The Knowledge: A Richard Jury Mystery

The shooting death of American physicist David Moffitt and his wife, Rebecca, outside the Artemis Club, an exclusive London casino and art gallery, propels MWA Grand Master Grimes’s solid 24th mystery featuring Scotland Yard’s Det. Supt. Richard Jury (after 2014’s Vertigo 42). Jury reads about the crime in the newspaper the next day. Meanwhile, a gritty version of the Baker Street Irregulars, children who hang out at train stations and Heathrow and act as informants, have the shooter in their sights; 10-year-old Patty Haigh befriends the killer and accompanies him to Nairobi, Kenya, where Melrose Plant, one of Jury’s team, soon follows. Jury’s investigation centers on gem smuggling, tax dodging, and greed. The real mystery is how to find a cab drivers’ pub, the Knowledge, so secret that even Scotland Yard can’t force its patrons to reveal its location. Though the plot gets a bit muddled midway through, readers will appreciate the elements that have made this a long-running bestselling series, notably a complicated case and distinctive characters. Agent: Steve Sheppard, Cowen Debaets Abrahams & Sheppard. (Apr.)