New Releases 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.

Der Polizist Brian Macalvie wird an den Strand einer kleinen Insel in Cornwall gerufen. Eine französische Touristin liegt erschossen im Sand – und die einzigen Spuren in der Nähe gehören den beiden kleinen Mädchen, die sie gefunden haben. Macalvie ist ratlos und beschließt, Richard Jury um Hilfe zu bitten. Dieser macht derweil Bekanntschaft mit einer Legende: Der ehemalige Detective Tom Brownell ist berühmt dafür, jeden Fall lösen zu können. Als kurz darauf zwei weitere Morde geschehen, beginnen die drei Ermittler fieberhaft nach einer Verbindung zwischen den Opfern zu suchen ...

In the new mystery in the bestselling Richard Jury series, Martha Grimes brings London''s finest on a double-homicide case that involves Kenyan art, rare gems, astrophysics and a long-fermented act of revenge. ''Read any one [of her novels] and you''ll want to read them all.'' - Chicago Tribune Robbie Parsons is one of London''s finest, a black cab driver who knows every street, every theatre, every landmark in the city by heart. In his backseat is a man with a gun in his hand - a man who shot Robbie''s previous pair of customers point-blank in front of the Artemis Club, a rarefied art gallery-cum-casino, then jumped in and ordered Parsons to drive. As the killer eventually escapes to Nairobi with ten-year-old Patty Haigh - one of a crew of stray kids who serve as the cabbies'' eyes and ears at Heathrow and Waterloo - in pursuit, superintendent Richard Jury comes across the double-homicide in the Saturday paper. Two days previously, Jury had met and instantly connected with one of the victims, a professor of astrophysics at Columbia and an expert gambler. Jury considers the murder a personal affront and is soon contending with a case that takes unexpected turns into Tanzanian gem mines, a closed casino in Reno, and a pub that only London''s black cabbies, those who have ''the knowledge,'' can find.

Unter mysteriösen Umständen verschwindet in der ländlichen Idylle von Cambridgeshire die 15-jährige Nell Ryder. Zwei Jahre später fehlt von ihr und ihrem wertvollen Rennpferd noch immer jede Spur, doch ihr Vater Roger ist davon überzeugt, dass seine Tochter noch am Leben ist. Gemeinsam mit seinem Freund Melrose Plant nimmt Inspektor Jury die hoch angesehene Familie Ryder unter die Lupe und stößt schon bald auf Ungereimtheiten. Doch welche Abgründe dort wirklich lauern, wird ihm erst klar, als man auf dem Ryderschen Anwesen die Leiche einer unbekannten Frau entdeckt ...

Inspektor Jury und sein Team ermitteln in einem idyllischen englischen Jägerdörfchen. Erdrosselte und vergiftete Haustiere sind nur der Anfang – bald werden in dem romantischen englischen Jägerdörfchen Ashdown Dean auch drei Menschen ermordet. Stecken womöglich geheime Machenschaften im Rumford-Tierversuchslabor hinter den furchtbaren Verbrechen? Oder könnte die Baronin de la Notre ein falsches Spiel spielen? Ohne Hilfe von oberster Stelle kommt die Polizei nicht weiter, und so nehmen Superintendent Richard Jury, sein Assistent Wiggins und sein adliger Freund Melrose Plant die Fährte des mysteriösen Täters auf. Ein aufregendes Katz-und-Maus-Spiel beginnt ...

Ein wunderbar britischer Spannungsroman zwischen London und Cornwall. Als Inspektor Jury an einem kühlen Märztag an den Ort eines Verbrechens in London gerufen wird, ist er fassungslos. Denn das Opfer, das durch einen heimtückischen Schuss in den Rücken getötet wurde, trägt ein geblümtes Kleidchen – und ist fünf Jahre alt. Eine erste Spur führt Jury nach Cornwall auf den stattlichen Landsitz Angel''s Gate. Dort hatte sich kurz darauf in dem weitläufigen Park ein weiterer Mord ereignet. Ist die unbekannte Tote der Schlüssel zu der Ermordung des kleinen Mädchens?

Wunderbar britisch und herrlich humorvoll – der neue Inspektor-Jury-Roman Inspektor Jury schweigt – schließlich ist er ja zum Trinken und nicht zum Reden in den Pub gekommen. Sein Gegenüber redet dafür umso mehr: Er erzählt Jury die unglaubliche Geschichte eines befreundeten Physikers, dessen gesamte Familie spurlos verschwunden ist. Einzig der Hund Mungo taucht Monate später wieder auf. Zum Glück – denn ohne Mungo stünde Inspektor Jury bei diesem schwierigen Fall auf ziemlich verlorenem Posten ...

Ein spannender Fall für Inspektor Jury vor der stimmungsvollen Kulisse Cornwalls Eigentlich wollte Melrose Plant, seines Zeichens Aristokrat und langjähriger Freund von Inspektor Jury, in Ruhe seinen Aufenthalt an der Küste Cornwalls genießen. Doch eine Serie von Todesfällen hält das Dorf in Atem. Gibt es einen Zusammenhang mit dem lange zurückliegenden, rätselhaften Tod zweier Kinder? Als die Ermittlungen der örtlichen Polizei ins Stocken geraten, hat Inspektor Jury eine zündende Idee...

Eine geheimnisvolle Hotelruine, ein verschwundenes Baby und eine junge Ermittlerin. Die zwölfjährige Emma ist in ihrem Heimatort La Porte am Spirit Lake eine kleine Berühmtheit. Sie hat zwei Kriminalfälle aufgedeckt und verfolgt bereits eine neue heiße Spur. Vor vielen Jahren verschwand während einer Ballnacht im Luxushotel „Belle Rouen“, das mittlerweile verfallen ist, das Baby eines amerikanischen Ehepaares spurlos. Doch es wurde kein Lösegeld gefordert und der Fall nie polizeilich weiterverfolgt. Sehr merkwürdig, findet Hobbydetektivin Emma, und begibt sich mit Feuereifer auf die Spur des verschollenen Kindes ...

In der Kathedrale von Exeter bricht eine Stickerin zusammen. In der Tate Gallery stirbt eine ältere Dame. Und in den Ruinen der keltischen Wallanlage Old Sarum stürzt eine Amerikanerin in einen tiefen Schacht. Jedes Mal lautet die Diagnose Herzversagen. Doch Inspektor Jury will nicht an einen Zufall glauben. Denn die drei Frauen verbindet ein Detail: Sie waren alle kurz vor ihrem Tod in Santa Fe ...

Ein neuer Fall für Inspektor Jury – ein Glücksfall noch dazu. Als Inspektor Jury den Mord an einem Mitglied der Londoner High Society aufklären soll, ahnt er nicht, welch rasante Ermittlungen auf ihn zukommen: Am Tatort, einem vornehmen Hotel im Londoner In-Stadtviertel Clerkenwell, erwartet Jury eine neue Kollegin. Lu Aguilar ist nicht nur schön, sondern auch klug, und sie stürzt Jury ebenso in Verwirrung wie die Ermittlungsergebnisse: Der Tote, Billy Maples, hütete nämlich ein pikantes Familiengeheimnis. Die Spuren führen ins Berlin der 1940er Jahre ...

Ein Herrenhaus im Lake District, eine Familie voller Exzentriker und vier Leichen im Keller Endlich ist der melancholische Inspektor Jury seiner großen Liebe begegnet. Aber kurz bevor er sein Verlobungsgeschenk überreichen kann, wird die schöne Lady Jane Holdsworth tot in ihrer Wohnung aufgefunden. Als wäre das nicht schrecklich genug, gerät Jury auch noch in bizarre Verwicklungen und unter bösen Verdacht. Denn in ihr Notizbuch hatte Jane für den Abend eine Verabredung mit einem „R“ eingetragen. Und so wird Richard Jury plötzlich Hauptverdächtiger in einem Mordfall ...

Cindy Sella struggles with writer''s block and a lawsuit by her unscrupulous former agent, L. Bass Hess, who is targeted by bumbling hitmen Candy and Karl''s zany efforts to drive him out of New York City.

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.

The girl’s hair was white below the scarf, now a scarf of snow, and there was a fine rime of ice on her eyebrows. Her mouth was so numb she couldn’t have spoken even if there had been someone to speak to. She wore the snowshoes she had found back in the cabin and had brought the supplies, painkiller and bandages, whatever she might need to dress a wound. She wondered if trappers wore snowshoes. Probably not. Anyway, a trapper wouldn’t put himself through the unpleasantness of coming out in a heavy snow like this to check his traps. In New Mexico, the law was you had to check the traps every thirty-six hours, but who paid any attention? An animal trapped stayed trapped.

A once-fashionable now fading resort hotel. A spinster aunt living in the attic. Dirt roads that lead to dead ends. A house full of secrets and old, dusty furnishings, uninhabited for almost half a century. A twelve-year-old girl with a passion for double-chocolate ice-cream sodas, and decaying lake-fronts, and an obsession with the death by drowning of another young girl, forty years before. Hotel Paradise is a delicate yet excruciating view of the pettiness and cruelty of small town America. It is a look at the difficult decisions a young girl must make on her way to becoming an adult and the choices she must make between right and wrong, between love and truth, between life and death.

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.

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.

The popular mystery writer and her son present a dual account of their struggles with alcoholism and sobriety, a parallel journey marked by poignant episodes of relapse, travel, and friendship.

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.

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.

When a dismembered corpse is found in the compartments of an antique writing bureau, 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.

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.”

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.

It is a chilly and foggy Twelfth Night, wild with North Sea wind, when a bizarre murder disturbs the outward piece of Rackmoor, a tiny Yorkshire fishing village with a past that proves a tangled maze of unrequited loves, unrevenged wrongs, and even undiscovered murders. Inspector Jury finds no easy answers in his investigation—not even the identity of the victim, a beautiful young woman. Was she Gemma Temple, an impostor, or was she really Dillys March, Colonel Titus Crael’s long-lost ward, returning after eight years to the Colonel’s country seat and to a share of his fortune? And who was her murderer?

Le monde des adultes vu par les yeux d''une enfant : Emma Graham, douze ans, apprentie détective dans l''Amérique profonde des années 1950. Devenue une célébrité à Spirit Lake, la jeune Emma s''efforce de mener de front la rédaction du feuilleton relatant ses aventures – réclamées avec insistance par le directeur de la feuille de chou locale – et l''enquête sur l''enlèvement de la petite Fay Slade à l''hôtel Belle Rouen, vingt ans plus tôt. Deux événements vont compliquer la tâche d''Emma : le retour du très séduisant Morris Slade, le père du bébé enlevé, objet de tous les fantasmes et commérages, ainsi que l''embauche d''un nouveau groom à l''hôtel Paradise, Ralph Diggs, dont le visage d''ange pourrait cacher d''obscurs desseins...

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...

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 subseu00adquent 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.