Richard Jury Mystery
22 primary works • 24 total works
Book 24
With their signature wit, sly plotting, and gloriously offbeat characters, Martha Grimes's New York Times bestselling Richard Jury mysteries are "utterly unlike anyone else's detective novels" (Washington Post). In the latest series outing, The Knowledge, the Scotland Yard detective nearly meets his match in a Baker Street Irregulars-like gang of kids and a homicide case that reaches into east Africa.
Robbie Parsons is one of London's finest, a black cab driver who knows every street, every theater, every landmark in the city by heart. In his backseat is a man with a gun in his hand--a man who brazenly committed a crime in front of the Artemis Club, a rarefied art gallery-cum-casino, then jumped in and ordered Parsons to drive. As the criminal eventually escapes to Nairobi, Detective Superintendent Richard Jury comes across the case in the Saturday paper.
Two days previously, Jury had met and instantly connected with one of the victims of the crime, a professor of astrophysics at Columbia and an expert gambler. Feeling personally affronted, Jury soon enlists Melrose Plant, Marshall Trueblood, and his whole gang of merry characters to contend with a case that takes unexpected turns into Tanzanian gem mines, a closed casino in Reno, Nevada, and a pub that only London's black cabbies, those who have "the knowledge," can find. The Knowledge is prime fare from "one of the most fascinating mystery writers today" (Houston Chronicle).
Book 25
When the body of a French woman washes up on a wild inlet off the Cornish coast, Brian Macalvie, divisional commander with the Devon-Cornwall police is called in. Who could have killed this beautiful tourist, the only visible footprints nearby belonging to the two little girls who found her?
While Macalvie stands in the Scilly Islands, inspector Richard Jury-twenty miles away on Land's End--is at The Old Success pub, sharing a drink with the legendary former CID detective Tom Brownell, a man renowned for solving every case he undertook. Except one.
In the days following the mysterious slaying of the Parisian tourist, two other murders take place: first, a man is shot on a Northhamptonshire estate, then a holy duster turns up murdered at Exeter Cathedral in Devon. Macalvie, Jury and Bronwell set out to discover whether these three killings, though very different in execution, are connected. Written with Grimes's signature wit, sly plotting, and gloriously offbeat characters, The Old Success is prime fare from "one of the most fascinating mystery writers today" (Houston Chronicle).
A woman's body is discovered amidst the ancient Roman ruins of Old Sarum-- the apparent victim of an accidental fall. In the Tate Gallery in London, an elderly woman keels over-- from a supposed heart attack-- while studying a painting. At Exeter Cathedral, a third woman is found dead from "natural causes". But in Martha Grimes' bestselling novels-- and in the world inhabited by Scotland Yard Superintendent Richard Jury-- there are no natural causes.
Is there a link between these three women? Of course. And Jury is the one who sorts it out. The link is Santa Fe, New Mexico, which all three women had visited before their untimely deaths. So Jury is off to the States where, amidst the turquoise jewelry and cappuccinos, he searches for and finds an astonishing web of jealousy and murder.
With its clever plotting, delicious atmosphere and a cast of wonderfully eccentric characters, "Rainbow's End" will satisfy all of Martha Grimes' many existing fans-- and bring her many new ones.
