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Booklist Online Exclusive: May 27, 2025
The Red Queen.
By Martha Grimes
July 2025. 256p. Atlantic Monthly, $28 (9780802164940); e-book (9780802164957)
Superintendent Richard Jury of New Scotland Yard, the star of 35 previous novels by Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Award–winner Grimes (The Old Success, 2019), returns in another cerebral police procedural. Here, crime-scene investigation takes a back seat to Jury’s searing intelligence and gift for interviewing everyone connected to a crime, finding holes in their defenses or time lines. For example, a suspect’s alibi is deflated by figuring out the exact time it would take for a soufflé to fall after rising.
It’s a Grimes tradition to name her Jury mysteries after an actual London pub. Here, the pub is the Queen, which becomes the Red Queen after someone paints “RED” on the pub sign. The vandalism occurred near the time of the murder of a patron at the bar: someone shot wealthy businessman Tom Treadnor in the back with a rifle; the mystery centers around the fact that no one in the pub saw or heard anything. Suspects and motives abound. For readers who prefer old-fashioned mysteries and Richard Jury’s eccentric investigations.
— Connie Fletcher