The Long Skeleton: Review

Frances & Richard Lockridge created quite a duo when they came up with Pam and Jerry North. And they created mad-cap mystery perfection when they decided to drop them in the middle of suspicious circumstances in book after book.

The Long Skeleton is another such vintage mystery. This outing has Pam and Jerry taking a hotel room to escape the painters who are redecorating their NYC apartment. They drop off their luggage and their cat, Martini and go out for dinner and a movie only to return to their room to find something unexpected on their bed. Not a mint on the pillow--but the body of Amanda Towne, a famous television personality known for her ability to get guests on her show to reveal things they might have preferred to keep hidden. It soon becomes apparent that finding the body in their hotel room isn't the only link to our murder-magnet couple. There are suggestions that Jerry's most recent best-selling author is involved too. Or maybe the real link is to the past...a past that leads to Chicago and eventually to a suspenseful ending in the hills of Arkansas.

These books are such a delight to me. I enjoy following Pam's illogical logic and watching her make intuitive leaps are always almost, but not quite on target. It's also fun to watch Chief Inspector O'Malley chew through his cigars as he fumes over "those Norths" making everything screwy again. And this one has a little more of O'Malley...all in good fun. I recommend these mysteries to anyone looking for light and breezy, comic, madcap mysteries. Four stars out five.