The Black Cat: A Richard Jury Mystery by Martha Grimes

Publisher: Viking Adult, 2010
ISBN: 9780670021604
ID: P000500899

Flat Signed! Hardcover first edition / first printing. Fine book in fine jacket, not price clipped, Signed on the title page and is author's signature only. Minimum scuffing and edge wear. No writing or marks Comes with Certificate of Authenticity for author's signature.

Price in US $ 31.50

Summary: 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 Blue Last: A Richard Jury Mystery by Martha Grimes

Publisher: Viking Adult, 2001
ISBN: 9780739421383
ID: P000500444

Flat Signed! Hardcover first edition / first printing. Fine book in fine jacket, not price clipped, Signed on the title page and is author's signature only. Minimum scuffing and edge wear. No writing or marks Comes with Certificate of Authenticity for author's signature.

Price in US $ 31.50

Summary: Scotland Yard Superintendent Richard Jury returns in a compelling novel, the 17th in Grimes's long-running series. Mickey Haggerty, Jury's old friend and colleague, is dying of cancer. So Jury can hardly refuse his request to look into what Mickey suspects is a 50-year-old case of switched identities. It surfaces when the last World War II bomb site in London is excavated for a new development, exposing the skeletal remains of a woman and infant. Mickey thinks the dead infant wasn't the baby of Kitty Riordan, Maisie Tynedale's nanny, as Kitty claimed, but was Maisie herself, the heiress to a brewery fortune. Did Kitty engineer the masquerade? And did Simon Croft, who was writing a book about London in the war years, discover it? When Croft is killed and his computer stolen, Jury sends his pal Melrose Plant to snoop around Tynedale Lodge disguised as a gardener. There he encounters a charming trio of amateurs: a homeless urchin and his extremely clever dog Sparky, and Gemma, a Tynedale ward whose mysterious background may hold the clue to Simon's murder as well as the still unsolved attempt on her young life.
As usual, Plant's world of eccentric friends and relatives is nicely evoked in a subplot that leads him on a surprising holiday in Florence, during which he acquires just enough knowledge of Italian Renaissance painting to pull off another disguise on Jury's behalf. Grimes weaves the threads of this rich tapestry together in a surprise ending that not even Grimes aficionados will sense coming. But it's an appropriate conclusion, given the book's brooding tone, established in the opening pages by a dying friend's obsession and sustained as the investigation forces Jury to confront his own haunted memories of the war. This is a solid page turner, marked by Grimes's unerring sense of pacing, respectful but provocative poking around in Jury's soul, and topnotch storytelling ability. "--Jane Adams"

Cold Flat Junction by Martha Grimes

Publisher: Viking, 2001
ISBN: 9780670894918
ID: P000500445

Signed! Hardcover first edition / first printing. Fine book in fine jacket, not price clipped, Signed on a custom designed bookplate and is author's signature only. Minimum scuffing and edge wear. No writing or marks Comes with Certificate of Authenticity for author's signature.

Price in US $ 31.50

Summary: Emma Graham is quizzical and persuasive, imaginative and pragmatic, shy and belligerent. And curious--"oh", so curious. The cat hasn't been born that could challenge Emma in that department. I can't let go of a thing--a puzzle, a person, a place. Once it gets my attention, I have to keep worrying it until it comes clear. I have to hang on, and it makes life really tiring. I work on these questions down in the Pink Elephant, a small chilly room which was once used for cocktail parties underneath the hotel dining room. The room's cold stone walls are painted pink, and there's a long wooden picnic bench and hurricane lamps. The candles give the room atmosphere. Cobwebs and dust and ghosts help too. Wrestling with quandaries small and large--there's nothing like it to lift a 12-year-old girl from the humdrum vagaries of life in La Porte, a small resort town whose crown jewel, the Hotel Paradise, is drifting into threadbare but dignified obscurity. Emma, who has lived at the hotel all her life (her mother is the hotel's cook), is a charming mix of David Copperfield, Scout Finch, Harriet the Spy, and Rudyard Kipling's mongoose, whose motto is "Go and Find Out." In "Hotel Paradise", Emma tried to unravel the mystery surrounding the 40-year-old drowning death of young Mary- Evelyn Devereau. In "Cold Flat Junction", that death takes on new resonance with the murder of Fern Queen. Fern was the daughter of Ben Queen and his wife Rose Devereau, Mary-Evelyn's aunt. Ben spent 20 years in prison for Rose's murder, and Fern's body is found just days after Ben is paroled. Convinced of Ben's innocence, Emma sets out to track down the real killer. Her investigations mirror a delicate web of small-town relationships, expectations, and preconceptions. She slips through diners, garages, abandoned houses, and train stations, befriending taxi drivers, schoolteachers, and poachers: "You have to sneak up on what you want to know; you have to peek through windows at the facts so they won't run off and hide. You cannot go smashing through doors." When Emma looks through windows, she sees not only facts, but dreams, questions, and possibilities. Her quest is for answers, certainly, but also for her place in the world she interrogates so persistently."--Kelly Flynn"

Dakota: A Novel by Martha Grimes

Publisher: Viking Adult, 2008
ISBN: 9780670018697
ID: P000500446

Signed! Hardcover first edition / first printing. Fine book in fine jacket, not price clipped, Signed on a custom designed bookplate and is author's signature only. Minimum scuffing and edge wear. No writing or marks Comes with Certificate of Authenticity for author's signature.

Price in US $ 31.50

Summary: In this stunning sequel to Grimes’s beloved "Biting the Moon", young Andi Oliver is an amnesiac and drifter who awoke in a Santa Fe bed and breakfast with a man’s belongings tossed about the room. Adopting a name from the initials on her backpack, Andi moves from one waitress job to the next, from Idaho to North Dakota. It is in Dakota that she is hired at Klavan’s, a massive pigfarming facility that specializes in the dark art of modern livestock management. As Andi begins to uncover the truth about Klavan’s and a slaughterhouse called Big Sun, two men are on her trail, one a gunman hired to kill her, another who has followed her across three states demanding something from her forgotten past.

Dust: A Richard Jury Mystery by Martha Grimes

Publisher: Viking Adult, 2007
ISBN: 9780670037865
ID: P000500447

Signed! Hardcover first edition / first printing. Fine book in fine jacket, not price clipped, Signed on a custom designed bookplate and is author's signature only. Minimum scuffing and edge wear. No writing or marks Comes with Certificate of Authenticity for author's signature.

Price in US $ 31.50

Summary: 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 Old Contemptibles by Martha Grimes

Publisher: Little Brown & Co (T), 1991
ISBN: 9780316328944
ID: P000500449

Flat Signed! Hardcover first edition / first printing. Fine book in fine jacket, not price clipped, Signed on the title page and is author's signature only. Minimum scuffing and edge wear. Has remainder marks on top and bottom page blocks. No writing or marks Comes with Certificate of Authenticity for author's signature.

Price in US $ 31.50

Summary: Did Jane Galloway commit suicide or was she murdered? Melrose Plant attempts to determine the identity of Jane's mysterious visitor on the night of her death. Was it Alex's sultry grandmother, Genevieve? Jane's sister, Madeline? Francis Fellows? Or the doctor, Maurice Kingsley?

The Old Wine Shades by Martha Grimes

Publisher: Viking Adult, 2006
ISBN: 9780670034796
ID: P000500450

Flat Signed! Hardcover first edition / first printing. Fine book in fine jacket, not price clipped, Signed on the title page and is author's signature only. Minimum scuffing and edge wear. No writing or marks Comes with Certificate of Authenticity for author's signature.

Price in US $ 86.25

Summary: "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.

The Train Now Departing: Two Novellas by Martha Grimes

Publisher: "New York, New York, U.S.A.: Viking Pr", 2000
ISBN: 0670891541
ID: S00010205

Flat Signed! Hardcover first edition / first printing. Fine book in fine jacket, not price clipped, Signed on the title page and is author's signature only. Minimum scuffing and edge wear. No writing or marks Comes with Certificate of Authenticity for author's signature.

Price in US $ 31.50

Summary: With the narrative grace, compelling characters, and intricate plotting that have made her Richard Jury mysteries an international byword for sophisticated intrigue, and with a dry wit and "a poignancy that pierces the heart" ("The Washington Post"), Martha Grimes's "The Train Now Departing" is a literal but superb departure from anything she has written. "In Hotel Paradise", of which Andrew Vachss said, "only the magnificent Martha Grimes could have written this book," she portrayed the emotional isolation and identity quest of adolescence. Here, in "The Train Now Departing", she explores it with equal power in middle age. Two thematically linked novellas each center on a single woman living a quiet, well-ordered, seemingly contented life. But each harbors a man who imperceptibly embroils its heroine in something far darker. Passionately told in Grimes's inimitable voice, her newest work brims with the singular characters and richly textured prose readers expect from this bestselling storyteller. Grimes is gifted at explaining the private, sometimes horrifying yet utterly mundane thoughts of ordinary people."--"San Francisco Chronicle"

The Winds Of Change: A Richard Jury Mystery by Martha Grimes

Publisher: Viking Adult, 2004
ISBN: 9780670033270
ID: P000500451

Flat Signed! Hardcover first edition / first printing. Fine book in fine jacket, not price clipped, Signed on the title page and is author's signature only. Minimum scuffing and edge wear. No writing or marks Comes with Certificate of Authenticity for author's signature.

Price in US $ 31.50

Summary: 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 Winds Of Change: A Richard Jury Novel by Martha Grimes

Publisher: "New York, New York, U.S.A.: Viking Pr", 2004
ISBN: 0670033278
ID: S00010206

Flat Signed! Hardcover first edition / first printing. Fine book in fine jacket, not price clipped, Signed on the title page and is author's signature only. Minimum scuffing and edge wear. No writing or marks Comes with Certificate of Authenticity for author's signature.

Price in US $ 31.50

Summary: 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?