Richard Jury Series Books in Order

The Richard Jury series by Martha Grimes is a long-running British mystery series following Scotland Yard Superintendent Richard Jury through cases that take him across England's villages, country houses, and cities, typically beginning at a pub whose name provides the novel's title. Jury is accompanied by the eccentric, independently wealthy Melrose Plant — an English aristocrat who has renounced his titles and who brings his considerable intelligence and social access to Jury's investigations as an unofficial partner.

Grimes writes in the tradition of the classic British mystery — the country village setting, the closed community of suspects, the emphasis on character and atmosphere over graphic violence — while developing the Jury-Plant partnership with genuine psychological depth and an ongoing cast of recurring characters whose lives evolve across the series.

The series has run for more than twenty novels and has been compared favorably to the classic Golden Age mysteries it homages, praised for Grimes's prose quality, her sharp wit, and the accumulated richness of the world she has built. Begin with The Man with a Load of Mischief (1981).