The Man With a Load of Mischief

Two pubs. Two murders. One chocolate-box village convinced of its own perfection - until now.





Long Piddleton is an unlikely setting for a crime, and yet it's the scene of two. With one dead body upended in a keg of beer at The Man with a Load of Mischief, and another swinging from the sign above the Jack and Hammer, tensions are high, and Scotland Yard's Richard Jury is called in to calm the waters.





On arrival, Jury finds himself confronted by a community spooked by the idea that the murderer could be amongst them. That is, apart from Melrose Plant - the eighth Earl of Caverness and a keen observer of human nature whose astute eye directs Jury's investigation straight into the heart of the village, leaving the community questioning everything they ever thought they knew and trusted.



Martha Grimes is a self-acclaimed Anglophile who has been publishing a book (and sometimes two) every year for the past twenty-five years.





Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Grimes earned her BA and MA from the University of Maryland. Though she is best known for her detective fiction series that features Richard Jury, a Scotland Yard inspector, Martha Grimes is the author of two further book series - the Andi Oliver series and the Emma Graham series - as well as a collection of poems, a short story and a further two novels.





In 1983, Grimes was the recipient of the Nero Wolfe Award for the best mystery of the year for The Anodyne Necklace. In 2012, she was awarded the title of Grand Master by The Edgar Awards Mystery Writers of America.



For readers who value wit, atmosphere and charm.



Grimes captures the flavour of British village life...Long may she write Richard Jury mysteries.



[Grimes's novel] is cast in the mould of the great British mysteries and comes complete with all the classic elements.



One of the established masters of the genre.



[Grimes's] gift for evoking mood and emotion is as keen as her talent for inventing a demanding puzzle, and solving it.



[Grimes] excels at creating a haunting atmosphere and characters both poignant and preposterous.



Grimes is gifted at exploring the private, sometimes horrifying, yet utterly mundane thoughts of ordinary people.



Read any one [of her novels] and you'll want to read them all.



Grimes's love of the offbeat, the whimsical and the absurd makes [the Richard Jury series] utterly unlike anyone else's detective novels.



Grimes is not the next Dorothy Sayers, not the next Agatha Christie. She is better than both.