Dust

Richard Jury #21

by Martha Grimes

A young friend pulls Scotland Yard's Richard Jury into the life--and death--of a wealthy bachelor....

The once-charismatic Billy Maples was last seen in a club named Dust, before his murder in a trendy London hotel. Proving as inscrutable--and challenging--to Jury as the case is the beautiful detective inspector....

Before his death, Maples was a patron of London's finest art galleries and caretaker of author Henry James's house in Rye. It's there Jury installs Melrose Plant, a man who takes his job to heart, as Jury closes in on the dark secrets behind Maples's friends and family....

Genres: Mystery, Fiction, Crime, British Literature, Detective, Mystery Thriller, Audiobook

10 pages, Audio CD

First published January 16, 2007

About the author

Martha Grimes is an American author of detective fiction.

She was born May 2 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to D.W., a city solicitor, and to June, who owned the Mountain Lake Hotel in Western Maryland where Martha and her brother spent much of their childhood. Grimes earned her B.A. and M.A. at the University of Maryland. She has taught at the University of Iowa, Frostburg State University, and Montgomery College.

Grimes is best known for her series of novels featuring Richard Jury, an inspector with Scotland Yard, and his friend Melrose Plant, a British aristocrat who has given up his titles. Each of the Jury mysteries is named after a pub. Her page-turning, character-driven tales fall into the mystery subdivision of "cozies." In 1983, Grimes received the Nero Wolfe Award for best mystery of the year for The Anodyne Necklace.

The background to Hotel Paradise is drawn on the experiences she enjoyed spending summers at her mother's hotel in Mountain Lake Park, Maryland. One of the characters, Mr Britain, is drawn on Britten Leo Martin, Sr, who then ran Marti's Store which he owned with his father and brother. Martin's Store is accessible by a short walkway from Mountain Lake, the site of the former Hotel, which was torn down in 1967.

She splits her time between homes in Washington, D.C., and Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Reviews

[Julie · Rating 1 out of 5]

Huh? What has happened to this series? Martha used to be one of my favorite authors. I put this one down less than half-way through about a month ago and finally realized that I'm not going to pick it back up again but I just don't care. And that is the cardinal sin of any mysery novel -- I don't even care who is dead, and why, and how. And what is WRONG with Jury? In the first chapter he's got a girlfiend (when did this happen?) and by the end of the second, he's cheated on her by having crazy, lust-filled, knock-the-furniture-over sex with a complete stranger. Richard Jury! This is so completely out of character for him that I almost thought it was a dream sequence or maybe Jury suffered some sort of brain-damaging stroke from when he was shot two novels previous. Honestly, Martha Grimes should know better than to do a 180 on an established character. (You've got to build these character arcs better, Martha.) That's not even including the tedius literary references. Too bad.

[Pamela · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was so irritated, I may not read another one of Martha Grimes books again. Richard Jury has taken a massive turn in his character which is hard to imagine. What is with that? I liked the boy, the dog, still really liked Plant, could tolerate his aunt, but the changes in Jury were hard to handle. Combine that with the rambling, hard to follow, plot with no real ending and the book mostly flopped for me.

[Maryjmetz · Rating 1 out of 5]

I've sort of sworn off goodreads but this book was just so truly awful that I'm writing about it. Like at least one earlier reviewer, I used to read Martha Grimes and then got out of the habit. I picked up this book a while back and decided it would be a nice light read. God knows it was light but not so much on the nice. Oh, warning, there will be spoilers here.

The writing wasn't great but I don't require that in a mystery. What I do require is at least some vaguely believable plotting and understanding of timelines--both of which were rather lacking here.

Possibly I missed some subtle joke but the forty-year-old woman who claimed to have met Hemingway in her youth was one of the first notes that struck me as off--though that scene may have occurred after the English child and English superintendent discussed "rappelling." (Hint: it's abseiling in the UK.) Admittedly, I'm not an expert about WWII but I'm relatively certain that no members of the SS were smuggling their chlidren out of Germany either in 1939 or 1942. Certainly not among trains bearing Jewish children. And, again, I don't claim to be an expert about police procedures but I sort of think an autopsy would be done on a murder victim, revealing what he had or hadn't eaten shortly before being killed. One somewhat doubts that children of people working at Bletchley Park openly talked about their parents' jobs as codebreakers during WWII. It all more than strained credulity but I stuck with the book because, well, I do. The end has a "Damn, I need to wrap this up" feel to it and I'm still vague on what motive the "murderer(s)" may have had.

But, honestly, what the hell? How does such an utter piece of tripe get published, let alone become a bestseller?

[Bria · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not my favorite Jury. Very different style compared to other books in the series. It has a sense of force modernization, perhaps from the editor?

[Aibohphobia · Rating 1 out of 5]

I used to love Martha Grimes' Richard Jury books. They were fun, entertaining mysteries with interesting characters and engaging plots.

I couldn't finish this one.

It feels like, after 21 books, the author hates these characters. Richard Jury is an aging Lothario who cheats on his girlfriend; Melrose Plant is a two-dimensional caricature of himself; all the minor characters have become self-important and condescending. I couldn't stand spending time with any of them.

The book also doesn't seem to know what year it is. Although it was written in 2007, and contains modern-day conveniences (such as cell phones), a character who was three or four in 1939 is described as being in his mid-fifties (he would be over 70 in 2007), and Jury himself, who has childhood memories of World War Two, is depicted more as middle-aged than pushing retirement.

It's good to know I, too, can travel in time, and go back to the beginning of this series and revisit these characters back when I liked them.

[k · Rating 1 out of 5]

I have read most of Grimes' other novels featuring Richard Jury, and have generally enjoyed the characters and stories. Not this one. I could never figure out the connection to Henry James, except in the most obvious, pedestrian sense. It felt like there were gaping holes in the plot, or maybe I am just not clever enough to get the subtleties? And what was up with Jury & Aguilar? Their hook-ups (and really, what else were they?) were the least romantic, least passionate encounters I have read in years. I only finished the book out of a sense of duty, and even the ending was completely baffling and unsatisifying. Too bad, because I am usually happy to lose myself in Grimes' stories. This one, I just want to lose.

[Paige · Rating 1 out of 5]

Annoying cliff hanger ending.

[Marlene · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is my absolutely favorite so far in the Richard Jury series by Martha Grimes. One review describes it as "a confection of a plot". If you are seriously not into giving mystery series a chance, then you will probably not go for this, and deep literature it is not, but I found it to be a great read and I always marvel at how much research must go into settings. This series has about 20 books, and each has a different background to the murder, all of which require some research. Dust involves children that were shipped out of Germany during the war.

I have come to love the characters in this series, and in this book the characters get into some amusing discussions. I also learned about the author Henry James, as a house that he lived in is central to the plot.

As in all mystery series, one has to read a couple to get familiar and attached to the repeating characters. I suppose it is better to read in order because there are references to past events, but in this series I think I have been reading in random order. Whichever book falls into my hands.

Grimes has written other books, all of which I enjoyed a lot.

[Jane · Rating 1 out of 5]

Jury’s young friend finds body; Jury knows victim’s grandfather; Jury has wild sex w/ detective. Mix in muddle of references to WWII and Henry James. Whatever happened to the Richard Jury I knew & loved? What has happened w/ Grimes’ writing? I finished this without knowing who murdered Billy or why Jury’s detective/lover had been in horrible car crash.

[Louise · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very clever mystery overlain by the life/works of Henry James. As always, I enjoyed the character of Melrose Plant. I didn't really care for the latest twist in Jury's love life or the recurrence of the character of Harry Johnson.

[Jill H. · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have loved the Richard Jury series through all its iterations BUT this one threw me (as did the preceding book #20, The Old Wine Shades which I thought might just be an aberration). Why is this usually very talented mystery writer suddenly going off in an entirely different direction with plots and continuing characters? Jury has turned into a man sexually obsessed and involved with another member of the police and their liaisons take up quite a bit of the book's content. Melrose Plant is a shadow of his former self and comes across as a man who has lost his grasp on reality. And the author brings in a character from book #20 (mentioned above)......if you haven't read that book you will have no idea who he is and what they are talking about.

The author really stretches credulity with the plot which is too involved to summarize here. And again, as she did in book #20, the reader ends up wondering who was the culprit. It is never made clear and the last few pages make no sense, leaving holes in the plot as big as the Isle of Wight! I guess I gave it three stars because there were sections that were fairly interesting or maybe I just did it for old times sake!

[Ben · Rating 1 out of 5]

Don't waste your time with this one. My mom asked me to read it and see if I could make sense of it, and while not having read the preceding 20 books in the series was a bit of a handicap, it certainly did not make the ending any more satisfying. Things are not cleared up in what I would describe as a satisfactory manner (the guilty parties are not entirely clear), and the cliffhanger at the end seems crudely joined to the rest of the book, and a blatant effort to make readers get the next book in the series. Not worth your time (or mine).

[Chazzi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Richard Jury is called in to help solve the murder by a young boy he has befriended in the past on another case. He finds that he also knows the grandfather of the murdered man from working with him on another case. He now has two people expecting him to come up with the murderer. The problem is the lack of clues, or the subtlety of them. He is also paired with a beautiful detective whose presence sparks an animal attraction between the two of them that just adds distraction to the whole case.

Characters from previous cases appear in this tale. Some providing help and others distraction. Jury is a bit of a somber character who sometimes seems to over analyze to the point that he can't see the forest for the trees.

For me, I enjoy Melrose Plant as he tends to add a nice touch of humour and levity. He is useful to Jury in his investigating behind the scenes. He can go where Jury can't as people won't always tell the truth to the police.

I enjoy Martha Grimes' mysteries as they can be read at a leisurely pace and don't reveal everything all at once. Gives you something to ruminate about.

[Murray · Rating 3 out of 5]

I go to Grimes when I need to be among comfortable friends and surroundings. I always expect I'm supposed to cherish time spent with the company of the village idiots who her London based detective, Richard Jury, manages to involve in every case. Actually, I find them tiresome. This particular case spent a lot of time using the biggest boob of the lot to accomplish its end but, pleasingly, balanced that with an interesting connective line to Henry James novels and stories. In the end, I felt like I was expected to accept a red herring the size of a pilot whale. She also had a series of sex scenes between Jury and a colleague that not only left furniture upended, clothing in shreds, neighbors annoyed and things broken but made me wonder if I wasn't the most boring lover outside of fiction. I wonder what was going on in Martha's life at the time of writing this book.

[Dorothy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Back to one of my guilty reading pleasures as a break from some of the more serious reading I've done lately. Martha Grimes' Richard Jury series fits the bill for that. I must say though that this time the reading was more guilt than pleasure. Guilt, as in "Why am I wasting my time reading this?"

This is the 21st entry in this series. We are nearing the end. I believe there are a couple left, although Grimes may write more. In such a long series, one expects hits and misses. I would put this one more on the "miss" side. In the end, I gave it a VERY generous three stars, mostly for old time's sake; in actuality, it probably deserved two-and-a-half at best.

The first problem with the book is its plot. A young man is shot to death on the balcony of his room at a trendy Clerkenwell hotel. The body is discovered by young Benny Keegan who is working at the hotel. Benny and his dog Sparky once saved Richard Jury's life and Jury is a friend so Benny calls him. So, even though it's not technically a Scotland Yard case, Jury comes to the scene and gets involved.

And, boy, does he get involved! We learn before he goes to the scene that he is having an affair with Dr. Phyllis Nancy, the pathologist, but when he arrives at the murder scene, he meets Inspector Lu Aguilar of the Islington police who is in charge. Inspector Aguilar is a looker. Moreover, she is originally from Brazil and is a hot-blooded, passionate, Latin woman, whom Jury takes to his apartment and has raucous, furniture-destroying, neighbor-disturbing sex with, straight from the crime scene. And his bed is not even yet cool from his night with Dr. Nancy! This is not the Richard Jury I've come to know over the past 20 books and I did not like him very much.

Neither did I like the portrait of the Brazilian inspector painted by Grimes. Really, Martha? Stereotype much?

Anyway, back to the murder victim who seemed to have been an inoffensive and quite generous rich guy, patron of the arts, who had no enemies. Who could possibly want him dead?

The convoluted plot which Grimes spins reaches back to World War II and long smoldering hatreds, but it seems to take forever to develop and it is only close to the end that we begin to get a glimmer of an inkling as to what might have precipitated the murder. Even then, it seems most unlikely.

There is a secondary plot line involving the works of Henry James. The murder victim had recently been the resident caretaker of the National Trust's James property in Rye, Sussex, a place called Lamb House where James lived and wrote what are considered his three best books. Jury, as per usual, enlists the aid of his friend, millionaire Melrose Plant, to go to Lamb House and take over the caretaker's post until a new one can be selected, and to keep his eyes and ears open and see what can be learned. In that capacity, Plant finally supplies the key that opens up the solution to the case.

Speaking of Plant naturally brings up the little village of Long Piddleton where he lives and which is where we first encounter him in this story. Long Piddleton and the louche group of Long Piddletonians, Plant's friends, who gather at the Jack and Hammer at 11:00 and 6:00 every day to drink copious amounts of booze and speak ill of all their neighbors. I confess I used to find them amusing but now I am thoroughly bored with them and irritated by them. Do they serve any purpose in life other than getting drunk and making fun of people? It doesn't seem so.

So, what did I like about the book? Well, the children and the animals. Grimes is always at her best when writing about them. Cyril the Cat is still a star and I still like Melrose Plant even though I'm annoyed by his entourage. And Sgt. Wiggins, who has grown on me over the years. I enjoyed the Henry James references that I was able to understand. Unfortunately, I'm not that familiar with his work, having only read a couple of his books, and perhaps if I were better read in the oeuvre, I might have enjoyed this book more.

Nah. Probably not.

[Helen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book has been lingering on my bookshelf for quite awhile. Right before the quarantine I bought up a big stack of used Martha Grimes thinking I would try to read through all of her books. (Earlier in 2019 I’d read the Morse series in order. Although I am not reading Martha Grimes in any order) ANYWAY I saw this book and thought why not? Two things: I didn’t realize it was a later book in the Jury series and I’d read some of the reviews. Not complimentary. But hey! I’m in quarantine and if it’s as bad as everyone seems to think it is I’ll just put it down unfinished as most did.
Let me get the reviews out of the way first. I totally agree with everyone who was horrified, blown backwards etc. by Jury’s weird behavior. I too don’t think it added anything to the story to throw a relationship that had absolutely no beginning (or end?) into this story. Yes. He was a lesser man for Grimes having written it. It would have been more believable if he’d suddenly started a passionate relationship with Carole-anne. And Lu (the romantic interest) had absolutely nothing to endear her to anyone in anyway. She was written as someone who did nothing but have crazy sex and....yep. That’s it. Don’t really know more than that. She wasn’t even that great of a police investigator. Her character was one dimensional. I’m not sure why Grimes thought her character worked.
For me, having read the negative reviews, I went into it prepared. It was annoying and I did sigh and eye roll when Lu was around. But I just skipped the very little of their meaningless (less than meaningless) ‘relationship’.
What I enjoyed was that I’d already read the book prior to this and Jury is still trying to bring to justice the murderer of that story and so that overlaps to a degree with this one. So believable. Although Jury with the help of a young one, his dog and Melrose Plant (and maybe Henry James) solves this murder I’m anticipating more of his pursuit of justice on previous crimes in future books.
(Please please don’t do this with Jury again. Hoping this is a one off. Maybe it was a dream sequence never verbalized. Ugh)

[Hannah and Nicholas · Rating 2 out of 5]

Enjoyable enough to read in the moment-because you feel as though even its most questionable choices are leading somewhere- but after the fact, when the DUST has settled, you have to confront just how stupid most of this book is. The mystery is nonsense. I really want to know how many (if any) readers were able to figure out the solution. "Be someone on whom nothing is lost" my behind. When your book is 400 pages long and goes on so many meandering tangents and has so many repetitious scenes, how is your brain supposed to stay ALERT. I admit there are some clever hints that make the solution seem obvious in retrospect. But even when explained, the solution to the mystery is insane and difficult to believe. Conveniently, the guilty party takes a vow of silence as to their reasoning behind this dumb, dumb murder...... very conveniently. Also, this book contains one of the most mind-blowingly insane coincidences I've ever seen in a murder mystery and it goes COMPLETELY UNACKNOWLEDGED by any character. If you're wondering: the murder victim has two people in his employ: a chef and an assistant. BOTH OF THEM have siblings who were killed by one of the victim's grandparents in COMPLETELY DIFFERENT CIRCUMSTANCES. The thing preventing Mr. Jury from solving the mystery for most of the novel is that he was focusing on the wrong employee whose sibling was killed by the victim's grandparent.... like, for real. It is never acknowledged just how insane this coincidence is, never a moment where Jury goes "hey, isn't it strange that both of Billy's employees have the exact same (extremely-specific) motivation to kill him?".... Like what??????? This is one of the dumbest things I've read in a mystery.
So yeah. One last thing: the fling Jury has with the district attorney lady is dumb and pointless. There are two identical love-making scenes, neither of which have any impact on anything.

[Tawallah · Rating 2 out of 5]

As a newbie joining an established clique, my work was cut out for me. Knowing nothing about this police procedural set in London, there was a steep learning curve. The dialogue was sparse and choppy and wooden at times. Especially in the beginning. Eventually it improved. There are character dynamics that are best understood with reading earlier books, I presume. But one can read between the lines to catch up. But the major problem was the plot seemed to drag especially with all the red herrings. This is a slow paced crime novel that was loaded with references to Henry James and his literary works. Having not read this should not be too much of an issue, Grimes waxes on poetically enough for you to understand some of his obtuse writings. (At least that’s what I gathered from the text). To her credit, I am interested in reading one of his books sooner.


But this book took a decidedly contemporary turn with the actions of DS Jury. It serves no real purpose to the crime and was generally quite random. It is his reaction to what happened that kept me from putting this down. Definitely did not provide a good first impression. But other characters were more interesting and were the highlight of this book.

Overall this book is not a good introduction to this series. But the literary bent was enough to read one more book and deciding on whether read more.

[Shelley · Rating 1 out of 5]

Yeah, couldn't finish this. Skimmed to see if it got better, but it didn't grab me. The plot seems quite interesting, but I CANNOT STAND HER WRITING STYLE OMG. I am cringing. Early lines such as, "Jury smiled. Perhaps it was Aguilar's moment of domesticity that made him smile" (first, patronizing and obnoxious as all hell, second, it's a limited third POV - he doesn't know why he's smiling? Don't be coy, all right?) and "She capped her pen and stowed it in her purse. Smiled." drove me up a wall. Ugh. Not to mention the lead character doing odd things with no motivation or explanation. Hello, whiplash and poor storytelling skills.

And the ending? The hell?

(I am amused by the patron before me who corrected some dialogue grammar: "That's not for it's value," into its. Good on them. *g*)

[May · Rating 1 out of 5]

Jeez Louise! I Am Frustrated. I hate working my way through a book and not get any satisfaction in the ending. I can appreciate the subtle clues and misdirection, only if the threads of the story are unveiled by the end of the book. I think I have figured out who killed Billy and why. Still have no idea what the two paintings stolen by the Nazis has to do with the murder. And what was the DI doing with Billy's grandmother at the end of the book or if it has anything to do with the DI being injured in a hit and run on the last page...
This is killing me.
Also, I now understand that in order to best appreciate the full cast of characters and all their past exploits you need to have read her mysteries in order. Don't think I am motivated to do that.

[Elizabeth Frey-Thomas · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well, at least no children were actively abused, in this one, and a dog didn’t narrate.

Grimes continues to make her main characters less and less charming, with each novel. And her grasp of the timeline is borderline ridiculous... these people are by all lights pushing 70, if not older. They aren’t young, they’re supposed to be retired!

There is the problem of Jury being A-okay with a 13 year old living on the streets and working under the table. There is the problem with Jury having drinks with a psychopath, and using him as a conversational case helper. There is the problem with Jury’s casual sexism towards his female colleagues.

I swear, if this series doesn’t end with it all having been a long, coma-induced dream, it’ll be a real disappointment. Ugh.

[Anne · Rating 1 out of 5]

I almost never stop reading a book without finishing it, but this one finally got to be an exercize in literary torture for me, so I quit after 100+ pages. It almost seemed as though the last 2 Martha Grimes books I've read (Dust and Old Wine Shades) were written by a different Martha Grimes...the plots moved so slowly, getting bogged down in descriptions of rooms and meals and inactivity. Additionally, Richard Jury's love life (or better said, his sex life) has taken focus away from the plot development. Whether she's bored with Richard Jury (perhaps she intended to kill him off at the end of The Blue Last) or is losing her writing edge, I won't continue with this series.

[Nancy · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this mystery Martha Grimes usess the novels of Henry James to develope her plot and provide psychological insight into a contemporary crime. It is a compelling story and a wonderful read filled with memorable characters. The segments set in Henry James home in Rye are wonderful and just might inspire me to tackle another James novel. (there is no doubt that Martha Grimes has a much deeper appreciation of his writing than I do)

[Deanna]

DNF

This has never been a series I followed closely, but this one seems so different from others I’ve read, particularly in the Jury character. After a while the mystery didn’t hold my interest and Jury’s strangely garbled and insecure personal life was just a distraction.

[Julie Stafford · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is my first Richard Jury novel, and it's #21, so there were some places where I had to guess at the relationships between people. But the story line was good, and I really enjoyed some of the bantering, making me laugh out loud, and making me interested in reading the earlier novels so I can learn more about some of the characters.

That being said: My boss's boss's boss loaned this book to me saying she was having trouble getting through it, and I think it's because it was her first Richard Jury novel as well. Plus, it's very dry and Jamesian (as Henry James is sort of part of the mystery). However, my biggest issue with the book is not the vague ending where I just hope I've put everything together because Grimes only hints at the complete picture, but that this book was published in 2007 and though takes place in "the present" is all about things that happened in World War II, which means that the main character (who says his father died in the war) has to be in his early to mid-sixties and yet he's stripping off his clothes and getting into bed with two different women in this book, with at least three more queuing up (like how I added a little British flair to this sentence). Now, I'm not saying there aren't some handsome 60-year-old men, and I'm not saying that they can't work for the Yard, but I just found it hard to imagine that someone old enough to be a grandfather was getting that much action without ever spraining anything, or feeling stiff, or minding not getting any sleep or having any aches or pains at all, or even commenting about how his body didn't work as well as it used to. (This may just be a rant because my own body which is a least twenty years younger than his is starting to tell me "please don't do that" more often than I'd like.) My advise to Mrs. Grimes would be to maybe retire Superintendent Jury and give someone younger a try, before Jury's sexual exploits causes him to break more than his coffee table and lamp. (Imagine what Wiggins and Plant would say about that.)

Of course, it looks like Grimes has written three more Richard Jury novels since "Dust," and I'm betting that the immortal Jury (now in his seventies) still behaves like he's in his 30s and has no aches or pains at all.

[Kay · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a 5-star novel for fans of Henry James, but it certainly left many mystery fans cold. The ambiguous ending breaks all the rules of the genre. After all, much of the allure of the traditional mystery is solving an ingenious puzzle and seeing order restored to the universe. None of that happens here. For devotees of Henry James, however, the visits to Lamb House in Rye, where James wrote three of his best novels, and the frequent references to specific short stories by James, make for an intriguing and enjoyable work.
A second thread running through the book is the fate of children evacuated from Germany to England on the Kindertrain and from Britain to Canada on a ship, the City of Benares. And then there's Bletchley Park and the Enigma codebreakers. And an old nemesis, Harry Johnson. (Some readers complained that there's way too much going on, and they've got a point.)
No, I'm still not sure whodunit, but I can't wait to discuss my theories with my favorite book blogger, Roberta Rood.

[Robert · Rating 1 out of 5]

The writing is delicious. I think I might have enjoyed this if I had read the previous n books -- a lot of space is devoted to just visiting with people who don't come into the plot. But even then, I think I'd be disappointed by the outright mistakes in the story (what gun that you found in the drawer???), and the fact that we don't know who dunnit at the end -- I guess there will be a sequel, but she doesn't even set it up well -- I didn't find the ending satsifying.

[Lynn Weber · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another good Richard Jury mystery. They need to start filming this series with Hugh Grant in the lead.

[Jean Baxendale · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s been a while since I’ve read a Martha Grimes mystery…it feels so good to be reconnected to the recurring characters… a cozy mystery!!! It’s time for a spot of tea!!!