Richard Jury, the brooding Scotland Yard detective-hero of many of Martha Grimes's mysteries, is back in The Case Has Altered, but--as usual--his sidekick Melrose Plant steals the show. Set in the fens of Lincolnshire, Jury must investigate two murders in which his true love, Jenny Kennington, is a suspect. But while Jury deals with the evidence, Melrose uncovers the local color, interviewing everyone from uncommunicative pub owners to chatty cooks. Even murder seems a little less grim with Melrose Plant around.


From Library Journal
Poor Dorcas, dead in a ditch in the fens. And she's not the only one. Vera Dunn, the manipulative ex-wife of Max Owen, master of the local estate, Fengate (where Dorcas was a servant), is also dead. Enter Grimes stalward Richard Jury, who's not officially on the case but who gets involved anyway because Lady Kenningston, a woman he cherishes, has been accused of doing in Dunn, with whom she has been seen quarreling. Jury gets pal Melrose Plant to pose as an antiques dealer so that he can snoop around Fengate, then goes off to do some investigating on his own. Naturally, there are puzzles, e.g., why was Dorcas out on the fens that night? Why didn't Lady Kenningston come clean on her relation with nasty Verna? The result is a delicious ebb and flow of tension?first, we get a trial for Lady Kennington, then more twists and turns as the real killer is finally, surprisingly revealed. In the process, there's beautifully rendered atmosphere and perhaps a bit too much of Melrose's litigious aunt. Vintage Grimes; for all collections.-?Barbara Hoffert, "Library Journal"Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.


The New York Times Book Review, Marilyn Stasio
Although some of these animated creations are purely decorative (Plant's endearingly awful Aunt Agatha among them), most play small but integral roles in the richly textured story. Like the fens, which appear so cold and dead in the distance, life reveals itself in the homely details.


From AudioFile
Murder in Lincolnshire brings Richard Jury to the damp and wasted fen country. This time, an old flame is implicated, and Jury is forced to doubt how well he really knew her. His pub-trotting chum, Melrose Plant, eternally escaping his snobbish, litigious and voracious aunt, agrees to help by posing as an antiques expert. Curry's remarkable abilities as a character actor are here employed to great effect. Never has Aunt Agatha seemed so venal. The pubs, with their assorted inhabitants, glow in his portrayals. Grimes winds plots together in ways that might, in lesser hands, become confusing, but Curry and a deft abridgment do much to help sort things out. S.B.S. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine


From Kirkus Reviews
``The worst things happened to Jury's women,'' muses his friend Melrose Plant all too accurately. The victim this time is Supt. Richard Jury's former lover Lady Jennifer Kennington, suspected first of shooting actress Verna Dunn, then two weeks later strangling Dorcas Reese, homely kitchen girl at Fengate, the residence of Verna's ex-husband Max Owen. Jury's first idea- -prying Plant loose from his litigious aunt's nuisance suit against inoffensive secondhand-shopkeeper Ada Crisp to send him undercover to Lincolnshire as the antiques appraiser who'll help evaluate Max's treasures--yields lots of data about Max, his understanding wife Grace, his sculptor nephew Jack Price, and their neighbors Major Linus Parker and Peter Emery, his blind groundskeeper. But despite the data, there are precious few conclusions. And when Jury confronts Jenny directly, she simply admits an undeniable motive for killing Verna and expands on the lies she's already told the police. So it's on to the courtroom, where procedural fireworks await. As always with Grimes (Hotel Paradise, 1996, etc.), the pace is leisurely, at times maddeningly so; yet the endless repetitions of the case's central questions--what was Dorcas so sorry she'd listened to and done? why did she tell her trusted intimates she was pregnant when she wasn't? why were the two murders committed with different weapons?--actually deepen their mystery instead of dispelling it. Even the farcical subplot--that nuisance lawsuit back home- -adds its counterweight to the Fen Country gloom to produce Grimes's best book in years. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


Book Description
The thirteenth mystery for Richard Jury finds the detective investigating the murder of two women in the Lincolnshire fens. Both victims are connected to the wealthy owner of the Fengate estate: one a kitchen maid, and the other, the owner's ex-wife. But Jury has more at stake than just catching a killer, as the prime suspect is a woman who's presence in his life is becoming meaningful in a way he can't explain....

FROM OUR EDITORS

Superintendent Richard Jury is called to the fen country to rescue his former lover Lady Jennifer Kennington -- who doesn't mind lying to him as well as to the local police -- from two charges of murder, in an intricate, atmospheric puzzler that ranks with Grimes's best.

—Tom Leitch

FROM THE PUBLISHER

The Lincolnshire fens are the perfect setting for a mystifying double-murder in Martha Grimes's new Richard Jury case, a setting hardly likely to take Sergeant Wiggins's mind off his sinuses, off his pills, tinctures, and bromides. Jury finds it is a landscape that resists revealing its secrets when the body of a woman is found on the Wash and, two weeks later, the body of another woman is found floating in a canal in Windy Fen. Both women are connected with the Fengate estate: one, a kitchen maid there, and the other, the louche ex-wife of the owner, Max Owen, a man with a passion for antiques. Since the case officially belongs to the Lincolnshire police, Jury needs someone inside Fengate, someone who can impersonate an antiques expert. Someone like Melrose Plant, detective manque and yet another member of Martha Grimes's cast of deliciously eccentric characters. Jury's interest in this case is personal, for the principal suspect is Jenny Kennington, a woman who has stood at the periphery of Jury's life for years and whom he now wants in it.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Grimes is dazzling in this deftly plotted, 13th Richard Jury mystery (the last was Rainbow's End, 1995). Psychologically complex and muted in tone, with the characters' elliptical relationships reflecting the setting of England's dreamlike fen country, the novel also boasts Grimes's delicious wit. Most of her eccentric regulars are here: detective-manque Melrose Plant, Lord Ardry; his infuriating Aunt Agatha; hypochondriac Sgt. Wiggins; pompous antiquarian Marshall Trueblood. Jennifer Kennington, the woman whom Jury has loved, mainly from afar, for 10 years is the prime suspect in two murders. One victim is her cousin, Verna Dunn, with whom she was a guest at the antiques-strewn estate of Verna's ex-husband, Max Owen, and his second wife; the other is the Owens' servant, Dorcas Reese. The Lincolnshire police haven't requested Scotland Yard's help, so Jury, unofficially allying himself with the enigmatic local chief inspector, persuades Melrose to investigate by visiting the Owens as an antiques appraiser. Jury's breakthrough in identifying the real murderer follows a chat with a signature Grimes character, a knowing, elfin child named Zel whose companion is a nondescript dog. In a comic subplot, Melrose's litigious aunt sues a used furniture dealer, claiming she was injured tripping on an antique bedpan in front of the shop and then attacked by the shopowner's terrier. The title, as always, the name of a pub, holds the clue. After Jury's last two disappointing appearances, both set in America, Grimes brings him triumphantly back where he belongs.

Library Journal

Grimes returns with another Richard Jury mysterythis time, Jury must solve the murders of two women found in the misty fensbut now she's with a new publisher.

AudioFile - Susan B. Stavropoulos

Murder in Lincolnshire brings Richard Jury to the damp and wasted fen country. This time, an old flame is implicated, and Jury is forced to doubt how well he really knew her. His pub-trotting chum, Melrose Plant, eternally escaping his snobbish, litigious and voracious aunt, agrees to help by posing as an antiques expert. Curry￯﾿ﾽs remarkable abilities as a character actor are here employed to great effect. Never has Aunt Agatha seemed so venal. The pubs, with their assorted inhabitants, glow in his portrayals. Grimes winds plots together in ways that might, in lesser hands, become confusing, but Curry and a deft abridgment do much to help sort things out. S.B.S. ￯﾿ﾽAudioFile, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

"The worst things happened to Jury's women," muses his friend Melrose Plant all too accurately. The victim this time is Supt. Richard Jury's former lover Lady Jennifer Kennington, suspected first of shooting actress Verna Dunn, then two weeks later strangling Dorcas Reese, homely kitchen girl at Fengate, the residence of Verna's ex-husband Max Owen. Jury's first idea—prying Plant loose from his litigious aunt's nuisance suit against inoffensive secondhand-shopkeeper Ada Crisp to send him undercover to Lincolnshire as the antiques appraiser who'll help evaluate Max's treasures—yields lots of data about Max, his understanding wife Grace, his sculptor nephew Jack Price, and their neighbors Major Linus Parker and Peter Emery, his blind groundskeeper. But despite the data, there are precious few conclusions. And when Jury confronts Jenny directly, she simply admits an undeniable motive for killing Verna and expands on the lies she's already told the police. So it's on to the courtroom, where procedural fireworks await. As always with Grimes (Hotel Paradise, 1996, etc.), the pace is leisurely, at times maddeningly so; yet the endless repetitions of the case's central questions—what was Dorcas so sorry she'd listened to and done? why did she tell her trusted intimates she was pregnant when she wasn't? why were the two murders committed with different weapons?—actually deepen their mystery instead of dispelling it. Even the farcical subplot—that nuisance lawsuit back home—adds its counterweight to the Fen Country gloom to produce Grimes's best book in years.