The Blue Last: A Richard Jury Mystery [Hardcover]

Martha Grimes (Author)

Book Description

Series: Richard Jury Mysteries | Publication Date: September 10, 2001

Scotland Yard superintendent Richard Jury recruits a reluctant Melrose Plant to solve a case of mistaken identity revolving around London's last bomb site-where once stood a pub called the Blue Last.

--This text refers to the Mass Market Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Scotland Yard Superintendent Richard Jury returns in a compelling novel, the 17th in Grimes's long-running series. Mickey Haggerty, Jury's old friend and colleague, is dying of cancer. So Jury can hardly refuse his request to look into what Mickey suspects is a 50-year-old case of switched identities. It surfaces when the last World War II bomb site in London is excavated for a new development, exposing the skeletal remains of a woman and infant. Mickey thinks the dead infant wasn't the baby of Kitty Riordan, Maisie Tynedale's nanny, as Kitty claimed, but was Maisie herself, the heiress to a brewery fortune. Did Kitty engineer the masquerade? And did Simon Croft, who was writing a book about London in the war years, discover it? When Croft is killed and his computer stolen, Jury sends his pal Melrose Plant to snoop around Tynedale Lodge disguised as a gardener. There he encounters a charming trio of amateurs: a homeless urchin and his extremely clever dog Sparky, and Gemma, a Tynedale ward whose mysterious background may hold the clue to Simon's murder as well as the still unsolved attempt on her young life.

As usual, Plant's world of eccentric friends and relatives is nicely evoked in a subplot that leads him on a surprising holiday in Florence, during which he acquires just enough knowledge of Italian Renaissance painting to pull off another disguise on Jury's behalf. Grimes weaves the threads of this rich tapestry together in a surprise ending that not even Grimes aficionados will sense coming. But it's an appropriate conclusion, given the book's brooding tone, established in the opening pages by a dying friend's obsession and sustained as the investigation forces Jury to confront his own haunted memories of the war. This is a solid page turner, marked by Grimes's unerring sense of pacing, respectful but provocative poking around in Jury's soul, and topnotch storytelling ability. --Jane Adams

From Publishers Weekly

Reading Grimes's 16th Richard Jury novel (The Case Has Altered, etc.) is like watching a good movie on TV constantly interrupted by commercials. The author used to produce well-crafted, atmospheric works with delightful characters, but in recent years they've become unnecessarily long, overpopulated with minor characters (including Melrose), who take up a lot of time while contributing little to the crime at hand. The premise here is promising enough: the bodies of a woman and an infant turn up in the last unredeveloped bomb site in London (a pub called the Blue Last), victims of the final heavy German bombing of WWII. The woman, identified as Alexandra Tyndale, was the daughter of a wealthy brewing magnate; the infant was the daughter of Alexandra's nanny. Or was the infant, in fact, Alexandra's daughter, whom the nanny swapped with her own child to make her heir to the Tyndale fortune? It's all quite Victorian. Called in by his friend DCI Mickey Haggerty to help on the case, Richard Jury soon finds himself involved with a murder that could be related. Two children, Grimes's usual pathologically precocious tots, enter the action, as does Melrose with a whole subplot of his own. Because of this excess baggage, the reader must wait impatiently for the mystery to resume. A far-fetched solution will satisfy only the author's staunchest fans. 8-city author tour. (Sept. 10)Forecast: Despite the weakness of this title, Grimes is impervious to negative criticism; like others in the series, this one should hit bestseller charts.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: Viking Adult; 1ST edition (September 10, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0739421387
• ISBN-13: 978-0739421383
• ASIN: 067003004X
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.3 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (102 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,549,630 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Martha Grimes is the bestselling author of twenty-one Richard Jury novels, as well as the novels Dakota and Foul Matter, among others. Her previous two Jury books, The Old Wine Shades and Dust, both appeared on the New York Times bestseller list.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Is Ms. Grimes getting tired of Richard?, September 13, 2001

By 

Colleen G. Pittman "Songsmith" (USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Blue Last: A Richard Jury Mystery (Hardcover)

Richard Jury's old cop buddy, Mickey, is dying. He calls on Jury's expertise to help him solve a decades old case of deception. When modern murder intervenes, Jury and his old friend Melrose Plant set out to unravel both the new and old mysteries.

We see the usual suspects: Jury, Plant, Trueblood, the young child, the plucky boy, the old wealthy gentleman, the hard-hearted woman, the maybe-so/maybe-not imposter. What we don't see, alas, is real originality in plotting. As I read The Blue Last, I experienced deja vu--I had read this Richard Jury novel before.

Plant and Trueblood together are amusing, as usual. Ms. Grimes seems to have put too much emphasis on perspective and art style to render her theme. There seemed something lacking there. Considering the location of their excursion, the absence of a certain female character was disappointing. The sudden bit appearance of an old female character was surprising and felt out of place, as though she had been added just to "make the readers happy. You felt like you'd met all these characters before--even the plucky boy with the dog living on his own. Add to this, the destruction of much of the "history" of the characters as we know it (perhaps this was tying in with her theme of perspective again) and the disappointment builds. At the end, when the killer is revealed, there is no surprise. Although motive may not have been apparent, the suspect certainly had been from the beginning of the novel.

Perhaps my real disappointment comes with the ending, which can only be called ambiguous. If you dislike cliffhanger endings, you'll loathe this one. I give the book 3 stars mostly because I've read Martha Grimes since her first (Man with a Load of Mischief). Save your money for the paperback, though.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Maybe time to end the series., November 26, 2001

By 

Reader "angie42" (Georgia, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Blue Last: A Richard Jury Mystery (Hardcover)

I won't re-hash what everyone else has said already--But I actually liked the Florence trip to authenticate the painting. I think the point there is--do you really have to know if something or someone is authentic?

If you have lived with and loved Maisie for 50 years, does it matter if she isn't really a blood relation? Or do you appreciate her for who she is--just like Trueblood's beautiful painting. After all, whether she is "real" or not, Maisie is hardly at fault, since she was a baby at the time of the bombing.

Like other readers, I am having a hard time with the timeline in the Jury novels. Just how old is everyone, and is the story taking place "now" or a few years ago? If Maisie had an older sister (about 55 years old) how likely is it that 9-year-old Gemma could be the sister's daughter? Not to mention Jury's older cousin who has a baby.) And no one has pyjamas mixing Tweetie Bird with Disney characters.

I think Martha Grimes is tired of this line of books, and if so she's might as well stop rather than dragging things out painfully for the fans. This book had a lot of potential, but too much co-incidence and unanswered questions. (Who is Gemma anyway? And why does every female in sight look like Vivian Leigh?) I always liked the way Hercule Poirot would wrap up everything at the end of a Christie novel!

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Almost Good Richard Jury Novel, November 21, 2001

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Blue Last: A Richard Jury Mystery (Hardcover)

"The Blue Last" is almost good, flawed by impossibly intelligent children, a dog who talks to himself, and forays into the art world that seem to have little application. There are errors here--for example, it is Henry V who speaks of "we few, . . . we band of brothers," not Henry IV. That small editorial error may be the objective correlative of what is wrong with this book. It seems hurried. Ms. Grimes seems to be growing weary of Jury and his friends. The book reveals her weariness. But is Ms. Grimes wrong to try to satisfy those of us who clamor for more of Jury when she is tired of him? The reader yearns for Jury because he had once been original, engaging, surrounded by delightful Dickensesque characters who did not need to mean anything. The weariness in this Jury makes us scrutinize those characters who float by and comment on the silliness of the human condition, seeking for them to add meaning to the novel.

This is not a bad book. There are aspects of Jury's character that are beautifully and subtly developed. The story develops well, with many clues to the mystery imbedded into the interactions of the characters. The settings evoke an atmosphere that draws the reader into it.

Avid Jury fans will be engaged throughout the book and enraged by the ending.