Martha Grimes and Richard Jury are the most
talked about mystery duo of the 1980s.
All who love the classic British novel of
detection, all who delight in Grimes's sly wit and
exquisitely drawn characters, all who have fallen
for the irresistible Jury, Superintendent, Scotland
Yard, will revel in the fifth and, richest Jury
adventure to date:
Jensalem Inn
From the rough but colorful pub that provides
the book's tide, to the snowbound Gothic estate
nearby, the chilly English landscape has never held
more atmosphere -- or thwarted romance. And
Jury will never have a more mysterious Christmas.
Ftvedays beforeChristmag. On his way to a
brief holiday (he thinks), Jury meets a woman he
could fail in love with. He meets her in a snow-cov.ered
graveyard-- not, he thinks, the best way
to begin an attachment.
Four days before Chr/$tmas: Jury meets Father
Rourke, who draws for him the semiotic square --
"a structure that might simplify thought," says the
priest, but Jury's thoughts need more than symbols.
Three days before Chr/$tma.g-Melrose
Plant,
Jury's aristocratic and unofficial assistant, arrives at
Spinney Abbey, now home to a well-known critic.
Among the assembled snowbound guests he
meets: Iady Assington ("underneath her expensive
gown there was a typist trying to get out");
Beatrice Sleight, a genre writer v/nose hair combs
gave that tumbled look of one just preparing for
bed ("Melrose imagined she usually was"); the tall,
brooding type, the painter Edward Parmenger,
who "put Melrose in mind of Heathcliff." When
they all assemble in the dining room, oak paneled
and candlelit with mullioned windows of rose
and amethyst #ass, Lady Assington'announces, "I
think we should have a murder."
Two days before Chr/stma.g-Jury
meets Plant at
Jerusalem Inn. What, each would like to know, is
the other one doing there?