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. 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
發表於2024-09-06
The Blue Last: A Richard Jury Mystery 2024 pdf epub mobi 電子書 下載
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The Blue Last: A Richard Jury Mystery 2024 pdf epub mobi 電子書 下載