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Richard Jury Books in Order

Part ofMartha Grimes Books in Order

This page shows all the Richard Jury mysteries by Martha Grimes in order, with brief summaries, recurring character notes, series background, and simple guidance on the best place to begin this long running pub themed detective series.

Last updated: December 24, 2025

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Publication Order

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26 books

1

The Red Queen

by Martha Grimes

2025

Businessman Tom Treadnor is shot dead while sitting in a suburban London pub called The Queen, and everyone close to him seems oddly unreliable. As Jury investigates, a mysterious double of the victim and Sergeant Wiggins’s search for his missing sister complicate a case full of shifting identities.

2

The Old Success

by Martha Grimes

2019

After a French tourist’s body washes ashore on a Cornish island, two more baffling murders follow, one on a Midlands estate and one in Exeter Cathedral. Jury teams up with Brian Macalvie and legendary retired detective Tom Brownell to learn whether these killings are separate crimes or a single pattern.

3

The Knowledge

by Martha Grimes

2018

A gunman kills an American couple outside the Artemis Club, then calmly commandeers a black cab and vanishes toward Heathrow. London taxi drivers, a fearless ten year old girl, and Richard Jury all join forces as the case leads from a hidden cabbies’ pub to gem smuggling and Kenya.

4

Vertigo 42

by Martha Grimes

2014

At a bar perched high above London, Tom Williamson asks Jury to re examine the long ago death of his wife, believed to have fallen down the stairs during a vertigo attack. Linked deaths of a child and a mysterious woman in red force Jury and Melrose Plant to revisit old tragedies.

5

The Black Cat

by Martha Grimes

2010

A young woman is shot behind a country pub known as the Black Cat, dressed in couture clothes that do not fit her quiet village life. As more escorts are killed, Jury works to reconcile her identities as shy librarian and high priced companion, guided only by a watchful cat.

6

Dust

by Martha Grimes

2007

When charming bachelor Billy Maples is found murdered after a night at an exclusive club called Dust, Richard Jury must sort through the victim’s double life in the art world. With Melrose Plant installed at Henry James’s old house in Rye, secrets from Maples’s past begin to surface.

7

The Old Wine Shades

by Martha Grimes

2006

In a London wine bar, a stranger named Harry Johnson tells Jury an extraordinary story about a physicist whose wife, child, and dog vanished during a house hunting trip. Only the dog came back. As Jury checks the tale, reality and invention blur, and a body finally surfaces.

8

The Winds of Change

by Martha Grimes

2004

The shooting of an unidentified five year old girl on a shabby London street propels Jury into one of his bleakest cases, involving a child abuse ring, a financier with a poisonous past, and an earlier abduction tied to a grand house in Cornwall called Angel Gate.

9

The Grave Maurice

by Martha Grimes

2002

Still recovering from a near fatal shooting, Jury is drawn into the case of Nell Ryder, a teenager who vanished from her family’s stud farm along with a prized horse. At the pub called The Grave Maurice, evidence of insurance fraud, stolen thoroughbreds, and a brutal hormone farm slowly comes into view.

10

The Blue Last

by Martha Grimes

2001

At London’s last untouched bombsite, workers uncover the remains of a young mother and child from the Blitz, raising doubts about which infant really survived. As Richard Jury investigates, a modern City broker connected to the old pub called The Blue Last is shot dead, tying past and present together.

11

The Lamorna Wink

by Martha Grimes

1999

Melrose Plant rents a seaside house in Cornwall where two children once drowned on the stone steps. When their guardian disappears and another woman is found dead near the cove, Plant draws in Richard Jury and Brian Macalvie to uncover overlapping motives of revenge and exploitation.

12

The Stargazey

by Martha Grimes

1998

On a bleak November night, Richard Jury notices a luminous blonde in a fur coat hopping on and off a bus outside the Stargazey pub, then vanishing through the gates of Fulham Palace. When a lookalike turns up murdered, Jury’s search leads into London’s art world and an old film star’s troubled family.

13

The Case Has Altered

by Martha Grimes

1997

In the lonely Lincolnshire fens, two women linked to a remote estate are found dead, and the main suspect is Jenny Kennington, a woman Jury has never stopped caring about. To clear her name, he sends Melrose Plant in undercover as an antiques expert at Fengate.

14

Rainbow's End

by Martha Grimes

1995

Three women in England die of apparently natural causes, but the pattern bothers Richard Jury. The trail takes him to Santa Fe, where a guarded thirteen year old girl and her pet coyote hold pieces of a puzzle that stretches across continents.

15

The Horse You Came In On

by Martha Grimes

1993

When a bar patron is murdered in Baltimore, local police turn to Richard Jury for help. With Melrose Plant and Sergeant Wiggins in tow, Jury wades into a harbor full of eccentrics, following clues that circle back to a historic tavern called The Horse You Came In On.

16

The Old Contemptibles

by Martha Grimes

1991

After a brief, troubled affair, the widow Jane Holdsworth is found dead and Richard Jury himself is treated as a suspect. Confined to London, he sends Melrose Plant to the Lake District to pose as a librarian and pry into a family history strewn with unexplained deaths.

17

The Old Silent

by Martha Grimes

1989

On a bleak holiday in Yorkshire, Richard Jury watches a woman calmly shoot her husband in the lounge of the Old Silent inn. Determined to understand why, he follows her silence into a tangle of past kidnappings, family money, and long deferred grief.

18

The Five Bells and Bladebone

by Martha Grimes

1987

A dismembered corpse tumbles from a newly delivered antique desk in Long Piddleton, turning village gossip into horror. Jury’s search leads from a country estate to London’s riverside slums, where the dead man’s double life left a string of lovers and dangerous enemies.

19

I Am the Only Running Footman

by Martha Grimes

1986

When two women are strangled a year apart, one on a lonely Devon road and one outside a Mayfair pub named I Am the Only Running Footman, Richard Jury joins Brian Macalvie to hunt a clever killer who understands family secrets and fear.

20

The Deer Leap

by Martha Grimes

1985

In Ashdown Dean, a rash of suspicious pet deaths seems like small town gossip until violence strikes a young woman. Called in to assist, Jury and Melrose Plant follow the trail to a guarded teenager and a hidden refuge for mistreated animals.

21

Help the Poor Struggler

by Martha Grimes

1985

Around bleak Dartmoor, three children have been killed, and fears rise that a predator is still at work. From the lonely pub Help the Poor Struggler to a moorland estate with an orphaned heiress, Jury and Brian Macalvie chase a crime rooted in old injustice.

22

The Dirty Duck

by Martha Grimes

1984

During the theater season in Stratford upon Avon, a member of a tour group is found murdered near the pub called the Dirty Duck. Richard Jury must look past staged deaths and Shakespearean drama to find a killer hiding in plain sight.

23

Jerusalem Inn

by Martha Grimes

1984

Trapped by snow in the days before Christmas, Richard Jury meets a woman in a graveyard who is soon found dead. At a nearby country house, Melrose Plant discovers another body, and the remote Jerusalem Inn becomes the link between both chilling murders.

24

The Anodyne Necklace

by Martha Grimes

1983

A severed finger found near the village of Littlebourne pulls Richard Jury into a case linking a baffling local murder, a London street attack, and a rumored treasure. Gossip in the pub called the Anodyne Necklace slowly reveals how the pieces fit.

25

The Old Fox Deceiv'd

by Martha Grimes

1982

A woman in theatrical costume is stabbed on a foggy Twelfth Night in a Yorkshire fishing village, and no one is sure who she really is. Richard Jury must untangle a family’s buried scandals to learn why someone wanted the impostor dead.

26

The Man With a Load of Mischief

by Martha Grimes

1981

In the village of Long Piddleton, two strangers are murdered in spectacular fashion at neighboring pubs, one wedged into a beer cask and one swinging from a sign. Scotland Yard inspector Richard Jury and aristocrat Melrose Plant dig into the village’s well kept grudges.

Series background & context

The Richard Jury novels follow a Scotland Yard detective who is just as interested in people as he is in clues. Across the series, Jury works alongside his unlikely best friend, former earl Melrose Plant, and the chronically worried Sergeant Wiggins to solve murders that begin in pubs and spill out into villages, cities, and country houses.

Each book takes its title from a real or imagined British pub, and the settings are part of the pleasure. One story opens in a snowbound churchyard and a remote inn at Christmas, another in a London wine bar, another in a harbor tavern in Baltimore. Grimes uses those rooms to gather together suspects, witnesses, and drifters, then lets bar talk, local gossip, and quiet observation reveal what actually happened.

Jury himself is a thoughtful, melancholy figure, orphaned during the Second World War and still carrying that sense of loss. Melrose, who has given up his titles and lives in the village of Long Piddleton, provides a lighter counterpoint, slipping in and out of roles as a pretend antiques expert, gardener, or vacationing guest whenever Jury needs someone working unofficially. Around them is a steady cast of recurring characters, from hypochondriac Wiggins and blustering Chief Superintendent Racer to a rotating chorus of sharp children and opinionated animals.

The cases range widely. Early novels like The Man With a Load of Mischief and The Old Fox Deceiv'd introduce village secrets and tangled inheritances, while later books such as The Blue Last and The Grave Maurice reach back into wartime bombings, racing stables, and long buried financial schemes. Others, including The Old Wine Shades, The Knowledge, and The Red Queen, play with stranger structures and wider scopes, sending Jury into quantum physics conversations, hidden cab drivers' pubs, and investigations that cross continents.

What stays consistent is the mix of mood and detail. Grimes lets conversations meander, builds whole scenes around a pub game or a child’s offhand remark, and then suddenly drops in a clue that changes how everything fits together. The books are less about forensic twists than about how people live with grief, class, loneliness, or guilt, and how those pressures intersect when a crime is committed.

Readers can jump in almost anywhere, but there is a quiet satisfaction in watching relationships deepen from book to book, especially the long, unresolved threads around Jury’s love life and his running duel with the enigmatic Harry Johnson. However you approach them, the Richard Jury novels offer a blend of classic puzzle, character comedy, and low key sadness that feels distinctively their own.

Edited by

Richard Reis

Software engineer whose passion for tracking book recommendations from podcasts inspired the creation of MRB.

Anurag Ramdasan

Lead investor at 3one4 Capital whose startup expertise and love for books helped shaped MRB and its growth.

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All 26 Richard Jury Books in Order (Complete List 2026)