The first and third books in the Captain Heimrich police procedural series by Richard and Frances Lockridge are hard to find. The series consists of 24 books released between 1947 and 1977. Heimrich is part of the New York State Police Criminal Investigation Division, and his bailiwick is Westchester County and its surroundings.
Plenty of copies of the second one can be found in the secondary market and starting with the fourth title, the rest are readily available. Why these two should be so rare I suppose have something to do with the vagaries of post-war publishing. At any rate the third one recently came into my hands and I lost no time in reading it.
Spin Your Web, Lady! (J. B. Lippincott, 1949) is standard Lockridge, describing the social milieu of upstate New York. John Burden is visiting friends in the town he lived in with his wife for several years; Burden moved to the city after the death of his wife and this is his first visit after two years away. After a couple of drinks at home, they stop by a neighborhood watering hole before going to dinner where they meet a number of the locals about their age. The center of attention is Prudence Gaillard, who seems anxious to exert her control over every person there. Burden as the outsider watches the various reactions to her conniving and manipulation. Some avoid her, some become angry, some placatory. He is interested to note that his friends are also susceptible to her influence.
After an astonishing intake of alcohol, the group breaks up and everyone finds their way home. I have no idea how, as they all had to be incapable of driving. One of the marked differences between then and now, as none of them could have passed a breathalyzer test. Burden and his friends are awakened to learn that Prudence has been strangled and her body has been hung up amid the vines surrounding her house. Enter Lieutenant Heimrich of the New York State Police and his perennial sidekick Sergeant Forniss.
Nearly everyone had a grudge against the victim. She made it her business to obtain information that people would prefer not become public and she held it over their heads. Inevitably some of those secrets came out during Heimrich’s investigation, some of them are quite sad and some are criminal. Prudence had her own secrets as it turns out.
This is the closest the Lockridges came to writing a psychological thriller and they didn’t seem to be altogether comfortable with it. The repeated comparisons of Prudence to a spider weaving a web become redundant, I got it the first time. The final confrontation scene, where all the suspects are gathered and Heimrich tries to pressure the killer to break down, was ponderous. All in all, not the most successful book in the series but interesting for its societal context.