Richard Jury Mystery Series

Three months have passed since Richard Jury was left bereft and guilt- ridden after his lover’s tragic auto accident, and he is now more wary than ever. He is deeply suspicious when requested on a case far out of his jurisdiction in an outlying village, where a young woman has been murdered behind the local pub. The only witness is the establishment’s black cat, who gives neither crook nor clue as to the girl’s identity or her killer’s.

Identifying the girl becomes tricky when she’s recognized as both the shy local librarian and a posh city escort, and Jury must use all his wits and intuition to determine the connection to subse­quent escort murders.

Meanwhile, Jury’s nemesis, Harry Johnson, continues to goad Jury down a dangerous path. And Johnson, along with the imperturbable dog Mungo, just may be the key to it all.

Written with Martha Grimes’ trademark insight and grace, The Black Cat signals the thrilling return of her greatest character. The superintendent is a man possessed of prodigious analytical gifts and charm, yet vulnerable in the most perplexing ways.

A young friend pulls Scotland Yard’s Richard Jury into the life—and death—of a wealthy bachelor.
 
The once-charismatic Billy Maples was last seen in a club named Dust, before his murder in a trendy London hotel. Proving as inscrutable, and challenging, to Jury as the case is the beautiful chief inspecting officer.
 
Before his death, Maples was a patron of London’s finest art galleries and caretaker of author Henry James’s house in Rye. It’s there where Jury installs Melrose Plant, who takes his job to heart, as Jury closes in on the dark secrets behind Maples’s friends and family.
 
“Delightful, surprising, even magical.”—The Washington Post
 
“A clever story with a profound twist…the latest hypnotically compelling work of an author who continues to surprise with every book.”—Richmond Times-Dispatch

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER-NOW IN PAPERBACK

Richard Jury embarks on the darkest investigation of his career when the dead body of a young London girl leads to the cold case of a missing girl in Launceston-an unsolved mystery that has haunted Police Officer Brian Macalvie for years.

“Chew on this,” says Melrose Plant to Richard Jury, who’s in the hospital being driven crazy by Hannibal, a nurse who likes to speculate on his chances for survival. Jury could use a good story, preferably one not ending with his own demise.Plant tells Jury of something he overheard in The Grave Maurice, a pub near the hospital. A woman told an intriguing story about a girl named Nell Ryder, granddaughter to the owner of the Ryder Stud Farm in Cambridgeshire, who went missing more than a year before and has never been found. What is especially interesting to Plant is that Nell is also the daughter of Jury’s surgeon.But Nell’s disappearance isn’t the only mystery at the Ryder farm. A woman has been found dead on the track-a woman who was a stranger even to the Ryders.But not to Plant. She’s the woman he saw in The Grave Maurice. Together with Jury, Nell’s family, and the Cambridgeshire police, Plant embarks on a search to find Nell and bring her home. But is there more to their mission than just restoring a fifteen-year-old girl to her family?The Grave Maurice is the eighteenth entry in the Richard Jury series and, from its pastoral opening to its calamitous end, is full of the same suspense and humor that devoted readers expect from Martha Grimes.

In The Blue Last, Richard Jury finally faces the last thing in the world he wants to deal with—the war that killed his mother, his father, his childhood. Mickey Haggerty, a DCI with the London City police, has asked for Jury’s help. Two skeletons have been unearthed in the City during the excavation of London’s last bombsite, where once a pub stood called the The Blue Last. Mickey believes that a child who survived the bombing has been posing for over fifty years as a child who didn’t. The grandchild of brewery magnet Oliver Tyndale supposedly survived that December 1940 bombing . . . but did she? Mickey also has a murder to solve. Simon Croft, prosperous City financial broker, and son of the one-time owner of The Blue Last is found shot to death in his Thames-side house. But the book he was writing about London during the German blitzkrieg has disappeared. Jury wants to get eyes and ears into Tynedale Lodge, and looks to his friend, Melrose Plant, to play the role. Reluctantly, Plant plays it, accompanied on his rounds of the Lodge gardens by nine-year-old Gemma Trim, orphan and ward of Oliver Tynedale; and Benny Keagan, a resourceful twelve-year-old orphaned delivery boy.And Richard Jury may not make it out alive.A stolen book, stolen lives, or is any of this what it seems? Identity, memory, provenance – these are all called into question in The Blue Last

Detective Richard Jury is back in the 16th novel in Martha Grimes’ extraordinary New York Times bestselling series–now enmeshed in a series of strange crimes and disappearances, and an age-old tragedy that consumes his sidekick Melrose Plant….

The thirteenth mystery for Richard Jury finds the detective investigating the murder of two women in the Lincolnshire fens. Both victims are connected to the wealthy owner of the Fengate estate: one a kitchen maid, and the other, the owner’s ex-wife. But Jury has more at stake than just catching a killer, as the prime suspect is a woman who’s presence in his life is becoming meaningful in a way he can’t explain….

"Intricate and entertaining . . . A delicious puzzle." The Boston Globe
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 author keeps us enthralled with the rich interior and exterior lives of her characters in this emotionally stormy family saga."
THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW
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….
"As always, Grimes’ characters are gems, and her writting is as witty as ever."
USA TODAY
Selected by the Literary Guild and the Mystery Guild