The Lone Wolf detectives were all over the airwaves during the golden age of radio.

It was rare for a radio detective to have a steady girlfriend and rarer still for him to be married.

But there were a handful of married gumshoes whose wives were equal partners in their crime solving.

We heard one duo, Mr. and Mrs. North, back on the podcast in March, and today we'll hear another,

Pat and Jean Abbott.

The pair first appeared in the novels of Francis Crane.

Crane was the wife of an advertising executive and she was a frequent contributor to the New Yorker where her pieces were known for their dry wit.

While she and her husband were living in Germany, she continued to write articles and speak publicly in condemnation of the Nazi regime.

Her public comments resulted in her expulsion from the country on the eve of World War II.

Crane soon found herself back in the United States, recently divorced, and without a job.

Recognizing that mysteries were a hot commodity, she said about writing

her first detective novel, The Turquoise Shop. Published in 1941, it was based in her home state of New Mexico, and it introduced the world to Pat

and Jean Abbott. The couple met and married by the end of the first book, and starred in 25 additional novels written by Crane.

Pat Abbott was older, a veteran San Francisco private detective and Jean was younger,

managing a New Mexico antique shop. Their adventures, all narrated by

Jean, took them all over the world. The title of each novel featured a color, such as

the yellow violet, the pink umbrella, the indigo necklace, and so on.

It was a trademark later picked up by John D. McDonald for his Travis McGee novels.

Four years after their first mystery was published, the Abbots came to radio.

They joined other married sloths like Mr and Mrs North, and Nick and Nora Charles on the Adventures of the Thin Man. The Abbott mysteries aired on mutual from

1945 to 1947, but unfortunately no episodes are known to survive from that series.

The Abbots came back to radio in 1954 on an NBC series called The Adventures of the Abbots,

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