The Stargazey
   A Richard Jury Mystery
   Martha Grimes
  1998 Henry Holt & Co. NY USA
   ISBN: 080505622X


On a bleak November Saturday night, Richard Jury takes an aimless bus ride on the top deck. A woman with gossamer-pale hair & a full length fur coat leaves the Stargazey pub below him & he is caught in an overture to murder, art thefts & international assassins.

There is a poetic breadth to a Martha Grimes' mystery whether she puts you behind an assassin taking aim at a nobody who just happened to have come across her at the wrong moment or when she sends you out into a gloomy late autumn night under bare trees.

In The Stargazey Martha Grimes waltzes you along with both Richard Jury's & Melrose Plant's adventures in solving what looks, at the outset, like two entirely separate crimes. You will, however, find yourself in an art gallery, replete with lush carpeting, brilliant lights exposing histrionic modern canvases. Here you meet two ever-so genteel yet crass owners & wonder at the odd paintings.

Martha Grimes will usher you into Melrose Plant's father's club, Boring's, which, of course, isn't. It is filled with fascinating, interesting old chaps served by two living fossils who seem to flutter on the edge of death yet bear up remarkably well when death comes for a visit.

For someone who feels as though his life is empty, Richard Jury sure does have a group of eccentric, curious & eminently visitable friends. From his flat-mates to an artist of charming London scenes to an astronomer who can't read the night sky. From a Russian emmigre's family to an erstwhile famous English film star to a friendly bar-keep to an attractive, mysterious widow.

The jacket cover says this author lives in Washington, DC & Santa Fe, New Mexico. Having lived in London myself for a good number of years, I'd say that Martha Grimes has definitely gotten the hang of the English way of life.

Richard Jury is a Superintendent in New Scotland Yard. He literally follows someone to the very jaws of death & stops, does not enter & when asked later, thinks: ...because I wasn't invited in..." He has been drawn, however, into a wonderfully contorted mystery, well-wrought & filled with delicious detail.

All sorts of red herrings, delightful domestic scenes & hair-raising adventures in the company of little girls dot this ambling story. We learn a lot about London clubs, rabbit-warren slums & the least known tourist sites.

A difficult drama, strangely impersonal & often only hinted at. Lots of clues, lots of teatimes, beverages & meals; a couple of convoluted families & some very telling coincidences.

A lovely read. Atmospheric, vivid & well-written.

More from Martha Grimes: Poetry: Send Bygraves
Books: The Man with a Load of Mischief; The Old Fox Deceiv'd; The Anodyne Necklace; The Dirty Duck; Jerusalem Inn; Help the Poor Struggler; The Deer Leap; I am the Only Running Footman; The Five Bells and Bladebone; The Old Silent; The Old Contemptibles; The End of the Pier; The Horse You Came in On; Rainbow's End; Hotel Paradise & The Case Has Altered.
(06/12/99)

Rebecca