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kathydavie's review against another edition
4.0
Third in the Norths mystery series set in late 1930s New York City and war has broken out and revolves around a trio: Jerry North, an editor with Kensington & Brown, Pam is his wife, and William Weigand is a detective.
My Take
The start to this story certainly had me going. I just knew the taxi driver was about to be killed. Whew… Other than this, it's the same low-key approach with odd bits of humor. Part of me is irritated that the Lockridges portray Pam as a dizzy dame, and yet I also like that she's so far ahead of them in terms of solving the crime, although both Weigand and Jerry are bright men. Maybe the Lockridges are simply playing up women's intuition??
The Lockridges take us on twists and turns from the start, dropping tidbits of information as the story progresses. It's very matter-of-fact and very typical police work: investigating people and verifying their stories. The untypical is how seriously Weigand takes what Pam North has to say, and the amount of information he spills to the Norths. The clues are both subtle and not, and I kept going off on tangents, figuring out part of it and still being surprised at the end.
I do love seeing this time period through the Lockridges' story: it's weird that Pam doesn't know how old she is; cops today would be envious of all the cops Weigand can detail off to shadow people; and, the technology of the time is brought home with that inability to communicate as easily as we do today.
I'm suspicious of this brother who doesn't mourn his sister… Why doesn't Pam contact the police station when Michael is found?
The budding romance between Bill and Dorian is building slowly, very slowly which ought to satisfy those of you who hate the insta-love, LOL.
The Story
It appears to be a good life for Lois Winston. Good right up until she no longer has it, and Lieutenant Weigand is pulled into the investigation with Pam in his wake.
It's a plague of secrets with people hiding life-changing events until Weigand and Pam North work it out to be what you'd never expect.
The Characters
The Norths are socially active and spending time with Weigand and Dorian. Gerald "Jerry" is laid back and amused with his wife's, Pam's, intuitive leaps. I never do understand how she makes the connections she does. Pete, their cat, has been on his own unintended vacation.
Now promoted to lieutenant and still an acting captain, William Weigand is seeing Dorian Hunt, the fashion illustrator he met in Murder Out of Turn. Detective-Sergeant Aloysius Mullins also got a promotion and really does like his alcohol; he's starting to infect Weigand with "screwy". Their boss is Deputy Chief Inspector Artemus O'Malley. Dr. Jerome Francis is the assistant medical examiner. Detective Stein is helping.
Lois Wilson is a society girl with a big heart. In spite of her big bucks, she volunteers at the Placement Foundation. Dave McIntosh is the son of James McIntosh, a very wealthy man. He's in love with Lois and wants to marry her. Randall "Buddy" Ashley is Lois' half-brother; his father set up a trust that binds him terribly. Mrs. Ashley is their mother who surprises them all. Anna is Lois' maid; Mary Holden is a housemaid. Madge Ormond, a.k.a., Stella Ormk, is a lounge singer with whom Buddy is enthralled.
Mary Crane is the secretary of the Placement Foundation. Ellen Pickett is the social worker who suspected Lois of taking over her job. Mrs. Eva Halstead is the formidable old woman with whom Michael Osborne was boarded. Richard Osborne is his father; he's dying and wants to ensure a home for his three-year-old son. Barton Halstead is Mrs. Halstead's nephew; a man she takes great delight in making uncomfortable. Margaret Graham is almost desperate to adopt Michael; her husband, John Graham, works at Henri et Paulette, a perfume company. Miss Hand is John's secretary. George Benoit is Margaret's father. Cyrus Graham, John's father, is very ill and trapped in a wheelchair; he has very decided notions about insanity.
Max Fineberg is a taxi driver with a pregnant wife in the hospital. Nicholas is the maître d'hôtel at the Ritz-Plaza. Frank Kensitt is the quick-thinking busboy with his own agenda. Waiter No. 67 saw something. Zepkin is the hotel detective.
The Cover
The cover is a plain linen broken into a one-quarter vertical band of black on the left and the remaining three-quarters a red. The spine is where you'll find the title.
The title tells all, for it was just A Pinch of Poison.
My Take
The start to this story certainly had me going. I just knew the taxi driver was about to be killed. Whew… Other than this, it's the same low-key approach with odd bits of humor. Part of me is irritated that the Lockridges portray Pam as a dizzy dame, and yet I also like that she's so far ahead of them in terms of solving the crime, although both Weigand and Jerry are bright men. Maybe the Lockridges are simply playing up women's intuition??
The Lockridges take us on twists and turns from the start, dropping tidbits of information as the story progresses. It's very matter-of-fact and very typical police work: investigating people and verifying their stories. The untypical is how seriously Weigand takes what Pam North has to say, and the amount of information he spills to the Norths. The clues are both subtle and not, and I kept going off on tangents, figuring out part of it and still being surprised at the end.
I do love seeing this time period through the Lockridges' story: it's weird that Pam doesn't know how old she is; cops today would be envious of all the cops Weigand can detail off to shadow people; and, the technology of the time is brought home with that inability to communicate as easily as we do today.
I'm suspicious of this brother who doesn't mourn his sister… Why doesn't Pam contact the police station when Michael is found?
The budding romance between Bill and Dorian is building slowly, very slowly which ought to satisfy those of you who hate the insta-love, LOL.
The Story
It appears to be a good life for Lois Winston. Good right up until she no longer has it, and Lieutenant Weigand is pulled into the investigation with Pam in his wake.
It's a plague of secrets with people hiding life-changing events until Weigand and Pam North work it out to be what you'd never expect.
The Characters
The Norths are socially active and spending time with Weigand and Dorian. Gerald "Jerry" is laid back and amused with his wife's, Pam's, intuitive leaps. I never do understand how she makes the connections she does. Pete, their cat, has been on his own unintended vacation.
Now promoted to lieutenant and still an acting captain, William Weigand is seeing Dorian Hunt, the fashion illustrator he met in Murder Out of Turn. Detective-Sergeant Aloysius Mullins also got a promotion and really does like his alcohol; he's starting to infect Weigand with "screwy". Their boss is Deputy Chief Inspector Artemus O'Malley. Dr. Jerome Francis is the assistant medical examiner. Detective Stein is helping.
Lois Wilson is a society girl with a big heart. In spite of her big bucks, she volunteers at the Placement Foundation. Dave McIntosh is the son of James McIntosh, a very wealthy man. He's in love with Lois and wants to marry her. Randall "Buddy" Ashley is Lois' half-brother; his father set up a trust that binds him terribly. Mrs. Ashley is their mother who surprises them all. Anna is Lois' maid; Mary Holden is a housemaid. Madge Ormond, a.k.a., Stella Ormk, is a lounge singer with whom Buddy is enthralled.
Mary Crane is the secretary of the Placement Foundation. Ellen Pickett is the social worker who suspected Lois of taking over her job. Mrs. Eva Halstead is the formidable old woman with whom Michael Osborne was boarded. Richard Osborne is his father; he's dying and wants to ensure a home for his three-year-old son. Barton Halstead is Mrs. Halstead's nephew; a man she takes great delight in making uncomfortable. Margaret Graham is almost desperate to adopt Michael; her husband, John Graham, works at Henri et Paulette, a perfume company. Miss Hand is John's secretary. George Benoit is Margaret's father. Cyrus Graham, John's father, is very ill and trapped in a wheelchair; he has very decided notions about insanity.
Max Fineberg is a taxi driver with a pregnant wife in the hospital. Nicholas is the maître d'hôtel at the Ritz-Plaza. Frank Kensitt is the quick-thinking busboy with his own agenda. Waiter No. 67 saw something. Zepkin is the hotel detective.
The Cover
The cover is a plain linen broken into a one-quarter vertical band of black on the left and the remaining three-quarters a red. The spine is where you'll find the title.
The title tells all, for it was just A Pinch of Poison.
melissa_who_reads's review against another edition
3.0
A tricky mystery, where the obvious suspect turns out to be not-so-obvious, and the solution is a lot more complex than it looks like ... Lois Winston is poisoned as she is out for dinner and dancing with a man who wants to marry her: who did it, how did they do it, and why? And why does Mrs. North insist that an orphan child named Michael is the heart of the mystery?
bev_reads_mysteries's review against another edition
5.0
"A pinch," Mrs. North told him. "Like a pinch of salt. Only in this case, a pinch of poison." (p. 60)
Lieutenant Bill Weigand starts out quite convinced that the murder in this case has nothing to do with Pam and Jerry North. That his friends won't need to be involved. That Sergeant Mullins won't have to worry about this being another "screwy" one. That Deputy Chief Inspector Artemus O'Malley won't think that his lieutenant is making things more complicated than they need to be. Unfortunately, he's wrong on all counts.
O'Malley glared at Weigand, and said that Weigand looked to him like turning out to be one of the bright boys. "Making things complicated," he said. "Not seeing the noses on their faces."
But the nose on the face this time looks a little too obvious to Weigand. Lois Winston, a young society girl with a conscience, had been volunteering with a children's placement foundation--and doing good work for them and showing a lot of interest in those involved. She also took an interest in her younger brother's (half-brother--as he's quick to point out) affairs. Maybe too much interest. Her decisions in both realms carry a lot of weight and could affect people--for the good, certainly, but some might label her interest as meddling and take offense. Somebody certainly took offense to something, because it looks like somebody took advantage of the time while Lois was dancing on the rooftop of the Ritz-Plaza to add a little something extra to her drink. A little something poisonous.
Little brother was on the rooftop too. And he just happened to wander over to Lois's table while she was dancing. Plenty of opportunity to drop a bit of atropine into her drink. There's the nose that O'Malley thinks is so huge on the face of murder. Except the autopsy can't pinpoint when the poison was administered. And the drinks (thoughtfully gathered up by a crime-enthusiast waiter) don't show any evidence of doctoring. So...how was Miss Wintson poisoned? And who did it?
The Lockridges sped a bit of time educating Weigand (and the reader) about the attributes of atropine. He learns that it doesn't take much (quantity-wise) and the killer could have carried it in a convenient little paper. He learns that it affects people differently and it make take affect in minutes or hours.
It wasn't satisfactory, Weigand decided. Lois might have got the poison before she left home; she might have got it at the restaurant table shortly before she collapsed.
But that's one of the advantages of poison. The killer doesn't necessarily have to be on the spot when death occurs. One can be elsewhere doing completely innocent things. The question Weigand must answer is: did this particular killer have to be on the spot? Was she or he one of the crowd up on the rooftop? Because Lois's little brother wasn't the only suspect hanging out at the restaurant--there are others just as much in the running. Not to mention folks at home who might have set her up with a deadly little drink before she left.
This is another very entertaining entry in the Lockridge series. And once again (just like my previous read, The Norths Meet Murder) Pam & Jerry North are more spectators than participants popping in and out throughout. They appear in fairly substantial bookend scenes--Weigand and his new girl Dorian are having dinner with the Norths when he gets the call in the opening. And Pam and Dorian play a vital role in the denouement with a final wrap-up scene following in the Norths' apartment. But this is ultimately Weigand's book--with helpful assists from Mullins and various supporting policemen. This story has the advantage over the first book because there is no racial commentary--earning this police procedural with a light touch the full ★★★★★ that I gave it when I first read it from the library over 20 years ago.
First posted on my blog My Reader's Block. Please request permission before reposting. Thanks.
Lieutenant Bill Weigand starts out quite convinced that the murder in this case has nothing to do with Pam and Jerry North. That his friends won't need to be involved. That Sergeant Mullins won't have to worry about this being another "screwy" one. That Deputy Chief Inspector Artemus O'Malley won't think that his lieutenant is making things more complicated than they need to be. Unfortunately, he's wrong on all counts.
O'Malley glared at Weigand, and said that Weigand looked to him like turning out to be one of the bright boys. "Making things complicated," he said. "Not seeing the noses on their faces."
But the nose on the face this time looks a little too obvious to Weigand. Lois Winston, a young society girl with a conscience, had been volunteering with a children's placement foundation--and doing good work for them and showing a lot of interest in those involved. She also took an interest in her younger brother's (half-brother--as he's quick to point out) affairs. Maybe too much interest. Her decisions in both realms carry a lot of weight and could affect people--for the good, certainly, but some might label her interest as meddling and take offense. Somebody certainly took offense to something, because it looks like somebody took advantage of the time while Lois was dancing on the rooftop of the Ritz-Plaza to add a little something extra to her drink. A little something poisonous.
Little brother was on the rooftop too. And he just happened to wander over to Lois's table while she was dancing. Plenty of opportunity to drop a bit of atropine into her drink. There's the nose that O'Malley thinks is so huge on the face of murder. Except the autopsy can't pinpoint when the poison was administered. And the drinks (thoughtfully gathered up by a crime-enthusiast waiter) don't show any evidence of doctoring. So...how was Miss Wintson poisoned? And who did it?
The Lockridges sped a bit of time educating Weigand (and the reader) about the attributes of atropine. He learns that it doesn't take much (quantity-wise) and the killer could have carried it in a convenient little paper. He learns that it affects people differently and it make take affect in minutes or hours.
It wasn't satisfactory, Weigand decided. Lois might have got the poison before she left home; she might have got it at the restaurant table shortly before she collapsed.
But that's one of the advantages of poison. The killer doesn't necessarily have to be on the spot when death occurs. One can be elsewhere doing completely innocent things. The question Weigand must answer is: did this particular killer have to be on the spot? Was she or he one of the crowd up on the rooftop? Because Lois's little brother wasn't the only suspect hanging out at the restaurant--there are others just as much in the running. Not to mention folks at home who might have set her up with a deadly little drink before she left.
This is another very entertaining entry in the Lockridge series. And once again (just like my previous read, The Norths Meet Murder) Pam & Jerry North are more spectators than participants popping in and out throughout. They appear in fairly substantial bookend scenes--Weigand and his new girl Dorian are having dinner with the Norths when he gets the call in the opening. And Pam and Dorian play a vital role in the denouement with a final wrap-up scene following in the Norths' apartment. But this is ultimately Weigand's book--with helpful assists from Mullins and various supporting policemen. This story has the advantage over the first book because there is no racial commentary--earning this police procedural with a light touch the full ★★★★★ that I gave it when I first read it from the library over 20 years ago.
First posted on my blog My Reader's Block. Please request permission before reposting. Thanks.
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