The principal cast members are Pam and Jerry North, Bill Weigand, Merton Heimrich, Nathan Shapiro, and Bernie Simmons. Whirling about this core are numerous others such as Sergeant Mullins, John Stein, and Tony Cook. In fact there are dozens of recurring characters who appear in supporting roles. The town of Van Brunt for instance contains more "characters" then you can shake a martini at. I am still in the process of compiling my collection and at present I own 78 different Lockridge titles, out of perhaps 90 (or more) total. Clearly with that many holes, there is a lot of continuity issues that I still can't speak on authoritatively.(Since I wrote the above several years ago, I have continued to "fill in the holes" and now have 87 Lockridge titles in my library. I am aware of only three or four additional titles, making my guess of 90 titles more accurate then I imagined.) The Lockridge books are the only series of which I happily collect book club editions. They are plentiful for the most part and reasonably inexpensive, although some of the older titles are hard to find. The attractive thing about the book-club-editions is the fact that over almost the entire series, they were available in an appealing form that hardly varied. This makes for a nice display on the book shelf! My only criticism of the series was the fact that after Frances died, Mr. Lockridge allowed his political opinions to intrude to a greater extent. However, this was normally limited to a few harmless comments, and generally can be shrugged off as just another piece of the scenery. PREVIOUS NEXT |
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