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This page lists novels, short story collections and non-fiction by Martha Grimes.

The cover images are, when available, the first US edition and a more recent paperback or digital edition.

By Martha Grimes:
- novels & story collections
- omnibus editions
- non-fiction

About Martha Grimes:
- biography / criticism

The Man With a Load of Mischief

Martha Grimes

1981

A Richard Jury novel.

"At the Man with a Load of Mischief, they found the dead body stuck in a keg of beer. At the Jack and Hammer, another body was stuck out on the beam of the pub’s sign, replacing the mechanical man who kept the time. Two pubs. Two murders. One Scotland Yard inspector called in to help. Detective Chief Inspector Richard Jury arrives in Long Piddleton and finds everyone in the postcard village looking outside of town for the killer. Except for one Melrose Plant. A keen observer of human nature, he points Jury in the right direction: into the darkest parts of his neighbors’ hearts."

The Old Fox Deceiv'd

Martha Grimes

1982

A Richard Jury novel.

"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?"

The Anodyne Necklace

Martha Grimes

1983

A Richard Jury novel.

"A spinster whose passion is bird-watching, a dotty peer who pinches pennies, and a baffling murder make the tiny village of Littlebourne a most extraordinary place. And a severed finger makes a ghastly clue in the killing that leads local constables from a corpse to a boggy footpath to a beautiful lady’s mansion. But Richard Jury prefers to take the less traveled route to a slightly disreputable pub, the Anodyne Necklace. There, drinks all around loosen enough tongues to link a London mugging with the Littlebourne murder and a treasure map that will chart the way to yet another chilling crime."

The Dirty Duck

Martha Grimes

1984

A Richard Jury novel.

"Nothing ever happens in Stratford," insisted Superintendent Richard Jury of Scotland Yard. Unfortunately, he was wrong. Besides the stage murders commited nightly at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, a real one had been performed not far from the Dirty Duck, a popular pub. The victim had been a member of an exclusive group too: Those rare homicidal maniacs compelled to leave an intentional clue - in this case, a fragment of Elizabethan verse. Now a nine-year old boy from the same tour had vanished and Jury was worried. For, if the killer intended to finish the rhyme, would it spell death for Stratford with each new line?"

Jerusalem Inn

Martha Grimes

1984

A Richard Jury novel.

"A white Christmas couldn't make Newcastle any less dreary for Scotland Yard's Superintendent Richard Jury--until he met a beautiful woman in a snow-covered graveyard. Sensual, warm, and a bit mysterious, she could have put some life into his sagging holiday spirit. But the next time Jury saw her, she was cold--and dead. Melrose Plant. Jury's aristocratic sidekick wasn't faring much better. Snow bound at a stately mansion with a group of artists, critics, and idle-but-titled rich, he, too, encountered a lovely lady . . . or rather, stumbled over her corpse. What linked these two yuletide murders was a remote country pub where snooker, a Nativity scene, and an old secret would uncover a killer . . . or yet another death."

Help the Poor Struggler

Martha Grimes

1985

A Richard Jury novel.

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

The Deer Leap

Martha Grimes

1985

A Richard Jury novel.

"All roads don't lead to the village of Ashdown Dean. The one that did led writer Polly Praed right to the police station...to be questioned about a corpse. Poor Polly admitted to opening the phone booth door, but the dead woman had fallen out quite on her own. Now Polly needed to phone again - to call Melrose Plant and Scotland Yard's Richard Jury for help. For something was rotten in Ashdown Dean. Pets were missing. Some had been found dead."

I Am the Only Running Footman

Martha Grimes

1986

A Richard Jury novel.

"New Scotland Yard superintendent Richard Jury is convinced it's more than coincidence when two beautiful young women are found strangled to death with their own scarves - one in Devon, the second outside a fashionable Mayfair pub. Both women were as strikingly similar in life as they were in death. Neither had enemies that Jury can find. Now, somewhere in the night, a killer is biding his time, beckoning Jury and Devon's local divisional commander, Brian Macalvie, down an elusive trail of tragic family secrets and even more fatal lies."

The Five Bells and Bladebone

Martha Grimes

1987

A Richard Jury novel.

"When a dismembered corpse is found in the compartments of an antique secretaire a abattant, 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."

The Old Silent

Martha Grimes

1989

A Richard Jury novel.

"Feeling burned out, Jury takes an unplanned stopover in Yorkshire and books a room at a cozy inn called the Old Silent. Violence finds him anyway when he becomes the only witness to a murder. Though Nell Healey shot her husband in cold blood, Jury will go to any lengths to help her, including taking sick leave from Scotland Yard to investigate. Calling on his old friend Melrose Plant for help, he must break through Nell's reticence to untangle a web of twisted motives - and twisted lives."

Send Bygraves

Martha Grimes

1990

"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 Old Contemptibles

Martha Grimes

1991

A Richard Jury novel.

"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 Horse You Came In On

Martha Grimes

1993

A Richard Jury novel.

"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 Sergeant Wiggins, Jury arrives in Baltimore, Maryland, home of zealous Orioles fans, mouth-watering crabs, and Edgar Allan 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 End of the Pier

Martha Grimes

1993

A Maud Chadwick novel.

"In a sleepy resort town, Maud Chadwick waits tables at the Rainbow Cafe. Her confidant is Sheriff Sam DeGheyn and what they have in common is obsession. Maude doesn't want her son to leave home, and Sam cannot let go of the unsolved murders of three local women -- or his intuition that the killer is still out there. How these lives intertwine reveals a rich and startling story of parents and children and the pain they cause one another."

Rainbow's End

Martha Grimes

1995

A Richard Jury novel.

"A woman's body is discovered amidst the ancient Roman ruins of Old Sarum - the apparent victim of an accidental fall. In the Tate Gallery in London, an elderly woman keels over - from a supposed heart attack - while studying a painting. At Exeter Cathedral, a third woman is found dead from 'natural causes.' Is there a link between these three women? Of course. And Jury is the one who sorts it out. The link is Santa Fe, New Mexico, which all three women had visited before their untimely deaths. So Jury is off to the States where, amidst the turquoise jewelry and cappuccinos, he searches for and finds an astonishing web of jealousy and murder."

Hotel Paradise

Martha Grimes

1996

An Emma Graham novel.

"A once-fashionable, now fading resort hotel. A spinster Aunt living in an 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. Like all important events in the past, there are repercussions and ramifications in the present. The ramifications can be subtle. Or exhilarating. Passionate. And they can also be deadly. Hotel Paradise is a delicate yet excruciating view of the pettiness and cruelty of small town America."

The Case Has Altered

Martha Grimes

1997

A Richard Jury novel.

"The Lincolnshire fens 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. So when the principal suspect turns out to be Jenny Kennington, a woman Jury has long loved, he decides he needs someone inside Fengate, someone who can impersonate an antiques expert."

The Stargazey

Martha Grimes

1998

A Richard Jury novel.

"After a luminous blonde leaves, reboards, then leaves the double-decker bus Richard Jury is on, he follows her to the gates of Fulham Palace...and goes no further. Days later, when he hears of the death in the palace's walled garden, Jury will wonder if he could have averted it. But is the victim the same woman Jury saw? As he and Melrose Plant follow the complex case from the Crippsian depths of London's East End to the headier heights of Mayfair's art scene, Jury will realize that in this captivating woman--dead or alive--he may have finally met his match."

The Lamorna Wink

Martha Grimes

1999

A Richard Jury novel.

"With his good friend Richard Jury on a fool's errand in Northern Ireland, Melrose Plant tries - in vain - to escape his aunt and his long Piddleton lethargy by fleeing to Cornwall. There, high on a promontory overlooking the sea, he rents a house - one furnished with tragic memories. But his Cornwallian reveries are tempered by the local waiter / cab driver / amateur magician. The industrious Johnny Wells seems unflappable - until his beloved aunt disappears. Now Plant is dragged into the disturbing pasts of everyone involved - and a murder mystery that only Richard Jury can solve."

Biting the Moon

Martha Grimes

1999

An Andi Oliver novel.

"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."

Cold Flat Junction

Martha Grimes

2000

An Emma Graham novel.

"A once fashionable, now fading resort hotel. A spinster aunt living in the attic. A house full of secrets and dusty furnishings, uninhabited for almost fifty years. A neglected lake, covered with water lilies. Pettiness and cruelty in small-town America. And Emma Graham, a twelve-year-old girl with a passion for double-chocolate ice-cream sodas and decaying lakefronts, and an obsession with the death of another girl - Mary-Evelyn Devereau - forty years earlier. Cold Flat Junction is the sequel to Martha Grimes' Hotel Paradise and in it Emma Graham continues to look for answers surrounding the fate of Mary-Evelyn, who was also twelve when she drowned in Spirit Lake. And the murder of Fern Queen remains to be solved."

The Blue Last

Martha Grimes

2001

A Richard Jury novel.

"Mickey Haggerty, a DCI with the London City police, has asked for Jury's help. Two skeletons have been unearthed in the City during the excavation of London's last bombsite, where once a pub stood called the The Blue Last. Mickey believes that a child who survived the bombing has been posing for over fifty years as a child who didn't. The grandchild of brewery magnet Oliver Tyndale supposedly survived that December 1940 bombing . . . but did she? Mickey also has a murder to solve. Simon Croft, prosperous City financial broker, and son of the one-time owner of The Blue Last is found shot to death in his Thames-side house. But the book he was writing about London during the German blitzkrieg has disappeared. Jury wants to get eyes and ears into Tynedale Lodge, and looks to his friend, Melrose Plant, to play the role. Reluctantly, Plant plays it, accompanied on his rounds of the Lodge gardens by nine-year-old Gemma Trim, orphan and ward of Oliver Tynedale; and Benny Keagan, a resourceful twelve-year-old orphaned delivery boy. And Richard Jury may not make it out alive."

The Train Now Departing

Martha Grimes

2001

"Subtle and perceptive, atmospheric and lyrical, these two beautifully accomplished and thematically linked novellas are deceptively profound in their exploration of emotional isolation and identity within human relationships. Each story features a single middle-aged woman who to the outside world seems totally self-assured and content with their quiet and well-ordered lives. But each story features as well a man of seemingly no importance other than as a companion for the occasional meal or an outing in polite society."

The Grave Maurice

Martha Grimes

2002

A Richard Jury novel.

"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?"

Foul Matter

Martha Grimes

2003

The Winds of Change

Martha Grimes

2004

A Richard Jury novel.

"When an unidentified five-year-old girl is shot on a grimy street in London, Jury knows this will be one of the hardest investigations of his career. He is joined by his colleague DI Johnny Blakeley, head of the paedophile unit of New Scotland Yard, who suspects Viktor Baumann, owner of an iniquitous house on the same street - an operation Blakeley has been long trying to shut down. Meanwhile, at Angel Gate, where Jury's trusty sidekick, Melrose Plant, is now a gardener, an unidentified woman has been murdered in the grounds of Declan Scott's estate. First on the scene is commander of the Devon and Cornwall police, Brian Macalvie. Three years earlier, Declan Scott's four-year-old stepdaughter, Flora, was abducted and shortly after her disappearance, her mother died too, leaving Declan bereft. Together Jury, Macalvie, Blakeley and Plant rake over the past and the present and find that all sign posts point to the guilt of Viktor Baumann, who happens to be Flora's father. But when no one in this case is exactly who they seem, how can Jury be sure?"

Belle Ruin

Martha Grimes

2005

An Emma Graham novel.

"A waitress at her mother's decaying resort hotel, twelve-year-old Emma now has a second job as the youngest cub reporter in the history of La Porte's Conservative newspaper. But when she discovers the crumbling shell of a fabulous hotel- the once-sumptuous Belle Rouen-in the woods near her small town of Spirit Lake, Emma never imagines that the mysteries it holds will bring her one step closer to solving a forty-year-old crime-and force a new transgression to light."

The Old Wine Shades

Martha Grimes

2006

A Richard Jury novel.

"Over the course of three nights, Harry - a stranger who sits down next to Jury one night in a London pub - spins a complicated story about a good friend of his whose wife, son and dog disappeared over nine-months ago during a house viewing in Surrey. There has been no trace of them and no clue as to what happened. But the dog has come back. Dumbfounded, Jury wonders if Harry Johnson is just winding him up. Or did it really happen? When Jury investigates, all seems to be just as Harry described it. Until he finds the body."

Dust

Martha Grimes

2007

A Richard Jury novel.

" 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."

Dakota

Martha Grimes

2008

An Andi Oliver novel.

"In this stunning sequel to Grimes' 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 Klavans, a massive pigfarming facility that specializes in the dark art of modern livestock management. As Andi begins to uncover the truth about Klavans 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."

The Black Cat

Martha Grimes

2010

A Richard Jury novel.

"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. 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."

Fadeaway Girl

Martha Grimes

2011

An Emma Graham novel.

"Emma continues her investigation into the strange disappearance of the four- month-old Slade baby from the Belle Ruin Hotel more than twenty years before. The sudden appearance in town of the baby's father, Morris Slade, makes her even more determined to learn the truth. Then a mysterious drifter named Ralph Diggs appears at the Hotel Paradise, looking for work, ingratiating himself with everyone there. Everyone, that is, except Emma."

The Way of All Fish

Martha Grimes

2014

"Writer Cindy Sella is having trouble with her new novel. Aside from her paralyzing writer's block, she's faced with a lawsuit from her ex-agent, L. Bass Hess. Hess will stop at nothing to collect a commission from Cindy on her previous novel, which he did not represent since she had fired him long before it was published. Hitmen Candy and Karl - first introduced in Foul Matter - are asked to 'get rid' of L. Bass Hess. They join forces with a publishing mogul, a bestselling author, an out-of-work Vegas magician, an alligator wrangler, a glamorous Malaysian con lady, and Hess's aunt in the Everglades who has undergone a wildly successful sex change, and concoct a plan to save Cindy Sella from the odious machinations of Hess by driving him (slowly, hilariously) crazy."

Vertigo 42

Martha Grimes

2014

A Richard Jury novel.

"Richard Jury is meeting Tom Williamson at Vertigo 42, a bar on the forty-second floor of an office building in London's financial district. Despite inconclusive evidence, Tom is convinced his wife, Tess, was murdered seventeen years ago. The inspector in charge of the case was sure Tess's death was accidental - a direct result of vertigo - but the official police inquiry is still an open verdict and Jury agrees to re-examine the case. Jury learns that a nine-year-old girl fell to her death five years before Tess at the same place in Devon where Tess died, at a small house party. Jury seeks out the five surviving party guests, who are now adults, hoping they can shed light on this bizarre coincidence. Ultimately, four deaths - two in the past, two that occur on the pages of this intricate, compelling novel - keep Richard Jury and his sidekick Sergeant Wiggins running from their homes in Islington to the countryside in Devon and to London as they try to figure out if the deaths were accidental or not. And, if they are connected."

The Knowledge

Martha Grimes

2018

A Richard Jury novel.

"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, a professor of astrophysics at Columbia and an expert gambler. Feeling personally affronted, Jury soon enlists Melrose Plant, Marshall Trueblood, and his whole gang of merry characters to contend with a case that takes unexpected turns into Tanzanian gem mines, a closed casino in Reno, Nevada, and a pub that only London's black cabbies, those who have 'the knowledge', can find."

Martha Grimes Omnibus

Martha Grimes

1993

A Richard Jury omnibus.

An omnibus edition that brings together the three novels: I Am The Only Running Footman; Help The Poor Struggler; and The Dear Leap.

Double Double: A Memoir of Alcoholism

Martha Grimes and Ken Grimes

2016

"Double Double is a unique, dual memoir of alcoholism. People who suffer from alcoholism as well as their families and friends know that while it is possible to get sober, there is no one right way to do this. Now, mystery writer Martha Grimes and her son, Ken Grimes, offer two points of view on their struggles with alcoholism. In alternating chapters, they share their stories stories of drinking, recovery, relapse, friendship, travel, work, success, and failure. For Martha, it was about drinking martinis at home, sometimes with friends, sometimes alone. For Ken, it was partying in bars and clubs. Each hit bottom. Martha spent time doing outpatient rehabilitation, once in 1990 and again two years later. Ken began twelve-step recovery. This candid memoir describes how different both the disease and the recovery can look in two different people even two people who are mother and son. Double Double is an intensely personal and illuminating book, filled with insights, humor, a little self-deprecation, and a lot of self-evaluation."

Martha Grimes Walks Into A Pub: Essays On A Writer With A Load Of Mischief

Editor: Sarah D. Fogle

2010

"Since the 1979 discovery of Martha Grimes' work in a slush pile at Little, Brown & Co., she has gone on to publish more than thirty books, won international acclaim (and a Nero Wolfe Award) for her detective series, and developed a following of readers whose loyalty translates to repeated stays on the best-sellers lists. This collection of ten critical essays provides an in-depth analysis of Grimes' oeuvre, principally the Richard Jury, Emma Graham, and Andi Oliver series. The essays address Grimes' themes of parental abandonment, loneliness, obsession, greed, mistaken and dual identity, the resilience of children, stunted romantic relationships and animal cruelty. Particular critical attention is paid to her engaging characters, strong sense of place and the comedy, which features so strongly in her novels."

• Introduction (Sarah D. Fogle)
• Martha Grimes And The English Pub (Marcia J. Songer)
• "You’re Always Away When The Ax-Murderers Come": The Plight Of Disposable Children (Deane Mansfield-Kelley and Lois A. Marchino)
• The Significance Of Place (Mary Alice Money)
• "A Play For Us All": Medea And The Spirit Lake Novels (Amy Hausser)
• Identity, Simulacra, And The Hyperreal: Detectives, Murders, And Victims (Rhonda Knight)
• The Woman’s Way: Gender And Fictional Style (Nancy Eliot Parker)
• Humor, Murder And The Ludicrous In Human Behavior (Mimosa Stephenson)
• Fear Of Commitment: Richard Jury, Melrose Plant, And Women (Sherry Ginn)
• Emma Graham, Detective Quest Hero (Sarah D. Fogle)
• Mystery, Murder, Misery And Meat (Diane Calhoun-French)