The Red Queen
by Martha Grimes
Atlantic Monthly. (Richard Jury, Bk. 26). Jul. 2025. 256p. ISBN 9780802164940. $28.
Grimes’s sleuth Richard Jury returns in his 26th banter-filled, fast-paced mystery (a follow-up to 2019’s The Old Success).
Businessman Tom Treadnor is shot and killed in the town of Twickenham, but the local police hand the case off to the London office and Superintendent Richard Jury. Jury must solve multiple mysteries: how the crime happened; if Treadnor was the intended victim; and, if Treadnor was indeed the target, who among all the people who disliked him is the culprit. Treadnor was sitting at the bar in a crowded pub when he was struck down by a single gunshot that came through the window and hit only him. This feat of sharpshooting allows Jury to limit his suspect pool, but the case becomes more complicated when he realizes that Treadnor had a doppelga¨nger in London who has gone missing. As Jury investigates, he calls on familiar series characters Wiggins and Melrose Plant, who act as assistants and verbal sparring partners.
VERDICT Fans of Grimes’s series will be thrilled to see that the superintendent is back.
Reviewed by Jane Jorgenson, May 30, 2025