By Joan Whetzel
I read the Richard Jury series of books by Martha Grimes quite a
few years back and loved them. Richard Jury is a Detective for the New Scotland
Yard who is frequently called in by local police to help solve crimes.
"The Stargazey" - named for a London pub by the same
name - begins with Mr. Jury being intrigued by a woman. The woman is well
dressed and wearing a sable fur coat. She gets on the same bus as Jury, gets
off a few blocks later, gets back on the bus, then finally gets off near an
Abbey. Jury, intrigued, follows her to the gates of the Abbey grounds. She
enters the grounds, but Jury holds back. The next morning he hears of a woman
who was found dead on the Abbey grounds, wearing a sable fur coat. He has no
choice but to engage himself in the investigation. Imagine his surprise when he
finds out that the woman wearing the sable coat is not the same woman he saw
wearing it the evening before.
Like all of Martha Grimes's mystery novels, "The Stargazey" is a great British whodunit,
following the detective/mystery plot progression set forth by other British
authors .Like I said, I loved these books when I first read them. However, I
think my tastes must be changing, because I found the book moved too slowly for
me now. Yeah it started out catching the reader - me - right off the bat. But
then it took her several chapters (seemed like the whole first half of the
book) to get the investigation going. I had a really hard time staying focused.
It may just be my changing taste in reading material, though. So don't take
this negative from my pen to your ears as gospel truth. Give it a read and
decide for yourself.
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