Martha Grimes: The Old Contemptibles (USA 2013)

From the Publisher:
Following a passionate and troubled love affair with a pretty widow named Jane Holdsworth, Jury finds himself, unaccountably, a suspect in a murder investigation. Detained in London, Jury sends his friend Melrose Plant, former Earl of Caverness, to the Holdsworth family's Lake District home to pose as an eccentric librarian. Plant discovers that his catalogue cards contain less data on Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey than they do on tantalizing questions about the Holdsworths: What happened to Crabbe Holdsworth's first wife? What happened to his son, Graham? What happened to the cook, Annie?

And what might happen to the two children, favorites of rich old Adam Holdworth, who prefers the ambience of a swank retirement home, Castle Howe, where he and the elegant Lady Cray can drive the staff crazy? Jury and Sergeant Wiggins finally join Melrose at the Old Contemptibles pub, where they arrive at a solution that Jury detests, for no matter what he does, innocence will suffer.

Martha Grimes: The Old Contemptibles. A Richard Jury Mystery. Simon & Schuster, ISBN: 9781476732916 (June, 2013), eBook, 9.31 MB (ca. 320 p.), $11.99.

Martha Grimes: The Old Contemptibles (USA 2006)

From the Publisher:
A passionate affair comes to a crashing halt when Richard Jury's lover is found dead. And since Jury is himself a suspect, he must send Melrose Plant to her family's Lake District home, where secrets that rise to the surface threaten to pull the contentious clan under.

Grimes' British-based whodunits are all have been authentic successes with American readers. Scotland Yard Superintendent Richard Jury is drawn into a passionate affair--and becomes a suspect in a murder investigation.

Martha Grimes: The Old Contemptibles. Onyx Books, ISBN: 0451412133 (April, 2006), 359 p., $7.99.

Martha Grimes: The Old Contemptibles (USA 1992)

From the Publisher:
"The author keeps us enthralled with the rich interior and exterior lives of her characters in this emotionally stormy family saga." The New York Times Book Review

It is a rainy day in Londons Camden Passage when Scotland Yard superintendent Richard Jury meets a pretty and strangely troubled widow named Jane Holdsworth. He's drawn into a passionate affair with her -- andbe comes a suspect in a murder investigation.

Unable to leave London, Jury sends Melrose Plant, eighth Earl of Caverness, to the Lake District to pry open the Holdsworth family's locked box of secrets. Posing as an eccentric librarian -- hardly too out of character -- Plant goes from scruffy pub to child's tree house, accumulating a sheaf of shocking surprises about the death-prone Holdsworth clan and its growing number of orphans.

But the solution to the shattering affair doesn't emerge until Jury and Sergeant Wiggins join Plant at the Old Contemptibles pub for a stiff draught of cold reality...

Martha Grimes: The Old Contemptibles. Ballantine, ISBN: 0345374568 (March, 1992), 293 p., $5.99.

Martha Grimes: The Old Contemptibles (UK 1991)

From the Publisher:
Was it suicide or was it murder?

Arrows point in all directions. And in the case of the death of Jane Holdsworth, one is aimed right at Richard Jury, among the last people known to have seen her alive. Having been romantically involved with the victim, Jury finds himself one of the suspects, and temporarily suspended from the Force. So it falls to Melrose Plant to travel to the Lake District, home of the other members of the Holdsworth family, to do some surreptitious sleuthing.

His enquiries are more hindered than helped by the residents of Castle Howe, the posh 'retirement home' where the rich - including Adam Holdsworth - are left to get on with the business of death and bequests. More useful are eleven-year-old Millie Thale, master chef; Alex Holdsworth, Jane's teenage son; the regulars at the Old Contemptibles pub and the Lake poets themselves. With their aid, Melrose comes closer and closer to a solution he detests, only to be confounded by another death. Was it suicide or was it murder?

Martha Grimes: The Old Contemptibles. Headline, ISBN: 0747236984 (September, 1991), 408 p., £4.99.

Martha Grimes: The Old Contemptibles (USA 1991)

From the Publisher:
"Grimes remains a master at delivering the ignificant detail... a first-rate series." -- Booklist
While the former Earl of Caverness, Melrose Plant, and his antiques-dealer friend Marshall Trueblood are in Venice hatching plots to get Vivian Rivington away from sunny Italy, it's a very rainy day in London's Camden Passage. Here, Scotland Yard Superintendent Richard Jury meets a pretty widow named Jane Holdsworth and is drawn into a love affair both passionate and troubled, for the lady appears to be concealing something -- something about her past, something about her dead husband's family, something that ultimately puts Jury in harm's way. He finds himself, unaccountably, a suspect in a murder investigation.

Unable to leave London, but knowing that the Holdsworths are searching for someone to overhaul the library of Tarn House, Jury sends Plant to the Lake District to pose as an eccentric librarian. In the "agoraphobic's paradise" of lakes and mountains, Melrose Plant loves his job: whether he's sitting in the scruffy Old Contemptibles pub; or being spied on by the little girl Millie; or conferring in a tree house with sixteen-year-old Alex. His catalogue cards contain less data on Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey than they do on tantalizing questions about the Holdsworths: What happened to Crabbe Holdsworth's first wife? What happened to his son, Graham? What happened to the cook, Annie?

...And what might happen to the two children, favorites of rich old Adam Holdsworth, who prefers the ambience of a swank retirement home, Castle Howe; where he and the elegant Lady Cray can drive the staff crazy? Jury and Sergeant Wiggins finally join Melrose Plant at the Old Contemptibles, where they arrive at a solution that Jury detests, for no matter what he does, innocence will suffer.

As in her previous New York Times best-selling novels, The Five Bells and Bladebone and The Old Silent, Martha Grimes moves beyond the "cozy" British mystery to write a story whose strange and shattering end takes on the who prefers the elements of myth.

Martha Grimes: The Old Contemptibles. Little, Brown & Co., ISBN: 0316328944 (January, 1991), 333 p., $19.95.