The Jury Is Back

by Daisy Maryles -- Publishers Weekly, 9/6/2004

That's Richard Jury, Martha Grimes's urbane British detective, who's returning in his 19th starring vehicle, The Winds of Change. Grimes aficionados may recall that her previous outing was last year's Foul Matter, about which Marilyn Stasio wrote in the New York Times "an evil-minded satire of the venal, not to say murderous, practices of the New York publishing industry [which] gets a great review from me." Jury's latest caper, which was published by Viking on August 23 (copies in print: 105,000), is dedicated to Grimes's brother, Bill, who died last year—and who was the last link to her past, where the two grew up in western Maryland. Interestingly, in the new book Jury solves a murder while grieving the death of a relative who was the last link to his childhood. The bookstores on Grimes's eight-city tour are lucky indeed, said her publicist, Kent Holland: "Martha does much more than sign books: she essentially does a stand-up comedy routine."