by Otto Penzler
She said, “You don’t seem at all like a detective.”
“Have you ever known any detectives?”
“In detective stories there are two kinds, the hard-boiled ones who are always drunk and talk out of the corners of their mouths and do it all by instinct; and the cold, dry, scientific kind who split hairs under a microscope.”
“Which do you prefer?”
“Neither,” she said, “I don’t like people who make their livings out of spying and poking into people’s lives. Detectives aren’t heros to me, they’re detestable.”
Thus I purged myself of prejudice and Mark McPherson was born. Like the rest of us he came into the world naked. To fulfill his destiny he had to be clothed with certain attributes which could not merely be draped upon him, but which had to be part of his bearing. In several editions of the book, the blurb calls him “the toughest detective in town.” This is sales talk. Mark is tough-minded but warmhearted. Toughness is required in his job but he is too imaginative, too intelligent to play the roughneck.
At the outset he is sullen about his job. The search for Laura’s killer seems a waste of time to a man who has investigated the perpetrators of social crime, been demoted to the Homicide Squad because of a private feud with one of his superiors. He is angry and cynical. He despises the chic world which Laura inhabited, is scornful of her smart circle, contemptuous of luxury, also charmed by these things. Native wit is his weapon. He loathes pretense but can be awed by pretentious persons whose culture he envies. His lower-middle-class Scotch Presbyterian morality is rigid but a burden to him. He is ambivalent, therefore human.
Such qualities were developed in him by the demands of the story. The detective has to be a foil for the brilliant, malicious columnist, Waldo Lydecker. As a hero Mark is obliged to top Waldo in repartee. He does. And having fallen in love with a dead girl, he is compelled to adjust his emotions when she returns alive, yet he must conceal his ardor when it becomes his job to investigate her as the possible killer of her rival.
Mark is defensive, almost bitter about an almost imperceptible limp. Although reported to have been the result of a wound during a gangster gun battle, it was caused by (but not in) World War II. The book was written in that grim time when every able-bodied young man was in service. Why was Mark investigating a murder on the home front? The hero could show no visible defect. The “silver shinbone” had a certain romantic aura. That he had acquired it in police work gave credibility to his job. It was also a symbolic characteristic. Mark does not tread heavily, he walks carefully.
Much of the tale is told by Mark himself. His style contrasts with Waldo’s florid prose and Laura’s feminine confessions. Since style expresses point of view, Mark writes in direct unadorned sentences that reveal as much about his own character as about the people he describes.
Having come alive, he took over the drama, influencing not only the mood but the movement of the story, asserting his personality in a way never contemplated in early drafts and outlines. I have been asked to write other books about him and would very much have liked to; I had become fond of the man. The only trouble is that I am not a real mystery writer and have never been able to think of a plot.
Lieutenant Luis Mendoza
Dell Shannon
IT IS NOT UNUSUAL for professors, writers, lawyers, doctors, and professionals of every imaginable vocation to turn up in the pages of detective novels as amateurs of crime, helping to solve cases because they cannot resist the lure of the chase or because they are inextricably drawn into a nefarious tangle. It is more unexpected for an independently wealthy policeman to continue to combat crime as a matter of principle—because of a desire to bring some order to the frightening chaos in his city. Luis Mendoza’s grandfather left him a substantial estate, but the Los Angeles police officer’s devotion to his ideals and career remains unchanged.
Dell Shannon—chronicler of Lieutenant Mendoza’s cases—is one of the pseudonyms of Elizabeth Linington, the prolific author of police procedurals which have appeared steadily since 1960. As Lesley Egan, she also writes about Andrew Clock of the L.A.P.D., lawyer Jesse Falkenstein, an amateur detective who quotes extensively from the Talmud, and Vic Varallo, a Glendale police captain. Under her own name, she writes about the squad at Hollywood precinct of the L.A.P.D. She has also written several historical novels and, as Anne Blaisdell, a suspense thriller (Nightmare). In addition to producing at least three books a year, the 56-year-old Californian devotes considerable time and energy to politics as an active member of the John Birch Society.
She views the detective story as a philosophical statement, calling it “the morality play of our time … it deals with basics; with truth versus lie, law and order versus anarchy, a moral code versus amorality.”
Lieutenant Luis Mendoza
by Dell Shannon
MENDOZA, LIEUTENANT LUIS RODOLFO Vicente, Bureau of Robbery-Homicide, Los Angeles Police Department. A rather unlikely professional police officer, Mendoza was born sometime between the wars. His parents killed in an accident shortly afterward, he grew up in the east L.A. slums, devoted to his resolute grandmother, Teresa Maria Sanchez y Mendoza, and hating and fearing his miserly grandfather. A naturally brilliant cardplayer, he was mastering the art of the stacked deck and crooked shuffle in his teens, possibly revealing a latent kinship with his grandfather who was amassing a fortune probably by means of crooked gambling at the time. To this day Mendoza “thinks better with the cards in his hands,” and though domesticity has ruined his poker game, is given to practicing the art of stacked decks as he ruminates on problems.
Some dim but obstinate conviction about principles of justice prompted him to join the force at the age of twenty-one, and he became a sufficiently dedicated L.A.P.D. officer that he stayed on at the job even when his grandfather’s death brought him a modest fortune. As a ranking detective, he served his apprenticeship in the Vice Squad, where his talents were chiefly utilized in pursuit of crooked gamblers and con men—a genus he still retains much sympathy for (Double Bluff). Probably his early poverty is responsible for his well-known penchant for expensive tailoring, the discreet but elegant jewelry; but his fanatic fastidiousness is a built-in idiosyncrasy. Although he is not a physically impressive figure, slender and under six feet, Mendoza’s smooth and often sarcastic charm makes its own impression; and when the occasion arises (The Ace of Spades) he can give a good account of himself.
An utter cynic and egotist, Mendoza was a casual chaser and catcher of females up to the age of forty, when a combination of circumstances (Knave of Hearts) led him to marriage with his redhaired Scots-Irish girl, Alison Weir. Subsequently they became the parents of twins, John Luis and Teresa Maria. Mendoza is a fanatic cat lover, which offers another clue to his essential personality; any extroverted idiot can love a dog, but as Mr. Gallico has remarked, it requires a very stable and subtle character fully to appreciate and understand cats. As of the moment the Mendoza ménage includes four cats and, rather grudgingly on Mendoza’s part, an Old English sheepdog acquired by accident (Schooled to Kill). Since the advent of the twins, also of the household is Mairí MacTaggart, the staunch and devoutly Catholic Scots nanny.
As a matter of fact, it can be inferred that the cynicism, egotism, and sardonic humor are camouflage on Mendoza’s part for a large and sentimental heart, though he is inclined to prefer animals to humans. And though he seems at all times to be master of his household, the probability is that it just looks that way. He made quite a fuss about the dog Cedric, but we notice that the dog stayed to become a member of the family. It can also be inferred that everybody who knows Mendoza really well is quite aware of this, and that all the affectation of the hardened cynic is merely a mannerism somewhat fondly accepted by his friends.
In the last few years he has become an avid Kiplingphile: stumbling late upon the master storyteller, his conversion was sudden and fanatic. It is one facet of his character neither his men nor Alison quite understands—but unfortun
ately this inner circle of the discerning few is a relatively small one.
Mendoza’s occasional uncanny intuition has earned him the reputation of having a crystal ball. Perhaps surprisingly, his money, brilliance, and refusal to suffer fools gladly have not antagonized the men under his orders; on the contrary, he is a popular and well-liked officer. The other men in his office—formerly Homicide, recently merged into Robbery-Homicide—are much more usual types of working detectives, from his two senior sergeants Hackett and Higgins to ingenuous-looking Tom Landers, handsome Palliser, the earnest fundamentalist Piggott, the phlegmatic Glasser, the deceptively bright Jason Grace, et al. They have all experienced some interesting occasions together, aside from the monotonous run-of-the-mill cases turning up day by day in any big-city police bureau. Over the years, they have shared changes and troubles, laughs and surprises: the murder of Sergeant Dwyer (The Death-Bringers), the humble pursuit of his widow by Higgins, the astonishing charge against Landers (The Ringer), the macabre antics of Coffin Corner—the grim chase of all the thieves and killers and lunatics and fools which makes up the working day of the professional police officer. At the same time, they are only human, with human problems and foibles even as the rest of us: Hackett on his perennial diet, Landers frustrated by his too-youthful looks, Piggott seeing the devil on all sides.
A lapsed Catholic since his not-so-tender youth, Mendoza had resisted all the cunning efforts of his grandmother and, latterly, Mrs. MacTaggart, to woo him back to the church; but recently the rather suspenseful affair of the kidnapping of the twins (Deuces Wild) accomplished even that. Most recently, also subsequent to that occurrence, the Mendozas are anticipating another addition to the family. As he has over the years, Mendoza is continually threatening to quit the thankless job, but it is unlikely he ever will. As Alison says, he wouldn’t know what to do with himself; and as he says, Mariana sera otro dia—Tomorrow is also a day.
I don’t know where Mendoza came from. There was no gestation period, as it were. At the time I was still feeling quite annoyed at various publishers who were rejecting my latest historical novel in spite of the fact that the others had sold very well; but being fond of eating I had to write something. I had a small, rather interesting idea for a suspense novel, and sat down to start it; the plot was all the interest to me, and it was quite casually—led on by the exigency of the developing plot—that I introduced a police officer on the scene on page eleven of the thing (Case Pending). Almost instantly he rose up off the page, captured me alive, and dismayingly refused to let me stop writing about him. Of course he is an egotist. Willy-nilly I was kept writing about Mendoza, and over the next four books all the various aspects of his character emerged. At this point I managed to stop myself temporarily, and as it appeared I would be writing about Mendoza and police work for some time, I began some intensive research on police techniques, apparatus, regulations, and the L.A.P.D. in particular. As a historical novelist I was accustomed to extensive research, and the mere mechanics of it made me feel rather less uneasy about this strange and sudden enthrallment—put Mendoza at one remove, so to speak. At the first stirring, again, of the impulse to write about Mendoza, I hastily concocted another plot and wrote a book, and then another, about some very different people (both of these turned into series too, purely as a device to keep Mendoza at bay). But when I was ruthlessly captured again and set to writing about Mendoza, although I was deliberately (and I hope plausibly and authentically) producing the police-procedural novel, Mendoza was still in charge and dominating the scene. My other detectives were all acquired, somewhat desperately, to keep him from forcing me to write about him every time I picked up my pen to write something.
It can be argued, I suppose, that the various productions of a reasonably prolific writer always have much in common: a writer tends to write about the same kind of people in book after book. Doubtless the Freudians would have glib explanations; having a simple mind (like Jason Grace) I am inclined to think that any given writer’s protagonists tend to similarity just because the writer finds something attractive, admirable, or amusing about that kind of character. Many of the people in my other books are “larger than life” people—as Mendoza certainly is (and that is the sole reason I might advance even to myself to explain why I once wrote one entire thick book about that less than admirable creature Oliver Cromwell). Curiously, a majority of my other protagonists have also been shrewd cardplayers, though it is a pastime I personally detest.
Aside from that—no, I don’t know where Mendoza came from, or why. Just, there he was—and there he is.
Mr. and Mrs. North
Richard Lockridge
THERE IS AN IRRESISTIBLE appeal in those scatterbrained young women of fiction who find themselves in the unlikeliest situations, never quite knowing how they got there and only miraculously escaping some horrible fate at the last moment. While they are as exasperating as real-life women, they still have a mad charm that squeezes affection out of the grumpiest reader. No one better exemplifies this personality than Pamela North, the delightful albatross around Jerry North’s neck. Perhaps the most likable couple in mystery fiction (along with Nick and Nora Charles), the Norths made their investigative debut in The Norths Meet Murder. They had previously been the central characters in a 1936 collection of sketches, originally published in The New Yorker, titled Mr. and Mrs. North, and were in time the subjects of a popular Broadway play, a radio series, and a television series.
Richard Lockridge had created the couple for those humorous sketches and, when his wife Frances decided to write a mystery, he suggested the already established characters for her novel. They appeared in a total of twenty-seven books (twenty-six of them mystery novels), all co-authored by Frances and Richard, until 1963, when Frances died and the series ended.
Richard Lockridge also wrote of the adventures of Nathan Shapiro, a New York City police detective plagued with self-doubts, and Merton Heimrich of the New York State Police. After his wife’s death, Lockridge continued those detective series alone. He also created Bernie Simmons of the New York District Attorney’s office in 1965. The 79-year-old Richard Lockridge is now married to another mystery writer, Hildegarde Dolson; they live in Tryon, North Carolina.
Mr. and Mrs. North
by Richard Lockridge
MR. AND MRS. NORTH had been fictional, or semifictional, characters for several years before they first met murder. I paraphrase the title of the first mystery novel about them—The Norths Meet Murder. I had written pieces about them for The New Yorker—not short stories, precisely, but what The New Yorker then called “casuals.” Brief domestic comedies, I suppose they were. And they were based, sometimes closely, on things which had happened to my wife, Frances, and me.
I wrote, and the magazine bought, a good many of those pieces, and eventually they were collected in a book called Mr. and Mrs. North. The publisher, rather ill-advisedly, called this collection a “novel.” Several reviewers snorted and so, in a mild way, did I. Novels, like short stories, require plots, and I, then, was plotless. And the Norths, in the early New Yorker pieces, were without first names.
The surname was easy. It was merely lifted from the somewhat amorphous, and frequently inept, people who played the North hands in bridge problems. In The New Yorker, in their early appearances they were merely “Mr.” and “Mrs.” But midway of one piece, it became necessary for Mr. North to call to his wife in another room of their apartment. It seemed unlikely that he would call out, “Hey, Mrs. North.” So, on the spur of the moment, he called for “Fran.” I do not remember that I had ever called Frances that, although, among other things, I did call her “Francie.”
When proofs—The New Yorker always sent proofs—came back the “Fran” stuck out. The spur of the moment had, clearly, struck too close to home. As a one-time printer I could count spaces, so that only one line would have to be reset. (I had been, a few years earlier, the printer in the Kansas City, Missouri, post office. I had learned to set type in
a “journalism” course at Kansas City Junior College, where journalism certainly started with the fundamentals. I was taught to run a job press at the post office by an elderly man, who really was a printer and was retiring. He lacked two fingers on his right hand, which was conventional for long-time operators of job presses. I did manage to retain mine.)
Anyway, I counted spaces, and “Pam” came close enough, and Mrs. North became Pamela, “Pam” for that line of type. I have no idea how her husband became “Jerry” or, for that matter, how he became a publisher. In The New Yorker stories, he had no occupation, so far as I can remember. Except, of course, that of being foil, straight man, to his wife.
Actually, I suppose the Norths did not first appear in The New Yorker, although that was the first time they had names.
When we first went to New York to stay, the New York Sun devoted that part of its back page not occupied by John Wanamaker to a department called The Sun Rays. It consisted of very short, preferably humorous pieces, and fragments of verse. We were broke; flat broke is not excessive. Frances got a job reckoning payments due from people who were buying on time—buying electric generators, as I recall. She was paid twenty-five dollars a week. It was a job for which she was totally unsuited, and which she did very well. We paid twenty dollars a week for a large room with a bath and a gas plate at one end. I, for some months, had no job at all, although I kept applying to all the city’s newspapers, which then were numerous. So I started submitting pieces to The Sun Rays.
