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

Following hard upon the action of 2006's twisty The Old Wine Shades, Grimes's equally intricate 21st Richard Jury mystery brings the Scotland Yard superintendent to a shady London hotel to investigate the murder of wealthy bachelor Billy Maples. Jury discovers connections between the murder case and the distant past through Maples's grandfather, who served as one of Britain's top code breakers during WWII. Allusions to the literary themes of Henry James lend depth. The superintendent also encounters some major romantic complications in the form of gorgeous Det. Insp. Lu Aguilar, the lead detective on the case, and Scotland Yard pathologist Phyllis Nancy. Ably abetted by his longtime amateur colleague, Melrose Plant, Jury deftly and doggedly pursues the killer. While still several notches below P.D. James's outstanding psychological whodunits, this excellent series consistently entertains-and in a way that's accessible for newcomers. 8-city author tour. (Jan.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

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