Martha Grimes: The End of the Pier (UK 1993)

From the Publisher:
Most summer evenings, when she's finished working at the Rainbow Cafe, Maud Chadwick sits at the end of the pier, watching the party across the water. Her thoughts usually turn to her son, Chad, as she tries to reconcile her pain at his absence with the knowledge that children must leave their parents if they are to grow.

Sometimes Maud is joined by sheriff Sam DeGheyn, who finds in her quiet company a refuge from the problems of his own marriage -- and from his increasing professional concerns. For the town's sleepy atmosphere is deceptive: three local women have been murdered and Sam suspects the wrong man has been convicted -- and that the real killer is readying himself to strike again...

Martha Grimes: The End of the Pier. Headline, ISBN: 0747242372 (September, 1993), 229 p., £4.50.

Martha Grimes: The End of the Pier (USA 1993)

From the Publisher:
In a sleepy resort town, Maud Chadwick waits tables at the Rainbow Cafe. Her confidant is Sheriff Sam DeGheyn and what they have in common is obsession. Maude doesn't want her son to leave home, and Sam cannot let go of the unsolved murders of three local women - or his intuition that the killer is still out there. How these lives intertwine reveals a rich and startling story of parents and children and the pain they cause one another.

Martha Grimes: The End of the Pier. Ballantine; ISBN: 0345376579 (June, 1993), 244 p., $5.99.

Martha Grimes: The End of the Pier (USA 1992)

From the Publisher:
A stunning new novel from Martha Grimes, Her first since her best-selling The Old Contempribles, it abounds in all the dazzling inventiveness of plot and character that we have come to expect from its author. Yet The End ofthe Pier marks, as well, a bold and exciting departure from her previous successes.

The setting: a small, sleepy American town where secrets are almost impossible to keep. The center of town life: the Rainbow Café, where Maud Chadwick works as a waitress, hiding behind a quiet manner the intensity and confusion of emotions she feels as her twenty-year-old son takes his final steps out of her life and into his own. Maud's only 'confidant: Sam DeGheyn, the town sheriff, who, trapped in a loveless, childless marriage, turns his attentions to Maud, and to the murders of three local women, which have occurred in the past five years. Sam's suspicion: that the wrong man may have been convicted of the crimes and the right man may soon kill again.

Briliantly delineating the inner lives of her characters, Martha Grimes tells a rich, startling story about parents and children and about what can happen when the balance of pleasure and pain in their relationships is irrevocably tipped. Sophisticated, moving, utterly satisying -- it is her most accomplished novel yet.

Martha Grimes: The End of the Pier. A Novel. Alfred A. Knopf, ISBN: 0679411267 (April, 1992), 229 p., $20.00.