The Blue Last

By: Martha Grimes

Narrated by: Steve West

Length: 14 hrs and 4 mins

Publisher's Summary

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.

©2001 Martha Grimes (P)2016 Audible, Inc.

Good story

Although the end was pretty much revealed from the beginning, I like this story very much. Grimes has a sense of melancholy that I find so enchanting.

I often find myself reading an Editor's summary and thinking, okay this could be good, but what the summary usually fails to inform the reader of is tone.

Grimes has a light hand with humor, a little heavy with symbolism, and just right with melancholy.

2 of 2 people found this review helpful

Great Richard Jury Mystery.

I am a Martha Crimes fan, especially the Richard Jury mysteries . Did not disappoint.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

The narration makes it come alive

I’ve enjoyed all the Jury mysteries immensely, and this has to be one of the best. But it’s Mr.West’s narration that makes it marvelous. It’s captivating how he can do so many different voices and keep them all straight, and put just the right feeling into them. The emotional impact of the climactic ending is so believable!

Awful lot of bad language.

I really wish authors and seemingly educated people could use adjectives that are not vulgar. Why blame God,? And why use the F word? It seems that the language is getting progressively worse in each of this author"s books. It's a shame, as she is talented and those vulgarisms are unnecessary and certainly not wanted.

Very twisty!

law-enforcement, murder, investigation, family-dynamics-----
The only trouble with reading this series out of order is that you wind up hunting for the one where a particular character is introduced, and for me that person is Benny Keagan. Benny is the best kind of street kid, one who is a truly good and resourceful person who knows how to help others. The publisher's blurb covers a lot, and no spoilers here other than to warn you to keep the tissues handy for both sad parts and silly stuff. Worth reading.
Steve West continues to be excellent as narrator.

I hated this book

Improbable plot, unlikely behaviour of all the characters, from Jury to the children, an author speaking with an uncertain voiceand a narrator indifferent at best .... it really has nothing going for it at all. Give this a miss.

1 of 2 people found this review helpful