Items related to The Blue Last
In The Blue Last, Richard Jury finally faces the last thing in the world he wants to deal with - the war that killed his mother, his father, his childhood. Mickey Haggerty, a DCI with the London City police, has asked for Jury's help. Two skeletons have been unearthed in the City during the excavation of London's last bombsite, where once a pub stood called the The Blue Last. Mickey believes that a child who survived the bombing has been posing for over 50 years as a child who didn't. The grandchild of brewery magnet Oliver Tyndale supposedly survived that December 1940 bombing...but did she? Mickey also has a murder to solve. Simon Croft, prosperous City financial broker and son of the one-time owner of The Blue Last, is found shot to death in his Thames-side house. But the book he was writing about London during the German blitzkrieg has disappeared.
Jury wants to get eyes and ears into Tynedale Lodge, and looks to his friend, Melrose Plant, to play the role. Reluctantly, Plant plays it, accompanied on his rounds of the Lodge gardens by nine-year-old Gemma Trim, orphan and ward of Oliver Tynedale; and Benny Keagan, a resourceful 12-year-old orphaned delivery boy.
And Richard Jury may not make it out alive.
A stolen book, stolen lives, or is any of this what it seems? Identity, memory, provenance - these are all called into question in The Blue Last.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
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.
About the Author:
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
Martha Grimes is the bestselling author of twenty Richard Jury mysteries and also the acclaimed fiction Belle Ruin, Cold Flat Junction, Hotel Paradise, Foul Matter, The End of the Pier, and The Train Now Departing.
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherOnyx
- Publication date2001
- ISBN 10 0747272727
- ISBN 13 9780747272724
- BindingPaperback
- Number of pages288
- Rating
Other Popular Editions of the Same Title
Top Search Results from the AbeBooks Marketplace
Stock Image
The Blue Last
Seller:
Rating
Book Description Paperback. Condition: Fair. A readable copy of the book which may include some defects such as highlighting and notes. Cover and pages may be creased and show discolouration. Seller Inventory # GOR003003046
Buy Used
US$ 1.00
Convert currency
Stock Image
The Blue Last
Seller:
Rating
Book Description Befriedigend/Good: Durchschnittlich erhaltenes Buch bzw. Schutzumschlag mit Gebrauchsspuren, aber vollständigen Seiten. / Describes the average WORN book or dust jacket that has all the pages present. Seller Inventory # M00747272727-G
Buy Used
US$ 6.49
Convert currency
Stock Image
The Blue Last
Seller:
Rating
Book Description Condition: Good. Good condition. This is the average used book, that has all pages or leaves present, but may include writing. Book may be ex-library with stamps and stickers. 1.06. Seller Inventory # 353-0747272727-gdd
Buy Used
US$ 39.68
Convert currency
Seller Image
The Blue Last
Seller:
Rating
Book Description Condition: Gut. 288 S. in gutem Zustand 27163 ISBN 9780747272724 Sprache: Englisch Gewicht in Gramm: 418 Taschenbuch, Maße: 15.4 cm x 23.1 cm x 2.4 cm. Seller Inventory # 7013097
Buy Used
US$ 7.24
Convert currency