Most Popular Books 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 Paul is a struggling writer navigating the treacherous landscape of editors and literary agents. When he hires the infamous Mackenzie Haack as his publisher, he''s plunged into a whirlwind of chaotic decisions and questionable choices. But as Paul dives deeper into the murky waters of the book publishing business, he becomes entangled in a murder plot that threatens to unravel everything.

Following a passionate and troubled love affair with a pretty widow named Jane Holdsworth, Jury finds himself, unaccountably, a suspect in a murder investigation. Detained in London, Jury sends his friend Melrose Plant, former Earl of Caverness, to the Holdsworth family’s Lake District home to pose as an eccentric librarian. Plant discovers that his catalogue cards contain less data on Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey than they do on tantalizing questions about the Holdsworths: What happened to Crabbe Holdsworth’s first wife? What happened to his son, Graham? What happened to the cook, Annie? And what might happen to the two children, favorites of rich old Adam Holdworth, who prefers the ambience of a swank retirement home, Castle Howe, where he and the elegant Lady Cray can drive the staff crazy? Jury and Sergeant Wiggins finally join Melrose at the Old Contemptibles pub, where they arrive at a solution that Jury detests, for no matter what he does, innocence will suffer.

"ONLY THE MAGNIFICENT MARTHA GRIMES COULD HAVE WRITTEN THIS BOOK. . . . BRILLIANTLY RENDERED AND SUPERBLY TEXTURED." --Andrew Vachss A neglected lake, covered with water lilies. A once fashionable, now faded resort. A derelict house full of secrets, uninhabited for almost half a century. The death of a twelve-year-old girl forty years in the past. And another girl who becomes obsessed with this death. With her knack for encouraging adults to reminisce, she begins to piece together puzzles from the past and present. HOTEL PARADISE is a delicate yet disturbing view of the decisions a young girl must make on her way to becoming an adult . . . and the choices she must make between right and wrong, love and truth, life and death. With its narrative grace, compelling characters, and intricate suspense, HOTEL PARADISE is Martha Grimes at the top of her form. "Utterly engaging." --The Washington Post Book World

In a unique departure from her acclaimed Richard Jury novels, bestselling author Martha Grimes presents "a lyrical coming-of-age journey" (Chicago Sun-Times) featuring two characters from her previous novels. A nameless young woman awakes in a strange bed-and-breakfast with a message that her "Daddy" will soon return. Fearing the worst, she flees into the wilderness and meets Mary Dark Hope. Together, the two track down the one person who holds the key to the girl''s identity: The man who abducted her. "A HARROWING ROAD TRIP." --New York Times Book Review "MESMERIZING." --Los Angeles Times

"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.

"At Vertigo 42, a bar high above London''s financial district, Richard Jury meets Tom Williamson - a friend of a friend who is convinced his wife, Tess, was murdered 17 years ago. Tess''s death was ruled accidental - a fall caused by vertigo - but Jury agrees to re-examine the case. A young girl''s fatal fall at a children''s party 22 years ago at Tom and Tess''s home may be connected. After an elegantly dressed woman falls from a tower near a pub that Jury and his cronies frequent, and her estranged husband is later found dead, Jury begins to suspect that the now grown "children" from Tess''s ill-fated party are the key to solving these interwoven mysteries"--

In her latest Richard Jury adventure, Martha Grimes takes us to Ashdown Dean, a little English village where animals are dying in a series of seemingly innocuous accidents. While the puzzling deaths of village pets may raise some idle gossip over a pint or two at the Deer Leap, the village pub, this hardly seems a case for Superintendent Jury of Scotland yard. Nor does it seem much of a challenge for the combined deductive powers of Jury and Melrose, the affable former Earl of Caverness. It is his mystery-writing, amethyst-eyed friend, Polly Praed, who drags Plant and Jury to Ashdown Dean. The impatient Polly, having yanked open a call box in the pouring rain, is ill-prepared for what lands at her feet. The now-deadly case is cause for calling in Scotland Yard.

In the tenth murderous case for Richard Jury, the New Scotland Yard superintendent witnesses a killing in a West Yorkshire inn called the Old Silent, while his highborn, amateur colleague, Melrose Plant wishes to he could perform one as he drives his impossible Aunt Agatha to the Old Swan in Harrogate. Caught up in a triple murder, Jury would go to any lengths to help Nell Healey, the lovely widow of one of the victims. But Nell Healey remains silent as the Yorkshire moors, quiet as the grave, while the scope of the mystery widens.

The Dirty Duck is a pub in Shakespeare’s beloved Stratford, and in this pub Miss Gwendolyn Bracegirdle of Sarasota, Florida, fresh from a performance of As You Like It, takes her last drink. A few minutes later she is slashed ear to ear, the only clue: two lines from an unknown poem printed across a theater program. The razor-happy murderer, it seems is stalking a group of rich American tourists. And Scotland Yard Superintendent Richard Jury, just passing through Stratford for a glimpse of the intriguing Lady Kennington, instead takes a crash course in the bloodier side of Elizabethan verse.

"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

From “one of the established masters of the genre” (Newsweek), another thrilling entry in the Richard Jury Mysteries that whisks us across the Atlantic to Baltimore. 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 Sargeant Wiggins, Jury arrives in Baltimore, Maryland, home of zealous Orioles fans, mouth-watering crabs, and Edgar Allen 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 Richard Jury Mysteries continues with this “richly textured story” (The New York Times Book Review) following Richard as he investigates a complicated double murder mystery. The sun, smoking behind a haze of cloud, threw off a light of burnished pewter. Mysteriously lit, it was as if the watery, colorless land refused drabness, stood determinedly against dimishment. This is a landscape that can easily deceive, a landscape that volunteers nothing—much like the patrons of the only pub for miles around called The Case Has Altered. The Lincolnshire fenlands are the right setting for Richard Jury’s latest case, a mystifying double murder. The body of one woman is found on the wash; another woman lies floating in a canal in Windy Fen. Both women are connected with Fengate: Dorcas Reese, a servant; Verna Dunn, the louche ex-wife of the owner, Max Owen, a man with a passion for antiques. The case is only further complicated when the principal suspect turns out to be Jenny Kennington, a woman Jury has long loved. Will he be able to solve the case or is it hitting too close to home?

Saturday night. It was not a night to be spending alone, riding a bus. When he was a teenager at the comprehensive, Saturday night without a girl, without a date, without at least your mates to raise hell with, Saturday night alone would have been shameful. One wouldn’t want to be seen alone on a Saturday night…. Who are you kidding? That was never your life, Jury, not yours.

"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."--Jacket.

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…

From the rough but colorful pub that provides the book’s title, to the snowboard Gothic estate nearby, the chilly English landscape has never held more atmosphere—or thwarted romance. And Jury will never have a more mysterious Christmas. Five Days Before Christmas: On his way to a brief holiday (he thinks) Jury meets a woman he could fall in love with. He meets her in a snow-covered graveyard—not, he thinks, the best way to begin an attachment. Four Days Before Christmas: Jury meets Father Rourke, who draws for him the semiotic square—“a structure that might simplify thought,” says the priest, but Jury’s thoughts need more than symbols. Three Days Before Christmas: Melrose Plant, Jury’s aristocratic and unofficial assistant, arrives at Spinney Abbey, now home to a well-known critic. Among the assembled snowbound guests he meets—Lady Assington, Beatrice Sleight, and the painter Edward Parmenger. When they all assemble in the dining room, Lady Assington announces, “I think we should have a murder.”

From bestselling author Martha Grimes, Detective Chief Inspector Richard Jury is back on the case in an installment in the Richard Jury Mystery series. Long Piddleton had always been wary of newcomers. But the quiet town was stunned when the first stranger was found dead, upended in a butt of ale in the cellar of the Men with a Load of Mischief. Then the second body appeared, swinging in place of the mechanical man above the door of the Jack and Hammer. Suddenly Long Piddleton had good reason to be wary of everyone! Its cozy pubs and inns with their polished pewter and blazing hearths had become scenes of the most bizarre crimes. Who were the victims? And who was the murderer? A stranger? A maniac? Or the disarmingly friendly man next door?

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.

In a rainy ditch in a Devon wood, a hitchhiker is found dead. Almost a year later, on another rainy night, another murder; this time, however, the victim is found just outside a pub called I Am the Only Running Footman, near Berkeley Square in London’s fashionable Mayfair District. Devon policeman Brian Macalvie is convinced that the two murders are connected. And thus, in his eighth case, Richard Jury is drawn into the so-called Porphyria killings. A particularly elusive pair of murders. From the streets of London to the village of Somers Abbas, Jury and Macalvie are joined by the stolid if hypochondriac Sergeant Wiggins and the reluctant Melrose Plant. They meet in another pub, the Mortal Man, and, amidst the clatter and cry of the Warboys family, they ponder a labyrinthine set of clues.

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.