Mystery Women Authors
Martha Grimes
Biography
Martha Grimes lives
in Washington DC and has taught the Writing Seminars Program at John Hopkins
University. Despite being born in USA and living in the USA all her mysteries
with Richard Jury are set in Britain and feature that wonderful institution
specialising in gossip - the British Pub. Like Elizabeth George (another American who writes about
Britain), Martha Grimes writes a 'true' British mystery.
For more on the biography of Martha Grimes visit her home page. There is lots about her books as well.
To read about Martha's writing process and the Pubs she names her books after click here for A Pint with Detective Jury.
Books
Richard Jury Mysteries
The Stargazey
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 �migr�s, 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. (Amazon.com Review)
Published Henry Holt and Co 1998
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(hardcover)
The Man with a Load of Mischief
The quiet village of Long Piddleton is suddenly
shocked by two murders. With no leads, Inspector Jury faces a variety of suspects.
Published Dell Books 1981 (Out of Stock)
The Old Fox Deceiv'd
After
a bizarre murder on Twelfth Night, Jury discovers a maze of unrequited loves,
unrevenged wrongs, and even undiscovered murders.
Published Dell Books 1982 (Out of Stock)
The Anodyne Necklace
A spinster
whose passion was bird-watching, a dotty peer who pinched pennies, and a baffling
murder made the tiny village of Littlebourne a most extraordinary place. And
a severed finger made a ghastly clue in a killing that led local constables
from a corpse to a boggy footpath to a beautiful lady's mansion.
But Richard Jury refused preferred to take the less traveled route to a slightly disreputable pub, the Anodyne Necklace. There, drinks all around loosened enough tongues to link a London mugging with the Littlebourne murder and a treasure map that would chart the way to yet another chilling crime.
Published Dell Books 1983 (out of stock)
The Dirty Duck
The only
clues to a murder are two lines from a poem, and Inspector Jury must take a
crash course in the bloodier side of Elizabethan verse.
Published Dell 1984
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Jerusalem Inn
A white
Christmas couldn't make Newcastle any less dreary for Scotland Yard's Superintendent
Richard Jury--until he met 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 saw her, she was cold--and dead.
Melrose Plant Jury's aristocratic sidekick wasn't faring much better. Snow bound at a stately mansion with a group of artists, critics, and idle-but-titled rich, he, too, encountered a lovely lady . . . or rather, stumbled over her corpse. What linked these two Yuletide murders was a remote country pub where snooker, a Nativity scene, and an old secret would uncover a killer . . . or yet another death. (From the Publisher)
Published Dell 1984
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The Deer Leap
Martha
Grimes takes us to Ashdown Dean, a little English village where animals are
dying in a series of seemingly innocuous accidents. While the puzzling deaths
of village pets may raise some idle gossip over a pint or two at the Deer Leap,
the village pub, this hardly seems a case for Superintendent Jury of Scotland
yard. Nor does it seem much of a challenge for the combined deductive powers
of Jury and Melrose, the affable former Earl of Caverness.
It is his mystery writing-writing, amethyst-eyed friend, Polly Praed, who drags Plant and Jury to Ashdown Dean. The impatient Polly, having yanked open a call box in the pouring rain, is ill prepared for what lands at her feet. The now-deadly case is cause for calling in Scotland Yard.
Published Dell 1985
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Help the Poor Struggler
Around
bleak Dartmoor, where the Hound of the Baskervilles once bayed, three children
have been brutally murdered. Now Richard Jury of Scotland Yard joins forces
with a hot-tempered local constable named Brian Macalvie 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 governess'. 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. (From the Publisher)
Published Dell 1985
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from
I Am the Only Running Footman
In his eighth case, Richard Jury is drawn
into the so-called Porphyria killings. A particularly elusive pair of murders.
From the streets of London to the village of Somers Abbas, Jury and Macalvie
are joined by the stolid if hypochondriac Sergeant Wiggins and the reluctant
Melrose Plant. They meet in another pub, the Mortal Man, and, amidst the clatter
and cry of the Warboys family, they ponder a labyrinthine set of clues.
Published Little Brown 1986 (Out of stock) Hardcover
The Five Bells & Bladebone
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.
Published Dell 1987
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from
The Old Silent
When Jury
books a room at the Old Silent, he never expects to witness a murder. Now he
will go to any length to help the victim's mysterious widow.
Published Dell 1989
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The Old Contemptibles
A
beautiful woman dies under murky circumstances and Inspector Jury must follow
a tangled trail of clues to extricate himself as a suspect.
Published Ballantine Books 1991
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The Horse You Came In On
Mourning
the death of his lover, Scotland Yard Superintendent Richard Jury throws himself
into a new case--involving three seemingly unrelated murders and a literary
forgery in Baltimore, Maryland.
Published Ballantine Books 1993
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from
Rainbow's End
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.
Published Ballantine Books 1995
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The Case Has Altered
The
accusation that Jenny Kensington, whom he has long loved, is behind the murders
of two women recently connected with the Fengate estate, leads Richard Jury
to the conclusion that he needs someone inside Fengate--someone who can impersonate
an antiques expert. Enter Melrose Plant, detective manqu�. And in his wake follows
a cast of characters that Martha Grimes' fans have come to love in this affecting
story that is by turns crushingly sad and wonderfully funny.
To read Chapter one click here
Published Henry Holt & Company 1997
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Other Mysteries
The End of the Pier
Two murders
with the same modus operandi committed one year apart lead La Porte deputy sheriff
Sam DeGheyn to the conclusion that the man serving time for the first murder
has been unjustly imprisoned.
Published 1992
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Hotel Paradise
When
12-year-old Emma Graham sets out to investigate the mysterious drowning of a
girl her age nearly 40 years ago, she comes face to face with a present-day
murder--and the dark and deadly side of the town she lives in.
Published Mass Market Paperback 1996
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Send Bygraves - Mystery Poetry
A dramatic
mystery poem that uses the conventions of the traditional British mystery to
explore the very nature of crime, the criminal and the criminal investigator.
Published 1989 (Out of Print)
Web site address
Other sites for Martha Grimes
To read more about Richard Jury click here
Bantam Books site
Page created by Leone Moffat
Last updated 03-Mar-2002