In the new mystery in the bestselling Richard Jury series, Martha Grimes brings London's finest on a double-homicide case that involves Kenyan art, rare gems, astrophysics and a long-fermented act of revenge.
'Read any one [of her novels] and you'll want to read them all.' - Chicago Tribune
Robbie Parsons is one of London's finest, a black cab driver who knows every street, every theatre, every landmark in the city by heart. In his backseat is a man with a gun in his hand - a man who shot Robbie's previous pair of customers point-blank in front of the Artemis Club, a rarefied art gallery-cum-casino, then jumped in and ordered Parsons to drive.
As the killer eventually escapes to Nairobi with ten-year-old Patty Haigh - one of a crew of stray kids who serve as the cabbies' eyes and ears at Heathrow and Waterloo - in pursuit, superintendent Richard Jury comes across the double-homicide in the Saturday paper.
Two days previously, Jury had met and instantly connected with one of the victims, a professor of astrophysics at Columbia and an expert gambler. Jury considers the murder a personal affront and is soon contending with a case that takes unexpected turns into Tanzanian gem mines, a closed casino in Reno, and a pub that only London's black cabbies, those who have 'the knowledge,' can find.
"Read any one [of her novels] and you'll want to read them all." - Chicago Tribune
"Delightful, surprising, even magical. They begin as police procedurals - someone is murdered, Jury investigates - but Grimes's love of the offbeat, the whimsical and the absurd makes them utterly unlike anyone else's detective novels . . . Although Grimes is American she has a wicked eye for English eccentricity" - Washington Post
"Delicious . . . Jury and his posse are terrific companions . . . Delightful." - Seattle Times on VERTIGO 42
"Intricate and entertaining . . . A delicious puzzle." - Boston Globe on THE HORSE YOU CAME IN ON
"Wondrously eccentric characters . . . The details are divine." - New York Times Book Review on THE STARGAZEY
"Swift and satisfying . . . grafts the old-fashioned 'Golden Age' amateur-detective story to the contemporary police procedural . . . real charm." - Wall Street Journal on THE LAMORNA WINK
"The literary equivalent of a box of Godiva truffles . . . Wonderful." - Los Angeles Times on THE STARGAZEY