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The Stargazey (Richard Jury Mysteries)
by Martha Grimes
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Onyx (1999-10-02)
ISBN: 0451408977
EAN: 9780451408976
Dewey Decimal #: 813.54
Mass Market Paperback: 432 pages
SKU: 1361
Condition: As New
Comments: Binding: Softcover. Condition: As New.
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Editorial Reviews
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Product Description
In Martha Grimes' newest, most intriguing novel yet, Richard Jury follows a beautiful blonde to the gates of Fulham Palace--only to hear of her death three days later. Soon Jury realizes that he may have finally met his match in this mystery woman--dead or alive...
* A major bestseller: New York Times, USA Today, Los Angeles Times
"Wondrously eccentric." --New York Times Book Review
"Delightfully entertaining. Grimes' popular Richard Jury returns in top form...a must-have from one of today's most gifted and intelligent writers." --Booklist (starred review)
"The literary equivalent of a box of Godiva truffles...Wonderful." --Los Angeles Times
"Martha Grimes's wintry new mystery envelops the reader in all the comforts of an English whodunit...The Stargazey is wellworth setting your sights on." --USA Today
"The author weaves a psychologically complex plot [and] delicious wit." --Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel
"Wonderfully daffy and endearing." --Publishers Weekly
"One of the established masters of the genre."--Newsweek
"Read any one [of her novels] and you'll want to read them all."--Chicago Tribune
"Grimes is not the next Dorothy Sayers, not the next Agatha Christie. She is better than both."--Atlanta Journal & Constitution
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Amazon.com Review
It all starts with two unlikely passengers on the same number 14 Fulham Road bus--Scotland Yard superintendent Richard Jury and a glamorous blonde woman in a sable coat. He can't keep his eyes off her, and when she disembarks, Jury follows her to the gates of Fulham Palace. He loses her in the fog, however, and when she's found shot to death in the herb garden of the palace, the game's afoot--especially since the victim may only look like Jury's blonde, but not be her at all. Two glamorous women in priceless fur coats in an obscure little museum in the London suburbs on the same foggy autumn night? Well, maybe. Or maybe not. The plot ultimately involves chicanery in the art world, a family of Russian émigrés, a missing Chagall, an international female assassin, a couple of unsettlingly strange young girls, and a hilarious send up of a stuffy English men's club. The tale serves a hearty helping of Grimes's usual interesting, not to say eccentric, characters. Among the most consistently fascinating of these is Jury's aristocratic friend Melrose Plant, a direct descendant of Lord Peter Wimsey and other wealthy, titled, amateur English detectives. Fans of Grimes's previous Superintendent Jury capers--each of which takes its name from an English pub--will enjoy the jokes, and new readers will appreciate the author's dry wit, her sharp eye for British oddities, and the way she turns an ordinary police procedural into a cozy little study of the national character. The Jury series began with The Man with a Load of Mischief (1981) and has included The Deer Leap (1985), The Horse You Came In On (1993), The Case Has Altered (1997), and several other tales. --Jane Adams
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Customer Reviews
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Answers in St. Petersburg
Rating  (3)
Date: 2006-06-24
It is wonderful to start a Richard Jury novel knowing that in the firm hands of Martha Grimes the reader is to embark upon a satisfying adventure. Cybil Odeon is a pretend person. We find her in St. Petersburg. Stars are fueled by the merging of atoms. When killing she felt a rush.
Richard Jury had been running errands in South Kensington when, riding a double decker, he saw people exiting a pub called the Stargazey. He watched a blond woman in a fur coat. She rode the bus and got off in heavy traffic. Walking was quicker it seemed. The following day he went to the Tate to the Pre-Raphaelites. Several days hence he read in a newspaper the woman he had seen had been shot. The DI in charge of the investigation, Ronald Chilten, loved mystery. Seeing the dead woman at the morgue, Richard Jury realized it was not the woman he had seen Saturday evening.
Melrose Plant and Marshall Trueblood were hated by Theo Wren Browne, the owner of a book shop in Long Piddleton. Plant and Trueblood had money, titles, looks. Diana Demorney wrote a ridiculous astrology column for the local paper. The three went to London in Marshall's van. Melrose stayed there at his club, Borings. It was his father's club and he hadn't been there for twenty years. Jury and Plant had dinner at Borings. Jury wanted Melrose to go to an art gallery owned by the Fabricant brothers. There was a tie-in he felt with the death of the woman in the fur coat on the grounds of Fulham Palace.
Having a half pint at the Stargazey, Jury saw the image of his blond woman in the pub mirror. When spoken to, she denied having been on that bus the previous week. At the Fulham police station he learned the dead woman had been identified.
Moving on, Melrose met the painter featured at the gallery of the Fabricant brothers, Ralph Rees. He also met the mother of Sebastain and Nicholas when he was invited to their place. He wanted to talk about sable coats and could only think to talk about GORKY PARK. Later he ran into a former Times reviewer at Borings and the men determined there was something fishy about the work of Ralph Rees.
Later Pitt, the former times reviewer, was murdered surreptiously at the club and it turned out that Richard Jury had a femme fatale on his hands, Kate McBride, the woman he followed from the double decker bus. The story is complicated and exciting.
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Enjoyable, but ...
Rating (3)
Date: 2006-02-28
This book is obviously written with American readers in mind; how else to explain some of the inconsistencies about British mores and customs, some of which would make native Brits cringe? To list just a few: Shaftsbury Avenue is spelled Shaftesbury Avenue; when Melrose and Jury make a bet on dessert, one of them thinks it might be a pudding -- dessert is always pudding, because that's what the English call it, and sometimes it really is what Americans consider a pudding. Someone else has pointed out protocols in British clubs; I agree.
By the way: In a previous book, she has Jury pondering to himself who it was who said about LOS ANGELES that there's "no there thee." Does she really not know that Gertrude Stein said this about Oakland and not Los Angeles? If she does, she should point that out.
Still, I enjoy these books enormously precisely because the cast of characters stays the same, their method of operations is predictable and they are amusing. Who cares whodunnit anyway?
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Colorful Characters, Intriguing Plot Twists
Rating  (4)
Date: 2004-03-05
1 out of 1 customers found this reveiw helpful
Detective Inspector Richard Jury is off duty and riding one of London's double decker buses, eavesdropping on two American women behind him, when a beautiful blonde wearing a sable coat boards the bus, then leaves, then re-boards and gets off at Fulham Palace Road. He is so fascinated with her that he gets off too and follows her to the gates of Fulham Palace. Then he leaves when she goes inside.The next morning, a woman in a sable coat with no identification is found dead in the palace's herb garden. Jury volunteers the information about the woman on the bus, but when he looks at the body in the morgue and declares it's not the same person, no one at New Scotland Yard believes him. He sets out on his own to investigate the sable coat, which leads him to an astrologer, artists, art dealers, an art critic, actors, children, travelers, a barmaid, a family of thieves, and aging members of aristocratic friend Melrose Plant's London club in his quest for answers. I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Ms. Grimes' prose is outstanding, her colorful characters and plot twists are intriguing and the pub that gives this book its odd title made me want to stop by for a pint or two.
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my favourite jury novel
Rating  (5)
Date: 2004-02-18
1 out of 2 customers found this reveiw helpful
If you're a fan of previous Jury novels, you are going to love the Stargazey! the Creme de la Creme of the series show up and add the eccentric delight we all crave of Grimes: Vivian, Diane Demorney, Marshall Trueblood, Agatha... they're all back and in fine Long Piddletonian form.
The plot itself is intriguing enough from page 1. Dashing Richard Jury spots a lovely woman on a bus. This wouldn't usually get the ball rolling for a set of murders, but this is Grimes and ANYTHING can happen!
Another fascinating facet of this tale is the insight into London's Art scene and a particularly repulsive set of paintings by Ralph Rees called "Siberian Snow" ( Melrose Plant's initiation to these works is indeed laugh-out-loud !)
With murders to solve and Lord Ardry in tow, Jury finds himself in a pseudo-romantic/homicidal/engimatic world that never appears to be as it seems. And there are, of course,many a worthy Jury/Plant rendezvous, this time at Borings: Melrose's Gentlemen's club. As soon as the Earl of Caverness can brush the dust off of his old entitled card he is an asset to the mystery and to Jury, schmoozing it up with elderly actresses and ten year old girls, buying ice cream and treating Bea Slocum to "Steak and Chips"; all the while being as charming and magnetic as a crossword-solving earl is allowed to be !Loved this one !
Want to read again!
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Can't tell the players without a program
Rating (3)
Date: 2004-01-04
3 out of 4 customers found this reveiw helpful
This is another novel in the Richard Jury series. The title is the name of a pub that plays a small role in the story. The novel starts out well, but then the author makes a side trip to Long Piddleton and introduces material that is unconnected to the main plot. A couple of the characters from Long Piddleton eventually have roles in the main plot. The author has a fixation on piddling, and the characters include Flash, who exposes himself in public loos, and a child who piddles here, there, and everywhere, none of which is relevant to the main plot, although the people are related to one of the characters. Various odd characters wander in and out of the story, some related to the plot, and some just extra baggage along for the ride.The main plot is interesting as New Scotland Yard tries to get to the truth of the matter. This is not an easy task as there is a tendency to not believe people telling the truth, and to believe people who are not. There is collateral damage, and a few bodies are left lying about. There is grand larceny and murder, and connections to crimes in other countries. If you expect the villain (a cold blooded psychopath) to be brought to justice, you will be disappointed. Who is real and who is not? People can fade into the night or, in the words of Shakespeare, "...are melted into air, into thin air..."
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