Profiles of Martha Grimes' Writings
from St. James Guide to Crime & Mystery Writers
In much of her fiction, Martha Grimes's trademark is her fanciful titles,
taken from the English country inns and pubs which are the setting for
much of the action, and frequently the venue for the murders in her
stories. Many other pubs besides the titular ones are used as settings
also--they are convenient gathering places for groups of people--but the
pubs that Grimes most enjoys are apparently those with names like The
Man with a Load of Mischief, I Am the Only Running Footman, and The Five
Bells and Bladebone. They are part and parcel of the very English
ambience that characterizes her work, all the more remarkable for her
being an American. To read Grimes with full appreciation it is helpful to
have a grasp of English topography, customs, modes of expression, the
class system, cuisine--if that is not too elevated a term for much pub
food--and, of course, that center of a great deal of English life, the pub
itself.
Grimes also writes for a culturally literate audience, attuned to the arts
and literature, and especially for readers familiar with the classic English
mystery story. A more than passing acquaintance with antiques, painting,
architecture, objets d'art in general, and literature in particular adds to
the reader's enjoyment of the Grimes novels. I Am the Only Running
Footman, for example, uses as a basic metaphor for the modus operandi
of the murders "Porphyria's Lover," a poem by Browning in which a girl is
strangled with her own flaxen hair. The particular circumstances
surrounding the death of Christopher Marlowe play an important role in The
Dirty Duck, even to the point of one of the murders seeming to be an
imitation of Marlowe's. Literary references abound in The Five Bells and
Bladebone--to Trollope's method of writing his novels, Coleridge's "Kubla
Khan" and the man from Porlock who interrupted its composition, to Henry
James's The Golden Bowl. The significance of all of these, and more, would
certainly slip by the reader unfamiliar with the canon of English literature.
Additionally, Grimes alludes frequently to the masters of the classic
mystery, to Sayers, Christie (not always favorably), Tey and others. And
her plots, characters and situations often echo in one way or another
those of her distinguished predecessors. Her central character,
Superintendent Richard Jury of Scotland Yard, reminds one in certain ways
of such figures as P.D. James's Adam Dalgliesh and Ngaio Marsh's Roderick
Alleyn--tall, good-looking, quiet, cultured, determined, thoughtful, and
sensitive. Melrose Plant, Grimes's aristocratic and wealthy amateur sleuth,
shows traces of Lord Peter Wimsey and Albert Campion: behind his
dilettantish appearance is an exceptionally keen and logical mind, that can
solve the Times crossword in 15 minutes. Her plots are exceedingly
convoluted and clever, with adroitly placed red herrings, delicate problems
of time and place, and most unexpected conclusions. Her picture-postcard
English villages look much like St. Mary Mead, and she even has the nerve
to create a tour de force using a Christmas party in a great house in
Yorkshire, snowed in whilst murders occur.
Although Grimes does not suffer from the anxiety of influence, she is far
from a thing of shreds and patches taken from other writers' cloth. She is
using both her literary allusions and her echoes of the classic mystery to
her own ends. She is saying in effect, "I know I am working in a tradition
and accept it. Now just watch what I can do with it." She puts a spin on
the tradition and makes it fresh.
The most striking evidence of this Grimsian spin is the comedy that
counterpoints the murder mystery in every novel. This comedy has two
orientations: the social comedy oriented around Melrose Plant, especially
in the village of Long Piddleton, and a kind of domestic comedy concerned
with Jury and his relationships with his associates and neighbors. Plant's
Aunt Agatha, with her rapacious appetite for fairy-cakes and whatever
bibelots she can purloin from Plant's estate of Ardry End, is one of Grimes's
best comic creations, supplemented by other Long Pidd types such as
Marshall Trueblood, gay dealer in antiques; Mrs. Withersby, village drunk
and oracle; and Ruthven (pronounced Ri'vn), Plant's archetypal butler.
Jury's comic coterie includes Chief Superintendent Racer, Jury's superior in
rank and inferior in brains, who tries unsuccessfully to browbeat Jury at
every opportunity but is in turn tormented by Cyril, the cat, who sneaks
into Racer's office equally at every opportunity. Jury's Sergeant Wiggins
brings comedy into the murder investigation with his hypochondriacal
chugging of nostrums in great variety; while at Jury's apartment house
Mrs. Wasserman, fearful of a nonexistent pursuer, and Carole-Anne, a
teenage beauty, continually call on his help and concern. Moreover, in
most of the stories Jury's empathy with children elicits a quiet comedy
that adds still another dimension to his character as he jokes and plays
with them.
The movement of Grimes's novels is essentially contrapuntal, rather
fugue-like, as she takes up first the murder, say, then switches to Long
Pidd and its comic interplay, then goes back to the murder investigation,
then perhaps to Racer or Mrs. Wasserman, then again returns to the main
theme of the murder, which by this time has probably become several
more murders. The murders are grisly, bizarre, the investigation plodding
with innumerable interviews and speculations, the comedy light and
sparkling, or amusingly outrageous. She works these elements back and
forth, gradually weaving them all together as Jury and Plant, and in later
novels, Chief Superintendent Macalvie of the Devon Constabulary, a most
feisty and tough cop who contrasts effectively with Jury, bring the plot to
its conclusion.
Grimes is not, however, stuck with this pattern. Throughout her novels she
varies her approach, the settings, and the supplementary characters with
great skill and flexibility. Which of these novels can be considered the
"best" or "most effective" is a matter of taste, but The Man with a Load of
Mischief, The Old Fox Deceiv'd, and The Anodyne Necklace, her first three
stories, and The Five Bells and Bladebone are among the most interesting
for rather different reasons. The Man with a Load of Mischief creates a
most detailed picture of Long Piddleton, even to the extent of including a
map, so that the village takes on depth and verisimilitude to a greater
degree than in the other novels. The comic characters, especially Aunt
Agatha, are also introduced in depth, so that when we meet them in later
stories they are familiar friends. The murders are exceptionally ingenious
and bizarre, one victim garotted and thrust into a butt of ale, reminiscent
of the Duke of Clarence, as we are reminded, while the other is placed
atop the beam that holds the "Jack" that strikes the hours at the Jack and
Hammer pub. Two more murders occur at or near pubs, thus establishing a
landmark practice of Grimes. The climax, a confrontation between the
murderer and Jury in a darkened church, is a real thriller, with a marvelous
feeling of danger unusual in Grimes. This first book shows the perfect
control that has characterized the rest; Grimes has always known what
she was doing.
The Old Fox Deceiv'd and The Anodyne Necklace are admirable in their
creation of setting, too, especially the former, where the village of
Rackmoor, tilted on the edge of the North Sea, has wonderfully convoluted
streets and byways important to the plot, as is the mistaken identification
which puzzles the reader as it puzzles Jury, a most satisfying conundrum.
The Anodyne Necklace is distinctive in the way it alternates between the
village of Littlebourne and London's East End, where the Dickensian family
of the Cripps are a superbly vulgar and comic bunch that shows still
another side of Grimes's flair for comedy. And, although children often are
important to Jury in his investigations, Emily Louise Perk, age 10, is really
central to this mystery, while her escape on horseback from the murderer
is just about as thrilling as Jury's earlier meeting in the darkened church.
Here also is an inconclusive romantic attachment begun for Jury and Lady
Kennington. Jury has long felt drawn to Vivian Rivington, a poet who lives
in Long Pidd, but here is drawn in another direction which adds another
aspect to his nature, since both women seem lost and subdued, calling on
the intense sympathy and deep melancholy which occasionally comes to
the surface in Jury.
The Five Bells and Bladebone, the ninth Jury novel, shows Grimes trying
out a more formal fugue-like approach, with the serious and comic
presented for much of the novel in separate sections, and also presents
the reader with a fundamental ambiguity at the end. Either Sadie Diver and
Simon Lean were killed by Hannah Lean, who stabbed Sadie on Wapping
Old Stairs in London's East End, and, after stabbing her husband, stuffed
him in a valuable antique desk in Long Piddleton, or Sadie Killed Hannah
with Simon's contrivance, then did him in, and took Hannah's place, and
money, relying on her resemblance to Hannah and various other
stratagems to support the charade. Which woman is Jury pursuing? One
never knows for sure, because the woman's last words as she is dying
after slashing her wrists are, "I'm not her." Probably she is Hannah, but for
this story Grimes leaves us with a genuine mystery. It seems to be her
Turn of the Screw or Benito Cereno, a radically ambitious fiction.
The Old Silent shows her venturing into yet another territory, since its
subtheme is the world of popular music and several of the characters
musicians. Throughout the story there are phrases from popular songs,
and the movement of the novel resembles that of jazz, with shifts of
perspective, more "riffs." The plot is as complex as ever, and the problem
of identity crucial as it often is, but the music motif makes this novel
unique among her works. As evinced by this novel, and her earlier work,
Grimes is a writer of infinite resource and great skill.
In both The Horse You Came in On and Rainbow's End, Grimes mixes
English and American settings with uneven results. The former book is set
chiefly in the Baltimore area and offers a plot which hinges on plagiarism;
the latter has a convoluted story line which takes Jury to New Mexico to
sort out the deaths of several women. In these two novels Grimes
concentrates much more on character, with the result that there is rich
feast in each book for the lover of well-drawn and eccentric characters,
surely one of Grimes's most appealing qualities. Indeed, in Rainbow's End,
she brings back the Cripps family from The Anodyne Necklace, as well as
characters from other novels, so that this book is almost a "class reunion."
A character-fest which almost overwhelms the mystery plot, Rainbow's
End is nevertheless a marvelously entertaining book for the patient reader.
With The End of the Pier, set in small-town America, Grimes broke rank and
offered her readers something quite different from the long string of highly
successful Jury novels. Something of a mix between a "crime" novel and a
"serious literary" novel, The End of the Pier is unfortunately not fully
successful as either. The book offers, rather impressively, several
intriguing characters, each of whom has at least one cross to bear. Grimes
limns these people unsparingly and tacks her psychological profiles onto a
story in which a serial killer has been preying on local women. The killer's
brooding presence adds a dark feel to the book, and the identity of the
killer is eventually revealed, in an ending that is almost farcical in its poetic
justice. But the "crime" aspect seems incidental to the story in an
unsatisfying way, as if Grimes felt impelled to include a crime but wasn't
very happy about doing so. Despite the novel's flaws, Grimes nevertheless
gives a virtuoso turn with her characters. Like Charles Dickens before her,
Grimes rejoices in her characters, quirky or down-to-earth; even when the
plot falters, the characters entice the reader to persevere to the end,
providing their own reward.
-- from St. James Guide to Crime & Mystery Writers, 4th ed. St. James Press, 1996.
Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: The Gale
Group. 2002.
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