Vertigo 42 (Richard Jury, #23) by Martha Grimes

My Review

This is the 23rd installment in the Richard Jury series by Martha Grimes.

I love the ambiance in Grimes’ novels. The locations she has the characters visit and the way she describes what they are doing are always spot-on for me. The novels have a lovely vibe with dark undertones that I think work well with the characters and the stories.

The mystery began back when a child died in an empty concrete pool during a game the kids were playing. It was ruled as an accident. Now, many years later, after the kids have grown up, the police are working to piece together what happened to that child and how it fits with subsequent deaths, and whether the events are related. It was an engaging, twisty mystery with quite a few interesting characters.

I’m a big fan of MMC Richard Jury of Scotland Yard, Melrose Plant (a former British aristocrat whom I find delightful and intriguing), and Wiggins (another Scotland Yard detective). I adore them all, but Wiggins is usually the one who makes me laugh when I least expect it. The three of them play a prominent role in this mystery. We do see some of Brian Macalvie, which is always good. I love a good cranky, curmudgeon.

I love this series, and I am glad I still have some to go back and read. I skipped ahead to this one because I specifically wanted to listen to one on audio.

Steve West does a wonderful job narrating this series and was very glad to see he was still part of this series.

Trigger warning: dog fighting

Goodreads Blurb

In her latest Richard Jury mystery, Martha Grimes delivers the newest addition to the bestselling series The Washington Post calls “literate, lyrical, funny, funky, discursive, bizarre.” The inimitable Scotland Yard Superintendent returns, now with a tip of the derby to Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo.

Richard Jury is meeting Tom Williamson at Vertigo 42, a bar on the forty-second floor of an office building in London’s financial district. Despite inconclusive evidence, Tom is convinced his wife, Tess, was murdered seventeen years ago. The inspector in charge of the case was sure Tess’s death was accidental—a direct result of vertigo—but the official police inquiry is still an open verdict, and Jury agrees to re-examine the case.

Jury learns that a nine-year-old girl fell to her death five years before Tess at the same country house in Devon where Tess died. The girl had been a guest at a party Tess was giving for six children. Jury seeks out the five surviving party guests, who are now adults, hoping they can shed light on this bizarre coincidence.

Meanwhile, an elegantly dressed woman falls to her death from the tower of a cottage near the pub where Jury and his cronies are dining one night. Then the dead woman’s estranged husband is killed as well. Four deaths—two in the past, two that occur on the pages of this intricate, compelling novel—keep Richard Jury and his sidekick Sergeant Wiggins running from their homes in Islington to the countryside in Devon and to London as they try to figure out if the deaths were accidental or not. And, if they are connected.

Witty, well-written, with literary references from Thomas Hardy to Yeats, Vertigo 42 is a pitch perfect, page-turning novel from a mystery writer at the top of her game.