Wherever they go, Pam and Jerry North do have an unfortunate tendency to turn up dead bodies., much to the dismay of their good friend, Lieutenant (now Acting Captain) Bill Weigand. This time, it's murder in a Broadway theater. Jerry North was merely stopping by the theater (with Pam along for the ride) to meet one of his authors, which is why they were in the audience when a key investor in the new play is murdered during a rehearsal. It happens in Death on the Aisle, a 1941 mystery by Frances and Richard Lockridge. The book is the subject of today's audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast, and you can listen to the complete review by clicking here.
Bill Weigand had planned to get married that evening, but instead found himself (and his frustrated fiancée, Dorian Hunt,) headed for the theater, where the victim's body was found in an orchestra seat. The victim is Dr. Carney Bolton, a surgeon and an investor in the play, Two in the Bush, which is being rehearsed in the theater. Dr. Bolton turns out to have been a most unpleasant individual, with what even in the 1940s had to be considered a truly offensive attitude towards women. ill Weigand will have little difficulty in finding motives for many members of the cast and crew. But which one’s hatred became a motive for murder? Weigand won’t be the only person to figure it out. So will others. Including Pamela North. And that can be…dangerous.
This is the fourth book in a tremendously popular series that eventually ran to more than forty books, in most of which Pam North stumbles over a dead body, Jerry North stays pretty much in the background, and Lieutenant Weigand solves murders (usually with some help from the Norths). It's a formula which works pretty well in the ones I've read so far. The mysteries are fairly light, but the characters (especially the Norths and Bill Weigand) are pleasant company. Death on the Aisle is available now mostly in electronic editions, and I suspect it would make great summertime beach or poolside reading.
Comments