Dust by Martha Grimes

Description

Bibliographic Details

• Author: Martha Grimes
• Title: Dust (A Richard Jury Mystery)
• Publisher: ‎ Viking Books
• Publication Date: January 16, 2007
• Language: ‎ English
• Format: Hardcover – 342 pages
• ISBN-10: ‎ 0670037869
• ISBN-13: ‎ 978-0670037865
• Item Weight: ‎ 1.20 pounds
• Dimensions: ‎ 6.5 x 1.2 x 9.5 inches
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher
• Book Condition: New / Like New – Excellent
• Dust Jacket Condition: Excellent

Synopsis:

A young friend pulls Scotland Yard’s Richard Jury into the life—and death—of a wealthy bachelor.

 

The once-charismatic Billy Maples was last seen in a club named Dust, before his murder in a trendy London hotel. Proving as inscrutable, and challenging, to Jury as the case is the beautiful chief inspecting officer.

 

Before his death, Maples was a patron of London’s finest art galleries and caretaker of author Henry James’s house in Rye. It’s there where Jury installs Melrose Plant, who takes his job to heart, as Jury closes in on the dark secrets behind Maples’s friends and family.

About the Author:

Martha Grimes (born May 2, 1931) is an American writer of detective fiction. She is best known for a series featuring Richard Jury, a Scotland Yard inspector, and Melrose Plant, an aristocrat turned amateur sleuth.

Grimes was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to William Dermit Grimes, Pittsburgh's city solicitor, and June Dunnington, who owned the Mountain Lake Hotel in Western Maryland, where Martha and her brother spent much of their childhood. Grimes earned her B.A. and M.A. at the University of Maryland and did postgraduate work at the University of Iowa. She has taught at the University of Iowa, Frostburg State University, and Montgomery College (Takoma Park).

In 1983, Grimes received the Nero Wolfe Award for best mystery of the year for The Anodyne Necklace. In 2012, Grimes was named Grand Master by the Edgar Awards Mystery Writers of America.

Grimes initially became known for her series of novels featuring Richard Jury, an inspector with Scotland Yard, and his friend Melrose Plant, a British aristocrat who has given up his titles. Each of the Jury mysteries is named after a pub.

Her Emma Graham quartet of novels beginning with Hotel Paradise is set in an atmospheric aging lake resort in western Maryland, and delves into mysteries of past secrets and human nature. The background of the series draws from the experiences that she enjoyed while spending summers at her mother's hotel in Mountain Lake Park, Maryland. One of the characters, Mr. Britten, is drawn on Britten Leo Martin Sr., who then ran Martin's Store, which he owned with his father and brother. Martin's Store is accessible by a short walkway from the Mountain Lake Hotel, the site of the former hotel, which was torn down in 1967.

The two Andi Oliver novels center on a young drifter with amnesia, making her way in the northern U.S. Midwest armed with a strong sense of right and wrong and great compassion. Grimes has donated a large portion of her profits from these novels to animal-protection organizations.

Grimes lives in Bethesda, Maryland and is a vegetarian.