When Grimes began writing her Richard Jury, Superintendent at the New Scotland Yard, series in 1981 with “A Load of Mischief”, the series was fresh, funny, and fascinating.  I finished that book on June 13 1986, the 244th book entered into my hand written book journal Volume 1, and went on to read nearly all of the rest of the 25 Richard Jury volumes that followed, enjoying the quirky cast of characters and the classic British formuale for solving murders (though Grimes, it turns out is an American, born in Pittsburgh and educated at U. of Maryland and Iowa).

Amazingly, she has written another Jury novel at the age of 95!!!!  It’s her first book in six years, and I wish someone had urged her to hang up her computer after that one.  This is a rather terrible book, though perhaps taking her advanced age into account, it’s somewhat amazing she was able to write it at all.

I’ll spare you the silly and disjointed plot, the brief appearance of unknown characters who we are assumed to know from prior books, the sudden appearance of otherwise irrelevant characters, and on and on.  It was simply a terrible book and her editor should have urged her to sit on her prior laurels.

Yet another sad incidence of a fine writer ending their career with a loser.