The Red Queen

A Richard Jury Mystery

By: Martha Grimes

Narrated by: Steve West

A sudden murder in an English village pub sets off the twenty-sixth novel in the bestselling series starring superintendent Richard Jury, from bestselling author Martha Grimes, still “one of the most fascinating mystery writers today” (Houston Chronicle).

One calm night in Twickenham, a businessman named Tom Treadnor is shot off his barstool at The Queen Pub. Superintendent Richard Jury is called in to investigate and quickly realizes that everyone in Treadnor’s life—from his widow, Alice, to the staff at his manor, to his business partner—had differing opinions of him. And to complicate things further, Jury has just happened upon a photo in a newspaper of a man in the United States, who is a dead ringer for Treadnor.

Meanwhile, Wiggins, Jury’s partner at New Scotland Yard, becomes sidetracked by an investigation of his own: His sister, missing for years and presumed dead, has just sent a postcard to their mother. When Wiggins takes off in search of his sister, the two investigations begin to converge.

Funny, eccentric, and fueled by Richard Jury’s talent for seeing clues in the most unlikely places, The Red Queen is a welcome return to a classic character and an exciting addition to a series that has been called “delightful, surprising, even magical” (The Washington Post).

Martha Grimes?

I had to listen to this book twice because I have read every M Grimes book and could not believe the mistakes could be real. Football with a "down" and "dangerous" in England? Football in England is soccer. Did she mean soccer? Did she have an American underwriter? I believe the ending was meant to be ambiguous as Martha Grimes often does in her writing, but an editor added a last chapter to "clear things up" and screwed up the entire book M Grimes had written. The general voice of the writing was Martha Grimes but there was an underwriter (probably American) that didn't get it. That's my theory, and I'm sticking to it.

Not a finished satisfying mystery!

This was not a satisfying mystery in any way! It’s sad! As a long time Martha Grimes fan it’s heartbreaking! How did her editors let this book be published as written!? It’s more of an outline sketch of a story than an actual novel. Just WOW! And not in a good way!

Choppy and disconnected transitions.

I love the characters but the story was as if 3 different books were put together to make one.

The Wiggins storyline in particular was discordant.

Just a wonderful as ever

It felt so good to get back into Jury land. I hope we get more new novels. Listening to this one has made me want to start at the beginning of the series again.

Thoroughly confused.

A very choppy story. I thought I knew where the story was going, and then I was in another story, and then there were pigs being rescued. The ending was just thrown in because it needed one. The narrator was the only good thing about it.