Looking Back: The Turquoise Shop

The detectives in Frances Crane's "The Pink Umbrella," the book reviewed on this week's Classic Mysteries podcast, were Pat and Jean Abbott, who became one of the most popular husband-and-wife sleuths in books during the first half of the 20th century and beyond. If you'd like to see where they came from, take a look back at the very first book in the series, "The Turquoise Shop." I reviewed it on this blog last year - here's what I had to say at the time.

"The Turquoise Shop" is set in an artists' colony in New Mexico - quite deliberately modeled after Taos, New Mexico. Turquoise shop proprietor Jean Holly gets involved with the investigation into a body found outside the town. It becomes even more interesting when Pat Abbott, a private detective who says he's on vacation and trying to learn how to be an artist, shows up in town.

Overall, it's a good mystery, a nice portrait of a semi-fictional town, peopled with interesting characters and peppered with a couple of murders. The 1941 book was based on a real incident that had happened in Taos. Crane's series eventually ran to more than two dozen Pat and Jean mysteries - here's where it all began.