Death Takes A Bow

At a banquet in 1940s New York, the guest of honor is a goner: “A genuinely puzzling mystery . . . with the delightful wackiness that has made the Norths famous.” —The New York Times Tonight, Jerry North faces something so terrifying that no amount of martinis could quiet his nerves: He has to make a speech. He’s introducing one of his authors, Victor Leeds Sproul, a continental novelist whose delicate tales of Parisian life have been selling like hotcakes ever since the Nazis goose-stepped into the City of Light. Crippled by stage fright, Mr. North enters the banquet hall feeling like a condemned man, but he isn’t the one who will die. Despite his terror, North delivers the speech of his life. But when he introduces the guest of honor, the distinguished author doesn’t stand. Sproul’s eyes jerk open, his chest heaves, and he breathes his last. He has been murdered in plain sight, but it will take the combined genius of Jerry and Pamela North to find out who killed the writer, and committed the unforgivable crime of ruining a perfect speech. “[An] excellent series.” —The New Yorker Death Takes a Bow is the sixth book in the Mr. and Mrs. North Mysteries, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.

Alan Keyes takes a break from his police duties to scratch his acting itch in a local stage production. But when the leading man is murdered during the opening night performance, his partner Detective Heath Barrington is thrust into the limelight to find the killer. Alan soon learns the theater has a deadly past and ghostly forebodings, including a telegram that seems to have come from the beyond. Among the large cast of suspects is Oliver Crane, the director whose finances depend on the success of this play, Jazz Monroe, Milwaukee’s sweetheart with a secret, and the handsome actor Henry Hawthorne, who has designs on Alan. When Alan seems to return Henry’s attentions, Heath must put his jealousy and insecurities aside to determine what’s real, what’s illusion, and who’s acting and who’s telling the truth before death takes a bow. A Detective Heath Barrington Mystery

A traveling spiritualist is found shot to death in an alley late at night with his underwear around his ankles. But the perpetrator is an enigma. Was it the young trick with a drug problem the spiritualist met in the alley? The unusual woman who runs the boarding house where the trick lives? The dead man’s wife, another spiritualist with secrets of her own? The handsome, alcoholic protégé? The beautiful woman who leads the spiritualist’s fan club? Or someone else altogether? With a list of suspects a mile long, only Detective Heath Barrington will be able to crack the murder. But Heath’s handsome fellow detective, Grant Riker, has an unlikely connection to their prime suspect that reveals a shady past he’s ashamed to admit. With more questions than answers, a séance may be the only way to the truth. Or perhaps the answer is in the cards? While Heath searches for the murderer, he uncovers more dark secrets than he bargained for, and witnesses firsthand the relentless pressure for LGBTQ+ people in the 1940s to stay hidden in the shadows.

It’s 1937, and Heath Barrington is a naïve twenty-two-year-old about to set sail across the Atlantic on the Queen Mary. While on board, he meets the handsome Lord Simon Quimby, who invites Heath to his estate. Heath falls for Simon hard, but Simon soon becomes withdrawn and distant. Is Simon all he appears to be, or is there more to him than meets the eye? And what of the old gypsy curse Simon claims his family is under? Did it really cause his mother’s death, his sister’s suicide, and his father’s murder, or did Simon have something to do with it all? It’s up to Heath to uncover the truth, despite his heart telling him otherwise. In this prequel to the Detective Heath Barrington Mystery series, Heath discovers that first love changes you forever and drives you to become the person you’re destined to be.

This was the first bibliography and guide to the American mass market paperback book, and it remains one of the most definitive. The major index is by author, and lists: author, title, publisher, book number, year of publication, and cover price. The title index lists titles and authors only. The publisher index provides a history of that imprint, with addresses, number ranges, and general physical description of the books issued. This is the place that all study of the American paperback must begin.

It’s 1946, and on a hot spring night in Phoenix, Arizona, things are only beginning to heat up at the Monte Vista Road home of flamboyant decorator Walter Waverly Wingate. Private detective Mason T. Adler isn’t thrilled to be turning fifty, and the party Walter throws him makes him even more uncomfortable. Walter has arranged a special birthday present for Mason: a private hour with the handsome, young Henry Bowtrickle in Walter’s upstairs bedroom. But the night turns deadly when his birthday gift turns up murdered. The room was locked, no way in or out, and only Henry and Mason were inside. Mason Adler is on the case, but he is also a suspect, along with the other assorted party guests who were all downstairs at the time of the stabbing. Or were they?