The Horse You Came in On

by Martha Grimes Narrated by Steve West

Overview

The murder is in America, but the call goes out to Scotland Yard superintendent Richard Jury. Accompanied by his aristocratic friend Melrose Plant and by Sargeant Wiggins, Jury arrives in Baltimore, Maryland, home of zealous Orioles fans, mouth-watering crabs, and Edgar Allen Poe. In his efforts to solve the case, Jury rubs elbows with a delicious and suspicious cast of characters, embarking on a trail that leads to a unique tavern called "The Horse You Came In On"...

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

In her latest Richard Jury novel (after The Old Contemptibles ), Grimes sends her Scotland Yard superintendent to the States to investigate a murder but assigns most of the sleuthing to his pal Melrose Plant. Jury and Inspector Wiggins take a busman's holiday in Baltimore to look into the murder of a young American, the nephew of a friend of Jury's acquaintance Lady Cray, at a cabin in Pennsylvania. Plant has come along to visit his friend Ellen Taylor, a novelist whose student at Johns Hopkins was recently murdered near the grave of Edgar Allan Poe. The intricate plot also involves the murder of a homeless man in a Baltimore alley and unfolds in oblique, unexpected turns, hinging on the partial manuscript, found by the dead student, of what might be a lost Poe short story and on the ambitions of descendants of an old Baltimore family. Jury and Wiggins talk to local police and shopkeepers; Plant tours Baltimore with Hughie the cabbie, picking up clues; and Ellen writes (while chained to her chair) the sequel to her first novel while agonizing over its near plagiarism by another writer. Notable for its themes of authorship and authenticity and for the cast of delightfully eccentric characters--who gather each day at a blue-collar bar called The Horse You Came In On--this mystery, with its feathery plot and fey, lighthearted tone, moves in quite a different direction than earlier Jury tales. Not bad, just different. 100,000 first printing; Mystery Book Club main selection; Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club alternates. (July)

Michiko Kakutani

Grimes nimbly orchestrates the suspense, giving the reader a sense of impending disaster.
— The New York Times

Mary Cantwell

She is working in the great tradition...good news for addicts -- crime with style.
— Vogue

Kirkus Reviews

Is any mystery writer more generous than Grimes in spinning out subplots and a supporting cast? In bringing Scotland Yard's superintendent Richard Jury to America to investigate the murder of young Philip Calvert, who worked in Philadelphia's Barnes Foundation, she provides not only two other murders (Baltimore street person John- Joy and ambitious Johns Hopkins Ph.D. candidate Beverly Brown) that might be connected—and just how they're connected is the best surprise here—but also a newly discovered story that Brown insisted was by Edgar Allan Poe (yes, we get to read the whole thing); a minimalist novelist, Brown's teacher, who chains herself to her writing desk; Jury sidekick Melrose Plant's swooping excursion into early Baltimore genealogy (courtesy of a riotously misinformed cabbie); and much, much more. As in Jury's recent cases (The Old Contemptibles, 1990, etc.), the high-spirited feast of episodes, settings, and allusions—from Chatterton to Barry Levinson to a secondhand store called Nouveau Pauvre—is too sumptuous for Jury or his fans to digest fully. But if some readers will complain that Grimes has left a million loose ends, nobody will rise from this table still hungry. (First printing of 100,000)

Product Details

BN ID:	2940171004385
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster
Publication date:	02/25/2014
Series:	Richard Jury Mysteries , #12
Edition description:	Unabridged

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