10/28/2019
The discovery of the body of a French tourist, washed up on one of the Isles of Scilly off the Cornish coast, kicks off MWA Grand Master Grimes’s entertaining, if sometimes befuddling, 25th mystery featuring Scotland Yard Supt. Richard Jury (after 2018’s The Knowledge). Soon afterward, a man is killed on an East Midlands estate—possibly by his wife, who admits only to shooting him in the leg—and a woman is gunned down inside Exeter Cathedral. Jury and his eccentric pal, Melrose Plant, plus handfuls of detectives from the far-flung crime scenes, attempt to discern what, if anything, connects these murders. Jury and company travel around England by boat, plane, helicopter, and car in search of answers, with occasional breaks for a drink in places such as the Old Success Pub in Land’s End. Never mind the difficulty of keeping track of the large cast and the complicated plot, witty dialogue keeps the action moving to the satisfying conclusion. Series fans and newcomers alike will have fun. Agent: Steve Sheppard, Cowan, Debaets, Abrahams & Sheppard. (Nov.)
Praise for The Old Success:
“Martha Grimes’s novels are a hybrid of mystery forms, all of them hugely entertaining. The Old Success is a perfect example.”—Marilyn Stasio, New York Times Book Review
“Entertaining . . . witty dialogue keeps the action moving to the satisfying conclusion. Series fans and newcomers alike will have fun.”—Publishers Weekly
“In terms of verbiage, slang and speech pattern, [Grimes] channels the British vernacular flawlessly. Some interesting subplots (one with a race horse, one with a race car and one with an updated take on the Baker Street Irregulars) help to tie up some loose ends and keep the reader guessing as they wait for the surprising big reveal.”—BookPage
“The solution to [three] apparently separate mysteries proves much simpler than might be imagined—and who better to pave the way to that elusive truth than Ms. Grimes and Richard Jury, her brilliant creation?”—Wall Street Journal
“The twenty-fifth Richard Jury mystery continues the Grimes tradition of mixing solid procedural details with deft characterization and offbeat wit.”—Booklist (starred review)
Praise for Martha Grimes and the Richard Jury mystery series:
“Delightful, surprising, even magical. They begin as police procedurals—someone is murdered, Jury investigates—but Grimes’s love of the offbeat, the whimsical and the absurd makes them utterly unlike anyone else’s detective novels . . . Although Grimes is American she has a wicked eye for English eccentricity . . . Original, civilized and witty novels that . . . truly are novel and, once come upon, they can become necessary.”—Washington Post, on Dust
“Delicious . . . A prime example of Grimes’ skill at balancing the serious with the lighthearted . . . Jury and his posse are terrific companions . . . Delightful.”—Seattle Times, on Vertigo 42
“Intricate and entertaining . . . A delicious puzzle.”—Boston Globe, on The Horse You Came In On
“Wondrously eccentric characters . . . The details are divine.”—New York Times Book Review, on The Stargazey
“Swift and satisfying . . . grafts the old-fashioned ‘Golden Age’ amateur-detective story to the contemporary police procedural . . . real charm.”—Wall Street Journal, on The Lamorna Wink
“The literary equivalent of a box of Godiva truffles . . . Wonderful.”—Los Angeles Times, on The Stargazey
“Witty, atmospheric mysteries . . . Simply heaven.”—Denver Post, on The Stargazey
“Read any one [of her novels] and you’ll want to read them all.”—Chicago Tribune
“Grimes is not the next Dorothy Sayers, not the next Agatha Christie. She is better than both.”—Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“Grimes is superlative at describing the physical world . . . And, when Grimes takes us into interiors, whether it’s a posh country home or a down-at-the-heels flat, she is like Dickens in linking human character to habitat . . . A stellar series.”—Kirkus Reviews, on Vertigo 42
2019-11-10
Superintendent Richard Jury's 25th case is less a star turn than a team effort for a trio of detectives and their deep bench of helpers and hangers-on.
A pair of young sisters out walking the beach of Bryher, the smallest inhabited Isle of Scilly off the Cornish coast, find the body of a woman who's been shot to death. Since Bryher is accessible only by ferry, it stands to reason that whoever killed Manon Vinet is still on the island. That's hard for the close-knit native community to accept. What makes the case even harder for Divisional Commander Brian Macalvie, called in from Exeter to head the investigation, is that the victim's most prominent link to the outside world—the fact that she once nursed the late Gerald Summerston—links her to still more violence when Summerston's niece, Flora Flood, is arrested for fatally shooting her estranged husband, Tony Servino. Flora denies the charges, but her account—Tony threatened her because he was enraged at being served with divorce papers after a two-year separation; she only shot at his feet; an intruder entering at just that moment fired the fatal bullet from a gun of the same caliber—seems calculated to inspire skepticism from even her next-door neighbor Jury's old friend Melrose Plant. While Jury and Sir Thomas Brownell, a legendary detective retired from Scotland Yard, are still trying to figure out whether the two murders are connected, their attention is claimed by a third: the shooting of former Summerston maid Moira Quinn in Exeter Cathedral, right on Macalvie's home turf. The ensuing rounds of inquiry and cross-checking would tax most novelists and their detectives to the limit, but Grimes (The Knowledge, 2018, etc.) keeps dropping unexpected complications, newly minted characters, and familiar faces into a mix that becomes so head-spinning that most readers are likely to greet the denouement with a combination of surprise and relief.
Plotted and peopled with unstinting generosity, even if the regulars are never quite as amusing as the author thinks.
