The End of the Pier by Martha Grimes

Description

Bibliographic Details

• Author: Martha Grimes
• Title: The End of the Pier
• Publisher: ‎ Alfred A. Knopf; First Edition (March 31, 1992)
• Language: ‎ English
• Format: Hardcover w/Library Binding – 230 pages
• ISBN-10: ‎ 0679411267
• ISBN-13: ‎ 978-0679411260
• Item Weight: ‎ 1.01 pounds
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.9" x 8.7"
• Book Condition: Used – Fair (Former library book; may include the markings and stickers associated from the library. Shows signs of wear / discoloration on pages and page edges). 
• Dust Jacket Condition: Fair (Plastic Library Dust Jacket – shows signs of shelf wear and readers)
• Edition: First Edition

Synopsis:

The setting: a small, sleepy American town where secrets are almost impossible to keep.

The center of town life: the Rainbow Cafe' where Maud Chadwick works as a waitress, hiding behind a quiet manner the intensity and confusion of emotions she feels as her twenty-year-old son takes his final steps out of her life and into his own.

Maud’s only confidant: Sam DeGheyn, the town sheriff, who, trapped in a loveless, childless marriage, turns his attentions to Maud, and to the murders of three local women, which have occurred in the past five years.

Sam’s suspicion: that the wrong man may have been convicted of the crimes and the right man may soon kill again.

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.