Martha Grimes Mystery Collection

Martha Grimes Novels

I Am the Only Running Footman by Martha Grimes

Scotland Yard Superintendent Richard Jury takes on an elusive strangler in a case of family secrets-and family lies...

The Blue Last by Martha Grimes

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Scotland Yard Superintendent Richard Jury returns in a compelling novel, the 17th in Grimes's long-running series. Mickey Haggerty, Jury's old friend and colleague, is dying of cancer. So Jury can hardly refuse his request to look into what Mickey suspects is a 50-year-old case of switched identities. It surfaces when the last World War II bomb site in London is excavated for a new development, exposing the skeletal remains of a woman and infant. Mickey thinks the dead infant wasn't the baby of Kitty Riordan, Maisie Tynedale's nanny, as Kitty claimed, but was Maisie herself, the heiress to a brewery fortune. Did Kitty engineer the masquerade? And did Simon Croft, who was writing a book about London in the war years, discover it? When Croft is killed and his computer stolen, Jury sends his pal Melrose Plant to snoop around Tynedale Lodge disguised as a gardener. There he encounters a charming trio of amateurs: a homeless urchin and his extremely clever dog Sparky, and Gemma, a Tynedale ward whose mysterious background may hold the clue to Simon's murder as well as the still unsolved attempt on her young life.
As usual, Plant's world of eccentric friends and relatives is nicely evoked in a subplot that leads him on a surprising holiday in Florence, during which he acquires just enough knowledge of Italian Renaissance painting to pull off another disguise on Jury's behalf. Grimes weaves the threads of this rich tapestry together in a surprise ending that not even Grimes aficionados will sense coming. But it's an appropriate conclusion, given the book's brooding tone, established in the opening pages by a dying friend's obsession and sustained as the investigation forces Jury to confront his own haunted memories of the war. This is a solid page turner, marked by Grimes's unerring sense of pacing, respectful but provocative poking around in Jury's soul, and topnotch storytelling ability.

The Lamorna Wink : A Richard Jury Mystery by Martha Grimes

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Fans of Martha Grimes will know that the Lamorna Wink must be a British pub, and one to which Superintendent Richard Jury or his aristocratic sidekick Melrose Plant can be counted on to repair in the process of solving a mystery or two. This time, with Jury off in Ireland, Plant takes the starring role. His vacation in picturesque Bletchley on the Cornwall coast is very nearly ruined by the coincidental appearance of his dreaded Aunt Agatha. Ironically, however, he is drawn to the plight of a young man, Johnny Wells, whose favorite aunt has disappeared suddenly without trace. In spite of Agatha, Plant decides to lease a house owned by an American millionaire whose two grandchildren died tragically on the beach a few years before. Within a day or so, a new dead body is found in neighboring Lamorna: that of Sada Colthorp, a young woman who had lived in the area but left to dabble in porn movies. Plant and divisional police commander Brian Macalvie (Help the Poor Struggler) believes there's a link between Colthorp and the missing Chris Wells. When the pieces start to come together (and a fast string of violence ensues), Jury makes a token appearance to tie up the remaining loose ends. But the day really belongs to Plant, who is becoming much more than an accidental detective, and to Macalvie, a character with an appeal that may eclipse even Jury's.
As always, Grimes provides comic relief at the expense of a tight plot by checking in with the myriad other characters who populate Plant's Long Piddleton and Jury's London. The impatient reader may wonder when, if ever, Plant and friends will cease their juvenile heckling of Vivian Rivington's Italian count. The final explanation of the children's deaths, however, will leave the most stoic mystery fan feeling distinctly queasy. That Grimes can so effectively amuse, shock, intrigue, and even irritate after 16 books bodes well for the continuing life of the series.

Hotel Paradise by Martha Grimes

Twelve-year-old Emma Graham becomes obsessed with the mysterious drowning of another girl her age forty years in the past and comes face to face with a present-day murder, and the dark underside of her hometown.

Biting the Moon by Martha Grimes

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A teenage girl 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; in an unlikely scenario that only a writer as talented as Grimes can make plausible, 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 that takes the two girls into the murky world of illegal dogfights, hunting, and wild-animal profiteers culminates in a dramatic confrontation, but it is the brilliantly realized characters rather than the plot that capture the reader's imagination and keep the pages turning. Another tour de force for Grimes, and a cause for celebration for her many fans.

Cold Flat Junction by Martha Grimes

In a sequel to Hotel Paradise, its "utterly engaging" (Washington Post Book World) young heroine continues her quest for the truth-about two mysterious deaths and her own life.
Hotel Paradise and its twelve-year-old heroine, Emma Graham, were hailed by Booklist as "superb...beyond genre...one of the year's best!" Emma's quirky, mysterious, laugh-out-loud story, and her pursuit of old secrets in the cobwebbed corners of a once-fashionable resort hotel, added up to a novel that enchanted readers and drew comparisons with the work of both Barbara Vine and Henry James.
In Cold Flat Junction, the irrepressible and intuitive Emma is still obsessed with the "accidental"drowning of an adolescent girl, forty years ago. She seeks to unravel the mystery of the drowning and the unsolved murders that wind back to it. Extraordinary range and depth, singular characters, and intricate suspense make this yet another book that only the magnificent Martha Grimes could have written.

The Case Has Altered : A Richard Jury Mystery by Martha Grimes

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Richard Jury, the brooding Scotland Yard detective-hero of many of Martha Grimes's mysteries, is back in The Case Has Altered, but--as usual--his sidekick Melrose Plant steals the show. Set in the fens of Lincolnshire, Jury must investigate two murders in which his true love, Jenny Kennington, is a suspect. But while Jury deals with the evidence, Melrose uncovers the local color, interviewing everyone from uncommunicative pub owners to chatty cooks. Even murder seems a little less grim with Melrose Plant around.

The Horse You Came In On by Martha Grimes

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" . . .

The Dirty Duck by Martha Grimes

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.

The Stargazey by Martha Grimes

Amazon.com
It all starts with two unlikely passengers on the same number 14 Fulham Road bus--Scotland Yard superintendent Richard Jury and a glamorous blonde woman in a sable coat. He can't keep his eyes off her, and when she disembarks, Jury follows her to the gates of Fulham Palace. He loses her in the fog, however, and when she's found shot to death in the herb garden of the palace, the game's afoot--especially since the victim may only look like Jury's blonde, but not be her at all. Two glamorous women in priceless fur coats in an obscure little museum in the London suburbs on the same foggy autumn night? Well, maybe. Or maybe not. The plot ultimately involves chicanery in the art world, a family of Russian émigrés, a missing Chagall, an international female assassin, a couple of unsettlingly strange young girls, and a hilarious send up of a stuffy English men's club. The tale serves a hearty helping of Grimes's usual interesting, not to say eccentric, characters. Among the most consistently fascinating of these is Jury's aristocratic friend Melrose Plant, a direct descendant of Lord Peter Wimsey and other wealthy, titled, amateur English detectives. Fans of Grimes's previous Superintendent Jury capers--each of which takes its name from an English pub--will enjoy the jokes, and new readers will appreciate the author's dry wit, her sharp eye for British oddities, and the way she turns an ordinary police procedural into a cozy little study of the national character. The Jury series began with The Man with a Load of Mischief (1981) and has included The Deer Leap (1985), The Horse You Came In On (1993), The Case Has Altered (1997), and several other tales.

The End of the Pier by Martha Grimes

In a sleepy resort 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.

The Old Silent by Martha Grimes

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.

Rainbow's End by Martha Grimes

Moving back and forth between England and Sante Fe, New Mexico, Rainbow's End features a wealth of wonderfully eccentric characters and deliciously clever plotting. Three seemingly unrelated deaths from "natural causes" set Scotland Yard Chief Superintendent Richard Jury on the trail of a dastardly villain.

The Old Contemptibles by Martha Grimes

After entering into an affair with a troubled widow, Richard Jury becomes a suspect in a murder investigation and sends his friend, Melrose Plant, to Scotland to probe into the sordid history of the victim's family.

OxfordBooks.com / Oxford, MS

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