressing as they land in Spain but the sun comes out on the last page of the book because, as Heimrich tells his wife, “You bring it with you.”

The writing style reflects Lockridge’s early life as a reporter. Words fired off like the sound of typewriter keys. Short sentences. Matter of fact. Declarative descriptions. Not much interior monologue. It works.

And yet, one of the things that I like about these books – and about the Lockridge’s other major series, featuring two other married couples, the Norths and the Weigands – is that the couples are so much in love. Don’t get me wrong – these are not sweeping romantic love stories like Peter Whimsey and Harriet Vane, with the man declaiming John Donne at his beloved and murmuring French in her ear while the bodies pile up – these couples are just matter-of-factly and comfortably in love. And it comes out, often while the men are gazing at their wives while other conversation goes on, and then their wives turn, see them looking, and smile at them. It makes me suspect that Richard and his wife and co-author, Frances, were maybe very much in love.

Although the writing style is early 20th-Century journalistic, whimsey comes out in the description of the pets – the Heimrich’s gloomy Great Dane, the series of Cats with Personality that cohabit with the Norths and sometimes draw them into murders. Another main character in these books is the location: the Hudson Valley and New York City are often finely drawn. As this book describes, for example, the trip from the Heimrich’s home to the dock on 50th Street and the Hudson, it’s almost like you’re riding with the Heimrichs down local roads and getting stuck, inevitably, in traffic once they hit Manhattan.

Someone republished the North books a couple of decades ago and that’s when I discovered that Lockridge had written about other things than cats. Later still, I stumbled across the Heimrich mysteries in a used bookstore – I often browse used bookstores by author – and started collecting them. I have a long way to go but luckily they are available in e- now, too.

If you haven’t tried the Inspector Heimrich mysteries, give them a shot. You can start with this one – it’s great, and just the book for a break from the February/March New York weather, when it seems winter will never end.

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^{*There is a prodigious amount of drinking the Lockridge’s books. They put the Nero Wolfe books, where there is also quite a bit of drinking, to shame. Something about starting your career during prohibition, I suppose.}