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Martha Grimes

Martha Grimes carries on the tradition of the English "cozy" mystery, even surpassing her predecessors Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers in her wit. Her delightful, entertaining characters are also successors to P.G. Wodehouse's Wooster and Jeeves.

The title of each lighthearted Grimes mystery is the name of a pub appearing in the novel, though the pub may not play a prominent role. Martha Grimes artistry improves in each successive book, but although the earlier novels are not as masterfully written as her more recent work, they should be read in order to follow the growth and relationships of her chief characters.

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Richard Jury
Other Novels

 
 

Richard Jury

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Man With a Load of Mischief

The Man With a Load of Mischief
by Martha Grimes / Paperback / January 1991 (first published 1981)

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Inspector Richard Jury and Melrose Plant uncover dark secrets from the past when they investigate a series of murders in the quaint village of Long Piddleton.

 

Paperback (Out of stock)

 

Old Fox Deceiv'd

The Old Fox Deceiv'd
by Martha Grimes / Paperback / August 1988 (first published 1982)

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After a bizarre murder on Twelfth Night, Inspector Jury discovers a maze of unrequited loves, unrevenged wrongs, and even undiscovered murders.

 

Paperback (Out of stock)

 

The Anodyne Necklace

The Anodyne Necklace
by Martha Grimes / Paperback / February 1990 (first published 1983)

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A spinster whose passion was bird-watching, a dotty peer who pinched pennies, and a baffling murder make the tiny village of Lambourne a most extraordinary place. And a severed finger makes a ghastly clue in a killing that leads local constables from a corpse to a boggy footpath to a beautiful lady's mansion.

But Richard Jury prefers to take the less-traveled route to a slightly disreputable pub, the Anodyne Necklace. There, drinks all around loosen enough tongues to link a London mugging with the Littlebourne murder and a treasure map that charts the way to yet another chilling crime.

 

Paperback (Out of stock) - Audio Cassette (abridged)

 

Jerusalem Inn

Jerusalem Inn
by Martha Grimes / Paperback November 1990 (first published 1984)

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A white Christmas couldn't make Newcastle any less dreary for Scotland Yard's Superintendent Richard Jury--until he meets a beautiful woman in a snow-covered graveyard. Sensual, warm, and a bit mysterious, she could have put some life into his sagging holiday spirit. But the next time Jury sees her, she is cold--and dead. Melrose Plant, Jury's aristocratic sidekick, isn't faring much better. Snowbound at a stately mansion with a group of artists, critics and idle-but-titled rich, he, too, encounters a lovelady... or rather, stumbles over her corpse. What links these two yuletide murders is a remote country pub where snooker, a Nativity scene, and an old secret would uncover a killer... or yet another death.

 

Paperback

 

Dirty Duck

The Dirty Duck
by Martha Grimes / Paperback / October 1990 (first published 1984)

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Lines from an unknown poem are the trademark of a brutal killer preying on a group of wealthy Americans visiting Stratford and bedeviling the investigation of Scotland Yard's Richard Jury.

 

Paperback - Audio Cassette - Audio Cassette (abridged)

 

The Deer Leap

The Deer Leap
by Martha Grimes / Paperback / September 1990 (first published 1985)

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Paperback

 

Help the Poor Struggler

Help the Poor Struggler
by Martha Grimes / Paperback / September 1990 (first published 1985)

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Around bleak Dartmoor, where the Hound of the Baskervilles once bayed, three children have been brutally murdered. Now Richard Jury joins forces with a hot-tempered local constable named Brian Macalavie to track down the killer.

The trail begins at a desolate pub, Help the Poor Struggler. It leads straight to the estate of Lady Jessica, a ten-year-old orphaned heiress who lives with her mysterious uncle and an ever-changing series of governesses. And as suspense spreads across the forbidding landscape, an old injustice returns to haunt Macalvie... with clues that link a murder in the distant pass with a killing yet to come.

 

Paperback

 

I Am the Only Running Footman

I Am the Only Running Footman
by Martha Grimes / Paperback (out of print) / (first published 1986)

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Paperback (out of print)

 

Five Bells and Bladebone

The Five Bells and Bladebone
by Martha Grimes / Paperback / March 1993 (first published 1987)

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In this ninth Richard Jury novel, a beautiful antique offers more than its market value when dealer Marshall Trueblood unwittingly discovers a corpse stuffed inside the rosewood desk he has just haggled out of a wealthy estate owner.

 

Paperback

 

The Old Silent

The Old Silent
by Martha Grimes / Paperback / February 1993 (first published 1990)

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While staying in a cozy Yorkshire inn, Inspector Richard Jury finds himself embroiled in a case of triple homicide and joins forces with his colleague Melrose Plant to stop the killing.

 

Paperback - Audio Cassette - Audio Cassette (abridged) - Large Print

 

Blood Sport

The Old Contemptibles
by Martha Grimes / Paperback / March 1992 (first published 1991)

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When Scotland Yard superintendent Richard Jury is drawn into a brief affair with a troubled widow named Jane Holdsworth, her subsequent death makes him a suspect in her murder. Unable to leave London, Jury sends Melrose Plant, eighth Earl of Caverness to the Lake District to pry open the Holdsworth family's locked box of secrets. Plant does what he is bidden, in his own particular style, and what he uncovers is a shocking sheaf of surprises about the death-prone Holdsworth clan and its growing number of orphans.

 

Paperback - Audio Cassette (abridged) - Audio Cassette (abridged)

 

Horse You Came In On

The Horse You Came In On
by Martha Grimes / Paperback / June 1996 (first published 1993)

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The murder is in America, but the call goes out to Scotland Yard superintendent Richard Jury. Accompanied by his aristocratic friend Melrose Plant and by Sergeant Wiggins, Jury arrives in Baltimore, Maryland, home of zealous Orioles fans, mouth-watering crabs, and Edgar Allan Poe. In his efforts to solve the case, Jury rubs elbows with a delicious and suspicious cast of characters, embarking on a trail that leads to a unique tavern called "The Horse You Came In On."

 

Paperback - Audio Cassette (abridged)

 

Rainbow's End

Rainbow's End
by Martha Grimes / Paperback / July 1996 (first published 1995)

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When three women die of "natural causes" in London and the West Country, there appears to be no connection--or reason to suspect foul play. But Scotland Yard Superintendent Richard Jury has other ideas, and before long he's following his keen police instincts all the way to Santa Fe, New Mexico.

There, in the company of a brooding thirteen-year-old girl and her pet coyote, he mingles with an odd assortment of characters and tangles with a twisted plot that stretches from England to the American Southwest. And while his good friend Melrose Plant pursues inquiries in London, Jury delves deeper into the more baffling elements of the case, discovering firsthand what the guide books don't tell you: that the Land of Enchantment is also a landscape ripe with tragedy, treachery and murder.

 

Paperback - Hardcover - Audio Cassette (abridged)

 

The Case Has Altered

The Case Has Altered
by Martha Grimes / Paperback / ANovember 1998 (first published 1997)

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Murder in Lincolnshire brings Richard Jury to the damp and wasted fen country. This time, an old flame is implicated, and Jury is forced to doubt how well he really knew her. His pub-trotting chum, Melrose Plant, eternally escaping his snobbish, litigious and voracious aunt, agrees to help by posing as an antiques expert.

 

Paperback - Hardcover - Audio Cassette

 

The Stargazey

The Stargazey
by Martha Grimes / Paperback / October 1989 (first published 1998)

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A dead woman found at London's Fulham Palace is a dead ringer for a mysterious passenger who boarded the same bus Jury did just a few days earlier. Jury's only lead to the victim's identity is the fur coat she was wearing. The coat, which once belonged to an aging film star, was passed along to a family of Russian immigrants who own a posh art gallery. Jury asks his friend, art collector Melrose Plant, to investigate the connection between the coat, the art gallery, and the dead woman. Then another deadly clue turns up when a retired art critic with links to the gallery is murdered. Jury and Plant finally unravel the myriad bits of evidence and uncover an art-theft ring, unmask a professional assassin, and prove--sadly and yet again--that hatred, greed, and anger remain in plentiful supply and continue to drive much of human behavior.

 

Paperback - Hardcover

 

Biting the Moon

Biting the Moon
by Martha Grimes / Hardcover / April 1999 (first published 1999)

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Though not technically a Richard Jury novel, "Biting the Moon" features a teenage Mary Dark Hope, whom we first met in "The Stargazey." The story begins with another teenage girl, who wakes up alone in a bed and breakfast in Santa Fe with no memory of who she is or how she got there. The innkeeper explains that the man who brought her there said he was her father. But the one thing she knows for sure is that he is not--and that she must flee before he returns. Taking his jacket, money, and gun, she hikes into the surrounding mountains, she survives the harsh winter and even flourishes, seeking solace in the company of coyotes she frees from their illegal traps. When she reemerges from the wilderness a few months later, seeking to unravel the mystery of who she is, she walks into the life of 14-year-old Mary Dark Hope, a lonely orphan who becomes her ally and companion. Together they track the stranger who abducted her, who holds the key to the secret of her identity--the man she knows only as "Daddy." The thrilling odyssey takes the two girls into the murky world of illegal dogfights, hunting, and wild-animal profiteers, culminating in a dramatic confrontation.

 

Hardcover

 

Other Mysteries

The End of the Pier

The End of the Pier
by Martha Grimes / Paperback / May 1994 (first published 1992)

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In a sleepy New England town, Maud Chadwick waits tables at the Rainbow Cafe. Her confidant is Sheriff Sam DeGheyn and what they have in common is obsession. Maude doesn't want her son to leave home, and Sam cannot let go of the unsolved murders of three local women -- or his intuition that the killer is still out there. How these lives intertwine reveals a rich and startling story of parents and children and the pain they cause one another.

 

Paperback

 

Hotel Paradise

Hotel Paradise
by Martha Grimes / Paperback / June 1997 (first published 1996)

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A neglected lake, covered with water lilies. A once fashionable, now faded resort. A derelict house full of secrets, uninhabited for almost half a century. The death of a twelve-year-old girl forty years in the past. And another girl who becomes obsessed with this death. With her knack for encouraging adults to reminisce, she begins to piece together puzzles from the past and present. "Hotel Paradise" is a delicate yet disturbing view of the decisions a young girl must make on her way to becoming an adult . . . and the choices she must make between right and wrong, love and truth, life and death.

 

Paperback - Hardcover - Audio Cassette (abridged)

 

Cold Flat Junction

Cold Flat Junction
by Martha Grimes / Hardcover / February 2001

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This smartly written, quietly paced sequel to her 1996 hit Hotel Paradise revisits precocious 12-year-old sleuth Emma Graham, working in her family's fading resort hotel on Spirit Lake in smalltown America. Setting this narrative a week after the close of its predecessor, Grimes chronicles Emma's investigation of three family murders. Ben Queen has recently been released from prison after serving 20 years for the murder of his wife, Rose Devereau Queen. Fern Queen, Rose and Ben's daughter, who "had always been touched in the head," is found shot, and Ben is once again the prime suspect. Emma knows that Ben could not have committed either murder. Unfortunately, she can't tell the sheriff without letting on that Ben is hiding in the old Devereau house. Emma is aware that all these events began 40 years ago with the mysterious drowning death of 12-year-old Mary-Evelyn Devereau, who was being cared for by her three aunts, Rose's half sisters. And who is the spectral "Girl" who keeps appearing and disappearing? Skillfully constructed as a smart, independent child learning to be a self-aware adult, Emma has a talent for indirect routes, self-fulfilling lies and pumping her unwitting sources for a great deal of information.

 

Hardcover

 


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