Profiles of Martha Grimes' Writings
from Contemporary Popular Writers
The New York Times called Martha Grimes "the Dorothy Sayers of the
1980s." Her novels recreate the classic country-house murder mysteries of
the 1930s, setting each case in a modern example of a closed community.
The first novel by Grimes, The Man with a Load of Mischief (1981),
introduces the reader to two detectives. One, Inspector Richard Jury, is a
professional policeman. The other, Melrose Plant, is a part-time academic
and an aristocrat who has renounced his title. Each man has his own
assistant; Jury has the hypochondriac Wiggins and Plant has the irritating
Aunt Agatha. Wiggins and Agatha bring light relief into the novels while
they stimulate the two detectives to solve the crimes. In the characters
of the two detectives, Grimes alludes to Sayers's aristocratic Lord Wimsey
and Christie's refined professional Hercule Poirot.
The murders in The Man with a Load of Mischief are centered around the
pubs in a small countryside hamlet. They are bizarre and resemble the
name of the pub where the body is found. In this story Jury and Wiggins
are interlopers intruding into a sleepy village in order to reassert normality.
Plant is both an insider and an outsider. He is one of the community, yet
he stands apart from the rest of the villagers because of his title. This
position makes him the ideal source of information for Jury. Together Jury
and Plant discover the identity of the murderer, and the equilibrium village
life is restored.
The Old Fox Deceived (1982) maintains Plant's position of police aide. Plant
is visiting old friends in Yorkshire when a woman who claimed to be the
local aristocrat's long lost ward is found stabbed to death. Jury and
Wiggins come to investigate after the local police fail to make progress on
the case. In the course of his investigation, Jury discovers and solves a
much earlier crime, rescues a young boy who has been deserted by his
mother, and discovers an unlikely murderer. The novel is a
well-constructed and atmospheric mystery. It contains all the elements
from the Golden Age of crime writing; a stranger found dead, mistaken
identity, deceit, betrayal, and justice. It is a prime example of modern
cozy detective fiction.
A different type of community is infiltrated by Plant and Jury in The Dirty
Duck (1984). The community in danger is a group of American tourists on a
trip to Stratford upon Avon. One of the women on the trip is brutally
murdered in a style similar to that of Jack the Ripper. At the same time the
adopted son of the tour organizer disappears. The one clue deliberately
left on each of the victims is a theater program inscribed with a couplet
from a poem. Jury and Plant need to identify the poem to find the
murderer before the quotation is complete. The investigation spreads to
the States.
The American influence is stronger in The Horse You Came in On (1993), in
which Jury, Wiggins, and Plant cross the Atlantic to solve the murder of a
PhD student. Two communities are explored in this case. One is the
academic world of the deceased female student. She had found a
manuscript, allegedly written by Edgar Allan Poe, that served to elicit all
manner of jealousies and in-fighting at the University. The other world is
that of a murdered homeless man whose death increases in importance as
the case develops. This world is harder to infiltrate, particularly for the
wealthy Plant. The connection between the two communities is surprising.
In her novels, Grimes uses Jury and Plant to delve into small,
self-contained communities, and puts a modern twist on country house
murders. Jury and Plant work together to find the perpetrator and, by
meeting out justice, to restore normality to the community. Grimes fulfills
the object of a cozy detective writer by setting a problem and solving it in
the contemporary world.
-- from Contemporary Popular Writers. St. James Press, 1997. Reproduced in Biography
Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: The Gale Group. 2002.
|
|