Publisher's Weekly Review
The discovery of the body of a French tourist, washed up on one of the Isles of Scilly off the Cornish coast, kicks off MWA Grand Master Grimes's entertaining, if sometimes befuddling, 25th mystery featuring Scotland Yard Supt. Richard Jury (after 2018's The Knowledge). Soon afterward, a man is killed on an East Midlands estate--possibly by his wife, who admits only to shooting him in the leg--and a woman is gunned down inside Exeter Cathedral. Jury and his eccentric pal, Melrose Plant, plus handfuls of detectives from the far-flung crime scenes, attempt to discern what, if anything, connects these murders. Jury and company travel around England by boat, plane, helicopter, and car in search of answers, with occasional breaks for a drink in places such as the Old Success Pub in Land's End. Never mind the difficulty of keeping track of the large cast and the complicated plot, witty dialogue keeps the action moving to the satisfying conclusion. Series fans and newcomers alike will have fun. Agent: Steve Sheppard, Cowan, Debaets, Abrahams & Sheppard. (Nov.)
Kirkus Review
Superintendent Richard Jury's 25th case is less a star turn than a team effort for a trio of detectives and their deep bench of helpers and hangers-on.A pair of young sisters out walking the beach of Bryher, the smallest inhabited Isle of Scilly off the Cornish coast, find the body of a woman who's been shot to death. Since Bryher is accessible only by ferry, it stands to reason that whoever killed Manon Vinet is still on the island. That's hard for the close-knit native community to accept. What makes the case even harder for Divisional Commander Brian Macalvie, called in from Exeter to head the investigation, is that the victim's most prominent link to the outside worldthe fact that she once nursed the late Gerald Summerstonlinks her to still more violence when Summerston's niece, Flora Flood, is arrested for fatally shooting her estranged husband, Tony Servino. Flora denies the charges, but her accountTony threatened her because he was enraged at being served with divorce papers after a two-year separation; she only shot at his feet; an intruder entering at just that moment fired the fatal bullet from a gun of the same caliberseems calculated to inspire skepticism from even her next-door neighbor Jury's old friend Melrose Plant. While Jury and Sir Thomas Brownell, a legendary detective retired from Scotland Yard, are still trying to figure out whether the two murders are connected, their attention is claimed by a third: the shooting of former Summerston maid Moira Quinn in Exeter Cathedral, right on Macalvie's home turf. The ensuing rounds of inquiry and cross-checking would tax most novelists and their detectives to the limit, but Grimes (The Knowledge, 2018, etc.) keeps dropping unexpected complications, newly minted characters, and familiar faces into a mix that becomes so head-spinning that most readers are likely to greet the denouement with a combination of surprise and relief.Plotted and peopled with unstinting generosity, even if the regulars are never quite as amusing as the author thinks. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
The twenty-fifth Richard Jury mystery (the first, The Man with a Load of Mischief, was published in 1981), continues the Grimes tradition of mixing solid procedural details with deft characterization and offbeat wit. As with most Jury mysteries, the title comes from a pub named in the book. (Here, though, the title has extra resonance, as readers will see at mystery's end.) When the body of a woman shot at close range is discovered on the beach of one of the Atlantic-battered Isles of Scilly, off the coast of Cornwall, it's a case for the Devon-Cornwall police. Divisional Commander Brian Macalvie calls in Superintendent Jury, who enlists the help of a man he's just met in the Old Success pub: Tom Brownell, a brilliant former Scotland Yard detective. The trio, each with his own special gifts for crime-scene analysis, interviewing suspects, and connecting the dots, tackles a case that grows more complex as two more victims appear with some tantalizing connections. The only discordant note is the appearance of aristocrat Melrose Plant, longtime friend of Jury's, who seems to have materialized from an Oscar Wilde play and takes away from Grimes' tightly constructed plot. Grimes was awarded the Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Award in 2012.--Connie Fletcher Copyright 2019 Booklist
