A spinster whose passion was bird-watching, a dotty peer who pinched pennies, and a baffling murder made the tiny village of Littlebourne a most extraordinary place. And a severed finger made a ghastly clue in the killing that led local constables from a corpse to a boggy footpath to a beautiful lady's mansion.But Richard Jury refused, preferring to take the less traveled route to a slightly disreputable pub, the Anodyne Necklace. There, drinks all around loosened enough tongues to link a London mugging with the Littlebourne murder and a treasure map that would chart the way to yet another chilling crime.

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.

From the rough but colorful pub that provides the books title, to the snowboard Gothic estate nearby, the chilly English landscape has never held more atmosphereor 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 graveyardnot, he thinks, the best way to begin an attachment. Four Days Before Christmas: Jury meets Father Rourke, who draws for him the semiotic squarea structure that might simplify thought, says the priest, but Jurys thoughts need more than symbols. Three Days Before Christmas: Melrose Plant, Jurys aristocratic and unofficial assistant, arrives at Spinney Abbey, now home to a well-known critic. Among the assembled snowbound guests he meetsLady Assington, Beatrice Sleight, and the painter Edward Parmenger. When they all assemble in the dining room, Lady Assington...

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 stumped 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—well, nearly every case. Bronwell discloses that there was one he once missed. In the days following the mysterious slaying of the Parisian tourist, two other murders are called in to Macalvie and Jury's teams: first, a man is found dead in his Devon estate, then a holy duster turns up murdered at the Exeter Cathedral in Northhamptonshire. When Macalvie and Jury decide to consult Bronwell, the retired detective...

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,...

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 ever-changing series of governesses. And as suspense spreads across the forbidding landscape, an old injustice returns to haunt Macalvie...with clues that link a murder in the distant past with a killing yet to come.

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...From Publishers WeeklyA 20-year-old kidnapping with faint echoes of the Lindbergh case drives Grimes's convoluted fourth crime novel featuring Emma Graham, a direct sequel to 2005's Belle Ruin. Emma, a 12-year-old cub reporter who also helps out at the Hotel Paradise in La Porte, Md., where her mother's the cook, thinks that the accounts don't add up about the unsolved disappearance of Baby Fay Slade from the nearby Belle Rouen hotel. Emma's doubts center on the possible role of Fay's father, the shady Morris Slade; Morris's spoiled wife; his rich father-in-law; and his former neighbors. The abrupt reappearance of Morris Slade and the arrival of a smug new hotel employee raise further questions and end in sudden death. Grimes's strength is in her appealing characters, from the inquisitive Emma and her dipsomaniac great-aunt, Aurora, to the pretentious 16-year-old Ree-Jane Davidow and philosophical auto mechanic Dwayne, but gaps in logic, lack of red herrings, and frequent references to earlier entries in the series may put off some readers, especially those unfamiliar with the previous books. 4-city author tour. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved. From BooklistEmma Graham, last seen in the disappointing Belle Ruin (2005), returns to better form in this latest episode in Grimes’ series starring the precocious 12-year-old sleuth. Emma, a cub reporter for the Conservative, is nearly finished telling the serialized story of her harrowing experience in “The Tragedy at Spirit Lake.” She’s distracted, though, by questions surrounding the disappearance of Baby Fay 20 years prior. The sudden arrival of two people—the baby’s father and drifter Ralph Diggs—piques her curiosity. Diggs wins the hearts of everyone in town, except Emma, who manages to put herself in considerable danger as she searaches for the truth about Baby Fay. Emma is not without her charms (especially when she’s hiding empty rum bottles on her great aunt’s behalf or outwitting a dim-witted sheriff’s deputy), but to enjoy her adventures, readers must suspend considerable disbelief to accept the idea of a 12-year-old who displays far more savvy than most adults. That hurdle crossed, however, this is an agreeable thriller from a seasoned hand. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Grimes’ Richard Jury novels sell better than this series, but there will be more than enough spillover to generate requests in public libraries. --Mary Frances Wilkens

In Send Bygraves, Martha Grimes has given us her most fascinating book, a dramatic mystery poem that uses the conventions of the traditional British mystery to explore the very nature of crime, the criminal, and the criminal investigator. Illustrated with thirty-five line drawings by acclaimed artist Devis Grebu, it is an elegant, darkly humorous work?a tour de force of chilling wit and brilliant literary imagination.

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.

Coming in January—Richard Jury returns to the back streets and back rooms of London in The New York Times bestselling seriesWhen 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 Plan...

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.

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...

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 inquires 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.