Books by Martha Grimes

The Old Wine Shades: A Richard Jury Mystery

by Martha Grimes

Jury considers the authenticity of a fantastical tale, told over the course of three nights by a stranger and fellow patron at the Old Wine Shades pub in London, about a string theory scientist's wife, son, and dog, who disappeared without a trace nine months earlier. By the author of The Winds of Change. Simultaneous.

The Winds of Change Bestseller's Choice

by Martha Grimes

None

Cold Flat Junction (Emma Graham Series)

by Martha Grimes

Martha Grimes's Hotel Paradise was hailed by Booklist as "superb...beyond genre...one of the year's best." Now, Grimes returns to the same small town, intertwining the threads of one young girl's unexplained death with another young girl's attempt at making sense of her own life.

Foul Matter

by Martha Grimes

The bestselling author of the Richard Jury novels delivers a razor-sharp and raucously funny send-up of the cutthroat world of publishing. And the praise is pouring in:
"A hilarious and wicked caper-adventure on the evils of the book business."
—Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
"Does laughing uncontrollably on a subway train constitute legitimate literary criticism? If it does, then Foul Matter...gets a great review from me." —New York Times Book Review
"She can kick literary butt—in more ways than one." —USA Today

The Winds of Change

by Martha Grimes

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.

The Blue Last

by 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

I Am the Only Running Footman (Richard Jury Mystery)

by Martha Grimes

They were two young women, strikingly similar in life…strikingly similar in death. Both strangled with their own scarves—one in Devon, one outside of a fashionable Mayfair pub called I Am the Only Running Footman. Richard Jury teams up with Devon’s irascible local divisional commander, Brian Macalvie, to solve the murders. With nothing to tie the women together but the fatal scarves, Jury pursues his only suspect…and a trail of tragedy that just might lead to yet another victim. And her killer…

The Dirty Duck (Richard Jury Mystery)

by Martha Grimes

Lines from an unknown poem are the trademark of a brutal killer preying on a group of wealthy Americans visiting Stratford and bedeviling the investigation of Scotland Yard's Richard Jury. Reprint.

The Grave Maurice

by Martha Grimes

"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.

The Case Has Altered

by Martha Grimes

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....

The Lamorna Wink

by Martha Grimes

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 Anodyne Necklace (Richard Jury Mystery)

by Martha Grimes

Superintendent Richard Jury's investigation into the seemingly unrelated crimes of a London mugging and murder in the town of Littlebourne takes him to the local pub, the Anodyne Necklace, which is inhabited by a variety of colorful village characters. Reprint.

The Deer Leap

by Martha Grimes

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.

The Winds Of Change: A Richard Jury Mystery

by Martha Grimes

The shooting death of an unidentified little girl found on a shabby London street, as well as the discovery of the body of an unknown woman in the gardens on the estate of Declan Scott, prompts Superintendent Richard Jury to join forces with Melrose Plant and Brian Macalvie, commander of the Devon and Cornwall police, to investigate a labyrinthine case of sexual perversity and murder. 150,000 first printing.

The Old Wine Shades

by Martha Grimes

"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, who sits down by Richard Jury in the Old Wine Shades. Over three successive nights, Harry spins out this story of a good friend of his whose wife and son (and dog) disappeared one day when they were in Surrey. No trace, no clue, no lead as to what happened.
He's a fascinating bloke, this Harry Johnson - rich, handsome and brainy on the subject of quantum mechanics and superstring theory, which has some pretty funny notions about the nature of reality.
Jury wonders, Is Harry Johnson winding me up? The dog did come back - but how? And from where? When Jury investigates, all seems to be just as Harry described it.
Until they find the body.

Belle Ruin: A Novel

by Martha Grimes

Discovering the crumbling remains of a once-fabulous hotel in the woods near her small home town, twelve-year-old cub reporter Emma Graham stumbles on clues pertaining to a forty-year unsolved crime involving deeply buried family secrets. By the author of The Winds of Change. 60,000 first printing.

Rainbow's End: A Richard Jury Mystery (Richard Jury Mysteries)

by Martha Grimes

"Once again, Grimes hooks her readers with the engaging Jury and friends and with skillful tucking of hints into unexpected corners."
--Publishers Weekly (starred review)
When 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

Belle Ruin (Emma Graham Series)

by Martha Grimes

A waitress at her mother's decaying resort hotel, twelve-year-old Emma now has a second job as the youngest cub reporter in the history of La Porte's Conservative newspaper. But when she discovers the crumbling shell of a fabulous hotel- the once-sumptuous Belle Rouen-in the woods near her small town of Spirit Lake, Emma never imagines that the mysteries it holds will bring her one step closer to solving a forty-year-old crime-and force a new transgression to light.

Dakota (An Andi Oliver Novel)

by Martha Grimes

There is ?suspense on every page?(Cleveland Plain Dealer) in this follow-up to Biting the Moon? now available in paperback.

In Martha Grimes?s acclaimed novel Biting the Moon, amnesiac drifter Andi Oliver sought the one man who held the key to her past. Now, Andi continues from one small town to the next, surviving the dangerous expanse of the Western plains, until she finds her mission?and menace?in Dakota. Taking a job at Klavan?s pig farming facility, Andi learns the gruesome truth of modern livestock management. As she begins to uncover the even darker secrets about Klavan?s sister facility, Big Sun, a stranger from her past comes to the surface? demanding information of which Andi has no memory.

The Old Wine Shades (Richard Jury Mystery)

by Martha Grimes

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER-NOW IN PAPERBACK

Dust: A Richard Jury Mystery

by Martha Grimes

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 Black Cat: A Richard Jury Mystery

by Martha Grimes

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.

The Black Cat: A Richard Jury Mystery

by Martha Grimes

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 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'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.

The Man with a Load of Mischief

by Martha Grimes

At the Man with a Load of Mischief, they found the dead body stuck in a keg of beer. At the Jack and Hammer, another body was stuck out on the beam of the pub’s sign, replacing the mechanical man who kept the time. Two pubs. Two murders. One Scotland Yard inspector called in to help. Detective Chief Inspector Richard Jury arrives in Long Piddleton and finds everyone in the postcard village looking outside of town for the killer. Except for one Melrose Plant. A keen observer of human nature, he points Jury in the right direction: into the darkest parts of his neighbors’ hearts…

Fadeaway Girl: A Novel (Emma Graham Series)

by Martha Grimes

For waitress and cub reporter Emma Graham, tragedy defines where she lives. Spirit Lake, La Porte, and Lake Noir have been held in thrall by intertwined crimes: the murders of Mary-Evelyn Devereau, Rose Queen, and Fern Queen; the supposed kidnapping of a four-month-old baby from the Belle Ruin hotel twenty years previously; and, most recently, the attack on Emma. And with the arrival of an unexpected visitor and a drifter, it looks like the bad times have only begun...

Help the Poor Struggler

by Martha Grimes

Superintendent Jury, Melrose Plant, Wiggins, and Police Chief Macalvie gather in Devon at an out-of-the-way pub to connect a twenty-year-old murder with a series of recent killings. Reprint.

Dirt - 1st Edition/1st Printing

by Martha Grimes

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 conflicting stories of the man's past, or the motivations of the case's chief inspecting officer, 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 London's 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 cared for Lamb House, the charming home where Henry James composed his three masterworks ... a place with secrets of its own. With Melrose Plant's investigating Lamb House and with Aguilar's interceding, Scotland Yard's finest, and now infamous, Richard Jury, will need every bit of his intelligence and quiet charm to close in on a mysterious young cousin of Maples's, and crack the case.

Dakota: A Novel

by Martha Grimes

A sequel to Biting the Moon finds amnesiac drifter Andi Oliver moving between waitressing jobs throughout the country until a discovery at a livestock facility renders her a target of two men, including a hired gunman and a pursuer who would claim something from her forgotten past. By the author of Dust. 75,000 first printing.

The Knowledge: A Richard Jury Mystery (Richard Jury Mystery (24))

by Martha Grimes

In the new mystery in the bestselling Richard Jury series, MWA Grand Master Martha Grimes brings London’s finest and “the Filth” together on a double-homicide case that involves Kenyan art, rare gems, astrophysics, and a long-fermented act of revenge

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).

The Knowledge: A Richard Jury Mystery (Richard Jury Mystery, 24)

by Martha Grimes

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).

The Red Queen

by Margaret Drabble, Martha Grimes

Barbara Halliwell, on a grant at Oxford, receives an unexpected package-a memoir by a Korean crown princess, written more than two hundred years ago. A highly appropriate gift for her impending trip to Seoul. But from whom?

The story she avidly reads on the plane turns out to be one of great intrigue as well as tragedy. The Crown Princess Hyegyong recounts in extraordinary detail the ways of the Korean court and confesses the family dramas that left her childless and her husband dead by his own hand. Perhaps it is the loss of a child that resonates so deeply with Barbara . . . but she has little time to think of such things, she has just arrived in Korea.

She meets a certain Dr. Oo, and to her surprise and delight he offers to guide her to some of the haunts of the crown princess. As she explores the inner sanctums and the royal courts, Barbara begins to feel a strong affinity for everything related to the princess and her mysterious life.

After a brief, intense, and ill-fated love affair, she returns to London. Is she ensnared by the events of the past week, of the past two hundred years, or will she pick up her life where she left it? A beautifully told and ingeniously constructed novel, this is Margaret Drabble at her best.

The Red Queen

by Margaret Drabble, Martha Grimes

A sudden murder in an English village pub sets off the twenty-sixth novel in the bestselling series starring superintendent Richard Jury, from bestselling author Martha Grimes, still “one of the most fascinating mystery writers today” (Houston Chronicle)
One calm night in Twickenham, a businessman named Tom Treadnor is shot off his barstool at The Queen pub. Superintendent Richard Jury is called in to investigate, and quickly realizes that everyone in Treadnor’s life – from his widow, Alice, to the staff at his manor, to his business partner had differing opinions of him. And to complicate things further, Jury has just happened upon a photo in a newspaper of a man in the United States, who is a dead ringer for Treadnor.
Meanwhile, Wiggins, Jury’s partner at New Scotland Yard, becomes sidetracked by an investigation of his own: His sister, missing for years and presumed dead, has just sent a postcard to their mother. When Wiggins takes off in search of his sister, the two investigations begin to converge.
Funny, eccentric, and fueled by Richard Jury’s talent for seeing clues in the most unlikely places, The Red Queen is a welcome return to a classic character and an exciting addition to a series that has been called “delightful, surprising, even magical” (Washington Post).

The Red Queen

by Margaret Drabble, Martha Grimes

A sudden murder in an English village pub sets off the twenty-sixth novel in the bestselling series starring superintendent Richard Jury, from bestselling author Martha Grimes, still "one of the most fascinating mystery writers today" (Houston Chronicle)

One calm night in Twickenham, a businessman named Tom Treadnor is shot off his barstool at The Queen pub. Superintendent Richard Jury is called in to investigate, and quickly realizes that everyone in Treadnor's life - from his widow, Alice, to the staff at his manor, to his business partner had differing opinions of him. And to complicate things further, Jury has just happened upon a photo in a newspaper of a man in the United States, who is a dead ringer for Treadnor.

Meanwhile, Wiggins, Jury's partner at New Scotland Yard, becomes sidetracked by an investigation of his own: His sister, missing for years and presumed dead, has just sent a postcard to their mother. When Wiggins takes off in search of his sister, the two investigations begin to converge.

Funny, eccentric, and fueled by Richard Jury's talent for seeing clues in the most unlikely places, The Red Queen is a welcome return to a classic character and an exciting addition to a series that has been called "delightful, surprising, even magical" (Washington Post).

The Old Success (Richard Jury Mystery, 25)

by Martha Grimes

In The Old Success, the twenty-fifth mystery in the bestselling Richard Jury series by MWA Grand Master Martha Grimes, an unlikely trio of detectives teams up to solve three puzzling murders that span three counties across England.

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).

The Old Success (Richard Jury Mystery, 25)

by Martha Grimes

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).

Vertigo 42: A Richard Jury Mystery

by Martha Grimes

In her latest Richard Jury mystery, Martha Grimes delivers the newest addition to the bestselling series The Washington Post calls “literate, lyrical, funny, funky, discursive, bizarre.” The inimitable Scotland Yard Superintendent returns, now with a tip of the derby to Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo.

Richard Jury is meeting Tom Williamson at Vertigo 42, a bar on the forty-second floor of an office building in London’s financial district. Despite inconclusive evidence, Tom is convinced his wife, Tess, was murdered seventeen years ago. The inspector in charge of the case was sure Tess’s death was accidental—a direct result of vertigo—but the official police inquiry is still an open verdict and Jury agrees to re-examine the case.

Jury learns that a nine-year-old girl fell to her death five years before Tess at the same country house in Devon where Tess died. The girl had been a guest at a party Tess was giving for six children. Jury seeks out the five surviving party guests, who are now adults, hoping they can shed light on this bizarre coincidence.

Meanwhile, an elegantly dressed woman falls to her death from the tower of a cottage near the pub where Jury and his cronies are dining one night. Then the dead woman’s estranged husband is killed as well. Four deaths—two in the past, two that occur on the pages of this intricate, compelling novel—keep Richard Jury and his sidekick Sergeant Wiggins running from their homes in Islington to the countryside in Devon and to London as they try to figure out if the deaths were accidental or not. And, if they are connected.

Witty, well-written, with literary references from Thomas Hardy to Yeats, Vertigo 42 is a pitch perfect, page-turning novel from a mystery writer at the top of her game.

Vertigo 42: A Richard Jury Mystery

by Martha Grimes

The inimitable Richard Jury returns in the latest in the bestselling mystery series: “Martha Grimes has written a whodunit with terrific characters and a grand plot mixed with her unique droll wit. Vertigo 42 is one smart mystery!” (Susan Isaacs, bestselling author of Goldberg Variations)

Richard Jury is meeting Tom Williamson at Vertigo 42, a bar on the forty-second floor of an office building in London’s financial district. Despite inconclusive evidence, Tom is convinced his wife, Tess, was murdered seventeen years ago. The inspector in charge of the case was sure Tess’s death was accidental—a direct result of vertigo—but the official police inquiry is still an open verdict and Jury agrees to re-examine the case.

Jury learns that a nine-year-old girl fell to her death five years before Tess at the same place in Devon where Tess died, at a small house party. Jury seeks out the five surviving party guests, who are now adults, hoping they can shed light on this bizarre coincidence. Ultimately, four deaths—two in the past, two that occur on the pages of this intricate, compelling novel—keep Richard Jury and his sidekick Sergeant Wiggins running from their homes in Islington to the countryside in Devon and to London as they try to figure out if the deaths were accidental or not. And if they are connected.

Witty, well-written, with literary references from Thomas Hardy to Yeats, Vertigo 42 is a pitch perfect, page-turning novel from a mystery writer at the top of her game.

The Way of All Fish: A Novel

by Martha Grimes

A wickedly funny sequel to Grimes’s bestselling novel, Foul Matter, “a satire of the venal, not to say murderous practices of the New York publishing industry” (The New York Times Book Review).

MARTHA GRIMES “GOES ENTERTAININGLY WONKY WITH THIS SEQUEL TO HER BESTSELLING FOUL MATTER . . . DELIVERING INSIDER PUBLISHING STUFF WITH ACIDULOUS WIT” (LIBRARY JOURNAL).

In Grimes’s new sendup of a world she knows very well, Candy and Karl, hitmen with a difference— they have scruples—once again venture into the murky Manhattan publishing scene. This time they come to the aid of a writer who is being sued by her unscrupulous literary agent, L. Bass Hess, a man determined to get a 15 percent commission for a book he didn’t sell.

The contract killers join forces with publishing mogul Bobby Mackenzie and megabestselling writer Paul Giverney to rid the mean streets of Hess, not by shooting him, but by driving him crazy. They are helped by other characters from Foul Matter and a crew of new colorful personalities, including an out-of-work Vegas magician, an alligator wrangler, a glamorous Malaysian con lady, and Hess’s aunt in Everglades City, who has undergone a wildly successful sex change.

This wickedly funny sequel to Grimes’s bestselling novel Foul Matter is another character-driven “satire of the venal, not to say murderous, practices of the New York publishing industry” (The New York Times Book Review).

The Way of All Fish

by Martha Grimes

An “absurdly amusing” (The New York Times Book Review) sequel to Martha Grimes’s bestselling novel, Foul Matter, this wicked satire of the publishing industry is “comic, caustic, and relentlessly readable” (Booklist).

Writer Cindy Sella is having trouble with her new novel. Aside from her paralyzing writer’s block, she’s faced with a lawsuit from her ex-agent, L. Bass Hess. Hess will stop at nothing to collect a commission from Cindy on her previous novel, which he did not represent since she had fired him long before it was published.

Hitmen Candy and Karl—first introduced in Foul Matter—are asked to “get rid” of L. Bass Hess. They join forces with a publishing mogul, a bestselling author, an out-of-work Vegas magician, an alligator wrangler, a glamorous Malaysian con lady, and Hess’s aunt in the Everglades who has undergone a wildly successful sex change, and concoct a plan to save Cindy Sella from the odious machinations of Hess by driving him (slowly, hilariously) crazy.

Grimes’s fans will delight in the return of several colorful characters from Foul Matter,includingSenior Editor Clive Esterhaus, unprincipled publisher Bobby Mackenzie, and ex-mobster and author Danny Zito, currently under the witness protection program. New readers will find that these characters and their escapades shed an amusing light on the New York publishing scene. Informed and influenced by the author’s own publishing adventures, “The Way of All Fish is a goofily offbeat delight” (The Washington Post).

The Five Bells and Bladebone

by Martha Grimes

When a dismembered corpse is found in the compartments of an antique secretaire a abattant, Marshall Trueblood, recipient of the precious piece of furniture, is the first to protest: "I bought the desk, not the body, send it back." Who would want to kill Simon Lean, the greedy nephew of the wealthy Lady Summerston?
Leave it to Superintendent Richard Jury of Scotland Yard to suggest a connection to the murder of brassy Limehouse lady named Sadie Driver, found dead near Wapping Old Stairs...if that stone-cold body on the slipway is really Sadie. Not even her brother, Tommy, on a visit from Gravesend, can swear to it.