Richard Jury Books In Order

The Man With a Load of Mischief

Two pubs in Long Piddleton are the sights of two murders. Scotland Yard’s Richard Jury gets some help from Long Piddleton’s own Melrose Plant to root out evil in the heart of the village.

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. 2 cassettes.

The Anodyne Necklace

A severed finger found at the scene of a baffling murder in the village of Littlebourne leads local constables on what seems like a wild goose chase. But Richard Jury prefers to take the less traveled route to a slightly disreputable pub, where drinks all around loosen tongues and provide clues galore. MASS MARKET PAPER

The Dirty Duck

Superintendent Richard Jury has been wrong before. But when stating that ‘nothing ever happens in Stratford,’ he never imagined just how wrong he could be. Besides the stage murders committed nightly at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, a real one has been performed not far from a popular pub known as The Dirty Duck.

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.

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 governesses. And as suspense spreads across the forbidding landscape, an old injustice retums to haunt Macalvie…
with clues that link a murder in the distant pass with a killing yet to come.

The Deer Leap

In a village plagued by missing pets, Scotland Yard’s Richard Jury and sidekick Melrose Plant face the worst of human nature when a chilling old crime leads them to a brand new way to die.

I Am the Only Running Footman

Finally back in print a classic Richard Jury novel from ‘one of the established masters of the genre’ Newsweek. Scotland Yard Superintendent Richard Jury takes on an elusive strangler in a case of family secrets and family lies…
‘Witty…
stylishly crafted.’ The Washington Post ‘ Grimes gets our immediate attention and holds it…
with something more than mere suspense.’ The New Yorker ‘A superior writer.’ The New York Times Book Review

The Five Bells and Bladebone

Scotland Yard Superintendent Richard Jury is just one pint into his vacation in Long Piddleton when the murder of a notorious philanderer rocks the small village and its eccentric inhabitants…

‘A writer to relish.’ The New Yorker

‘Blends almost Dickensian sketches of character and social class with glimpses of a ferocious marriage.’ Time

The Old Silent

Violence finds a burned out Richard Jury when he becomes the only witness to a murder in a cozy inn called The Old Silent. Though Nell Healey shot her husband in cold blood, Jury will go to any lengths to help her and break through her reticence to untangle a web of twisted motives and twisted lives.

The Old Contemptibles

‘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 REVIEWWhen 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 TODAYSelected by the Literary Guild and the Mystery Guild

The Horse You Came In On

‘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‘…

Rainbow’s End

‘Once again, Grimes hooks her readers with the engaging Jury and friends and with skillful tucking of hints into unexpected corners.’ Publishers Weekly starred reviewWhen three women die of ‘natural causes’ in London and the West Country, there appears to be no connection or reason to suspect foul play. But Scotland Yard Superintendent Richard Jury has other ideas, and before long he’s following his keen police instincts all the way to Santa Fe, New Mexico. There, in the company of a brooding thirteen year old girl and her pet coyote, he mingles with an odd assortment of characters and tangles with a twisted plot that stretches from England to the American Southwest. And while his good friend Melrose Plant pursues inquiries in London, Jury delves deeper into the more baffling elements of the case, discovering firsthand what the guide books don’t tell you: that the Land of Enchantment is also a landscape ripe with tragedy, treachery, and murder.’Rainbow’s End is itself a literary rainbow. It’s the skillful blend of mystery and comedy and pathos, a Martha Grimes trademark, that makes this visit with Richard Jury and company so memorable and satisfying.’ Mostly Murder

The Case Has Altered

The Lincolnshire fens are the right setting for Richard Jury’s latest case, a mystifying double murder. When the principal suspect turns out to be Jenny Kensington, a woman Jury has long loved, he decides he needs someone inside Fengate someone who can impersonate an antiques expert. Enter Melrose Plant, detective ‘manque’. And in his wake follows the cast of characters and wicked plot twists that Grimes’ fans have come to love. Simultaneous hardcover release from Henry Holt. 4 cassettes.

The Stargazey

In Martha Grimes’ newest, most intriguing novel yet, Richard Jury follows a beautiful blonde to the gates of Fulham Palace only to hear of her death three days later. Soon Jury realizes that he may have finally met his match in this mystery woman dead or alive…
A major bestseller: New York Times, USA Today, Los Angeles Times’Wondrously eccentric.’ New York Times Book Review’Delightfully entertaining. Grimes’ popular Richard Jury returns in top form…
a must have from one of today’s most gifted and intelligent writers.’ Booklist starred review’The literary equivalent of a box of Godiva truffles…
Wonderful.’ Los Angeles Times’Martha Grimes’s wintry new mystery envelops the reader in all the comforts of an English whodunit…
The Stargazey is wellworth setting your sights on.’ USA Today’The author weaves a psychologically complex plot and delicious wit.’ Ft. Lauderdale Sun Sentinel’Wonderfully daffy and endearing.’ Publishers Weekly’One of the established masters of the genre.’ Newsweek’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

The Lamorna Wink

Five years ago in Cornwall, two children disappeared from their beds and were found mysteriously drowned. When a woman is murdered nearby, the police look for a connection between the deaths. Melrose Plant, renting the children’s empty home is caught up in the inquiry, and soon Richard Jury arrives to investigate.

The Blue Last

Scotland Yard superintendent Richard Jury recruits a reluctant Melrose Plant to solve a case of mistaken identity revolving around London’s last bomb site where once stood a pub called The Blue Last.

The Grave Maurice

The follow up to The New York Times bestselling The Blue Last and the latest in the acclaimed Richard Jury series from ‘one of the established masters of the genre’ Newsweek.

Abridged, 4 cassettes, 6 hours /Content /EditorialReview EditorialReview Source Amazon. com Review /Source Content In this, the 18th outing in Martha Grimes’s popular series featuring Scotland Yard Superintendent Richard Jury and his aristocrat pal Melrose Plant, Jury, recuperating from a near fatal shooting The Blue Last hears about the two year old abduction of his doctor’s talented young daughter, Nell Ryder, who disappeared from her grandfather’s stud farm, along with a champion thoroughbred horse. Pursuing the stalled investigation when he’s released from the hospital, Jury stumbles on a complicated scheme involving murder, insurance fraud, and a scheme to replicate a popular menopause drug derived from the urine of pregnant mares. As readers of this popular series know, while there’s a mystery at the heart of every Jury novel, the real payoff is in Grimes’s lucent prose, wit, and complex characterizations. Fans of British mystery writer Dick Francis, who’s made the world of thoroughbreds his own turf, will find this a delightful diversion, particularly since Francis recently announced his retirement from the genre. Jane Adams

The Winds of Change

As he leans over the body of an unidentified five year old girl shot in the back on a shabby London street, Superintendent Richard Jury knows he ll be facing one of the saddest investigations of his life. His colleague DI Johnny Blakeley, head of the pedophile unit of NSY, thinks he knows where this child came from an iniquitous house on that same street, owned by well known financier Viktor Baumann and fronted by a woman named Murchison. Blakeley has been trying to wreck their operation for a long time. While examining the body of an unidentified woman murdered in the gardens of Declan Scott’s estate, Angel Gate, Brian Macalvie, commander of the Devon and Cornwall police, realizes he s been here before. Three years prior, Declan s stepdaughter, four year old Flora, was abducted while she and her mother Mary were visiting the Lost Gardens of Heligan. Shortly after that, Mary Scott herself died, and Declan was devastated by the loss of his child and his wife. ‘He really doesn t need a body in his garden,’ says Macalvie. Joined by the intrepid Melrose Plant, now a gardener at Angel Gate, Jury and Macalvie rake over the present and the past in a pub near Launceston called The Winds of Change. With one of their most serpentine investigations under way, all signs point to the guilt of Viktor Baumann, Mary Scott s first husband and Flora s father. But when no one in this case is exactly who he seems, how can Jury be sure?

The Old Wine Shades

The latest in New York Times bestselling author Martha Grimes’s Richard Jury mystery series ‘The dog came back.’ ‘This is a joke, right?’ ‘No, it isn’t…
. So do you want to hear the rest of it?’ Dumbly, Jury nodded. The rest of it is told by Harry Johnson, a stranger who sits down next to Richard Jury as he’s drinking in a London pub called The Old Wine Shades. Over three successive nights Harry spins this complicated story about a good friend of his whose wife and son and dog disappeared one day as they were viewing property in Surrey. They’ve been missing for nine months no trace, no clue, no lead as to what happened. He’s a fascinating bloke, this Harry Johnson rich, handsome, unattached, and brainy about the esoteric subject of quantum mechanics, a field in which the vanished woman’s husband, Hugh Gault, excels: He’s an authority on string theory, which has some pretty funny notions about the nature of reality. Jury wonders, Is Harry Johnson winding him up? Or did it really happen? The dog did come back but how? And from where? And when Jury investigates, all seems to be just as Harry described it. Until they find the body. Praise for Martha Grimes: ‘One of the established masters of the genre.’ Newsweek ‘ Grimes’s gift for evoking mood and emotion is as keen as her talent for inventing a demanding puzzle, and solving it.’ The Wall Street Journal ‘ Grimes excels at creating a haunting atmosphere and characters both poignant and preposterous.’ USA Today ‘Grimes is gifted at exploring the private, sometimes horrifying, yet utterly mundane thoughts of ordinary people.’ San Francisco Chronicle

Dust

Coming in January Richard Jury returns to the back streets and back rooms of London in The New York Times bestselling series

When an old friend pulls Richard Jury into the investigation of a wealthy bachelor’s murder, Jury s not sure what s more perplexing: the circumstances of the fellow s death, the conflicted stories of the man s past, or the motivations of the case s lead detective the beautiful and forbidding Lu Aguilar. What Jury is sure of is that he s in over his head, both with the inscrutable and challenging Aguilar and the false leads surrounding the once charismatic Billy Maples, last seen in a club named Dust.

A web of clues draws Jury to the trendy Clerkenwell galleries, clubs, and hotels, to the dark stories behind Maples s family, and to the Sussex town of Rye, where Billy had temporarily taken up the tenancy of Lamb House, the charming home where Henry James composed his three masterworks…
and a place with secrets of its own. With Melrose Plant investigating Lamb House, Aguilar interceding, and the appearance of Maples s mysterious young nephew, Scotland Yard s finest and now infamous will need every bit of his intelligence and quiet charm to crack the case.

The Black Cat

The inimitable Richard Jury returns in a thrilling tale of mystery, madness, and mistaken identity 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 subse quent 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’s 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.