β Scribed by Martha Grimes
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
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 wouldnβt want to be seen alone on a Saturday nightβ¦. Who are you kidding? That was never your life, Jury, not yours.
It all starts with two unlikely passengers on the same number 14 Fulham Road bus--Scotland Yard superintendent Richard Jury and a glamorous blonde woman in a sable coat. He can't keep his eyes off her, and when she disembarks, Jury follows her to the gates of Fulham Palace. He loses her in the fog, however, and when she's found shot to death in the herb garden of the palace, the game's afoot--especially since the victim may only look like Jury's blonde, but not be her at all. Two glamorous women in priceless fur coats in an obscure little museum in the London suburbs on the same foggy autumn night? Well, maybe. Or maybe not. The plot ultimately involves chicanery in the art world, a family of Russian Γ©migrΓ©s, a missing Chagall, an international female assassin, a couple of unsettlingly strange young girls, and a hilarious send up of a stuffy English men's club. The tale serves a hearty helping of Grimes's usual interesting, not to say eccentric, characters. Among the most consistently fascinating of these is Jury's aristocratic friend Melrose Plant, a direct descendant of Lord Peter Wimsey and other wealthy, titled, amateur English detectives. Fans of Grimes's previous Superintendent Jury capers--each of which takes its name from an English pub--will enjoy the jokes, and new readers will appreciate the author's dry wit, her sharp eye for British oddities, and the way she turns an ordinary police procedural into a cozy little study of the national character. The Jury series began with *The Man with a Load of Mischief* (1981) and has included *The Deer Leap* (1985), *The Horse You Came In On* (1993), *The Case Has Altered* (1997), and several other tales. *--Jane Adams*
Grimes' popular Richard Jury returns in top form. A dead woman found at London's Fulham Palace is a dead ringer for a mysterious passenger who boarded the same bus Jury did just a few days earlier. Jury's only lead to the victim's identity is the fur coat she was wearing. The coat, which once belonged to an aging film star, was passed along to a family of Russian immigrants who own a posh art gallery. Jury asks his friend, art collector Melrose Plant, to investigate the connection between the coat, the art gallery, and the dead woman. Then another deadly clue turns up when a retired art critic with links to the gallery is murdered. Jury and Plant finally unravel the myriad bits of evidence and uncover an art-theft ring, unmask a professional assassin, and prove--sadly and yet again--that hatred, greed, and anger remain in plentiful supply and continue to drive much of human behavior. Grimes' latest delivers a delightfully entertaining blend of irony, danger, and intrigue, liberally laced with wit and charm. Certain to be popular, this is a must-have from one of today's most gifted and intelligent writers. *Emily Melton*
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